Dive into DePIN "Tangerine": The Differentiation of the ICN Network

??? In Jiangnan, there are orange trees, still green in winter: against the market

I found this coin in Binance Alpha. At the beginning of August, the market was declining, but $ICNT seems to show signs of rising against the trend.

The daily level test support level showed a long upper shadow at the end of July, and the trading volume has been increasing over the past week. It is necessary to continue observing for a while to confirm the support level.

??? How can the warmth of the earth be self-evident, when the heart remains cold in winter: diving into the exploration of differentiation

The market of the new coin still needs to be observed. However, the price support may be related to the project’s fundamentals. The Impossible Cloud Network ( ICN ) appears to be an ordinary DePin project on the surface, but upon deeper research, it becomes evident that this project is actually noteworthy.

??? Products and Services

❚ On the surface

On the surface, the ICN network is similar to most dePIN projects.

The ICN network consists of two types of nodes, ScalerNode and HyperNode, as well as Builders and $ICNT stakers. Among them:

Hardware vendors establish ScalerNode nodes to perform tasks such as storage and computation.

HyperNode nodes are the validators of the ICN protocol, responsible for evaluating and supervising ScalerNode nodes to ensure the integrity and reliability of the ICN network.

Builders in the ICN ecosystem develop and establish applications using various hardware resources of the ICN network, making them one of the key users in the ICN ecosystem.

$ICNT holders can choose nodes for staking and receive corresponding rewards.

The entire dePIN network generates revenue by providing external services such as storage, computing, and rendering, and the revenue is then used to reward nodes and token stakers.

❚ Infiltrate

But in fact, other dePIN projects are either storage-based, computing-based, or network service-based. The Impossible Cloud Network ( ICN ) is building a comprehensive, integrated, and composable dePIN network.

The ICN network is about to become a comprehensive dePIN network composed of various types of hardware such as storage, CPU, GPU, and network facilities. At that time, builders can use distributed hardware combinations within the ICN ecosystem to create truly decentralized applications.

Therefore, the future ICN will be a large dePIN, a decentralized large-scale computer ecosystem.

???Market

❚ On the surface

Official Twitter @ICN_Protocol and platforms like CoinMarketCap show that the official website of ICN is icn.global.

❚ Infiltrate

According to the CEO of ICN’s LinkedIn, we can see another platform the CEO is involved in called impossible cloud, and its official website is impossiblecloud.com.

This is a cloud storage platform established in 2021, with advantages such as: compliance with European technical standards; unlimited hot storage; built-in ransomware protection software; 80% cost savings compared to Amazon’s AWS; and support for AWS S3’s API.

In other words, the foundation of ICN is a mature cloud storage platform with many high-quality enterprise clients in Europe.

If you only look at the ICN official website, you might question the data on the site: “Provided over $7 million in ARR to more than 1,000 enterprise customers, supported over 80PB of active storage, deeply integrated a $10 billion ecosystem, etc.”.

However, if you go to the impossible cloud website, you will see the feedback and positive reviews from these corporate clients about impossible cloud.

The service provider of impossible cloud actually comes from the dePIN network——impossible cloud net (ICN).

According to the Google search trends for “impossible cloud”, it is indeed more popular in Europe. Moreover, $ICNT has been listed on Kraken, which is a US exchange, but its main users come from Europe. This indicates that ICN is compliant in both Europe and America, and has a better market foundation in Europe.

The two main features of the ICN market are: first, it has a large number of enterprise-level clients, and second, it has a better market foundation in Europe.

??? Ecology

❚ On the surface

According to official website data, the ICN network TVL is a total of 79.82M**$ICNT**, worth approximately 16.6 million dollars.

The node distribution is mainly in Europe, extending to North America, Brazil, Africa, Asia, and Australia.

❚ Infiltrate

Dune data shows that according to the data updated 17 days ago, ICN network nodes have sold a total of 28,840, worth approximately 12.72 million dollars.

There are 1009 independent node operators.

The number of nodes in the ICN network and its degree of decentralization are not low.

??? Can recommend outstanding guests, but the obstacles are deep: The potential from Web2 to Web3

The CEO of ICN, Dr. Kai Wawrzinek, is an elite entrepreneur who graduated from Heidelberg University. He has extensive successful entrepreneurial experience in the gaming and VC fields and has been a board member of well-known companies. Since he has launched reliable projects on Binance Alpha and Kraken, I won’t elaborate on the other team members.

Pay special attention to the CEO’s resume. We can see that Impossible Cloud was founded in 2021, while Impossible Cloud Network was founded in 2023, and the $ICNT token TGE will be in 2025.

So ICN is a project that transitions from Web2 to Web3, and it is one that does things first and issues tokens later.

However, apart from DUNE, there is currently no third-party data for the ICN network on platforms such as defillama and tokentiminal.

These are some obstacles that are detrimental to the promotion of Web3.

Of course, for ICN, which has only been on the mainnet for about a month, this is also where the potential lies.

??? Destiny is only encountered, the cycle cannot be sought: proactive operation

The author of this poem is the famous minister Zhang Jiuling from the Tang Dynasty. This poem is excerpted from his collection of poems “Ganyù” written during his exile, and it expresses his feelings through the imagery of the orange.

“Fate can only be encountered, and the cycle cannot be sought,” destiny is often something that can be encountered but not pursued, as the cycle is difficult to trace; this line of poetry is unrelated to the tangerine.

This point is different from Zhang Jiuling; the project is actively working to promote integration with Web3.

For example, the recent ICN network provided 50TB of cloud storage as a reward to 5 Web3 projects. Moreover, these five Web3 projects belong to different types of Web3 applications. This means that the ICN ecosystem is expanding outward from these five different types of Web3 applications.

For example, the web3 data platform Messari released an ICN analysis report and looks forward to the launch of on-chain data analysis tools for ICN in the future.

???Talking about the peach and plum trees, does this tree not have shade: Comparison of advantages

If other excellent dePIN projects are the “peach and plum”, then ICN can be said to be the “tangerine” in dePIN, rivaling the other “peach and plum”.

???ICN vs Aethir

The similarity between ICN and Aethir is that both provide enterprise-level services while targeting the Web3 market.

One of the differences is that Aethir is primarily a decentralized GPU network serving fields such as AI and cloud gaming, providing computing services. In contrast, ICN is currently decentralized cloud storage, which will soon develop into a large dePIN integrating various hardware.

The second distinction is that Aethir’s main market is currently in Asia, while ICN originated in Europe, having a greater influence in the English market. Moreover, it is expanding into the Chinese market through its Chinese account.

???ICN vs filecoin&Arweave

Currently, ICN mainly focuses on storage services, which makes it comparable to Filecoin and Arweave.

One distinction is that on the demand side, filecoin and Arweave mainly serve the Web3 domain. In fact, there are very few Web3 applications that use filecoin. However, ICN’s service targets include both enterprises in the Web2 domain and various dAPPs in the Web3 domain.

And ICN is expanding beyond storage hardware service types.

The second difference is on the supply side. Currently, there are over 1,400 active miners for Filecoin and over 400 active miners for Arweave, while there are around 30,000 nodes sold for ICN, with 1,009 different node operators. Moreover, the ICN mainnet has only been online for a month, and the enthusiasm of participants is even higher.

??? Written at the end

In-depth exploration, monitoring project progress and ecological operations, comparative analysis, etc., we can find that, compared to what is seen on the surface, the ICN network actually has more distinctive products, a larger ecosystem, and more proactive operations.

??? products are more distinctive

Unlike existing dePIN, the ICN network product will be a decentralized integrated network composed of various hardware.

For enterprise users, the existing ICN network decentralizes and disperses monopoly profits, allowing enterprise users to obtain high-quality, low-cost services.

For Web3 users, in the future, Builders can build decentralized applications based on ICN without having to purchase storage on one dePIN and compute power on another dePIN… All that is needed is one ICN network, which on one hand forms larger economies of scale, offering lower costs; on the other hand, hardware matching within the same network can achieve higher performance.

Therefore, the ICN product will be a high quality + low cost large dePIN.

??? The ecosystem is more scalable

Although the ICN mainnet has only been launched for a month, network development started in 2023, and the enterprise-level cloud storage platform has been in development since 2021. ICN currently has a large number of enterprise-level users (1000+), and has sold a considerable number of nodes in the Web3 field, around (30000 ).

??? More Active Operations

ICN is actively transitioning from Web2 to Web3 by providing hardware services as rewards to Web3 applications, collaborating with exchanges and Web3 platforms, and promoting the integration of Web2 and Web3 ecosystems.

Therefore, in the dePIN ecosystem, the “peach and plum” are well-known to the world, while the benefits of “tangerine” may be known to few—just speaking of the peach and plum tree, does this tree not have its shade?