ICON Development Update — June 2021

Greetings ICONists,

It’s never been a better time to join the ICON ecosystem! With a renewed focus, two major upcoming releases, and additional talent joining our core team, and the ecosystem abroad, ICON has never been in a better position for growth.

In the 2nd half of 2021, we want to deliver a smooth and successful launch of ICON 2.0 (in the coming months). The migration process is a tedious/difficult one, but we are up to the task. Also, we want to grow our developer ecosystem, including but not limited to partnering with more talented teams to build out the largest interoperability network in the space. Additionally, we want to provide a user-friendly & value-adding experience for the Ethereum and Polkadot ecosystems through ICE.

We are busy, but we are excited. The team is re-energized, motivated, and pushing ourselves to be the best. The work ahead is challenging, but the opportunity is vast. Now, let’s dive into the updates.

ICON 2.0

Internal development teams continue making progress on block migration, IISS, fee updates, and other critical pieces of infrastructure for the network: trackers, wallets, etc. The target launch date for Mainnet hasn’t settled just yet, however, we will keep the community updated as we progress through the above development work.

Note, we will also be preparing plans for the update for all the service providers in the ICON ecosystem (exchanges, wallets, etc.). So please stay tuned for more details on the requirements in the coming weeks.

Lastly, we will propose an initial IISS 3.1 update shortly. Please refer to the forum for further details and corresponding community discussions. As a reminder, this proposal will be an initial economic design for the ICON ecosystem within the ICON 2.0 framework and the addition of relayers.

BTP ecosystem

We are currently in sprint 9 of parachain BTP implementations, and several key contracts are more than 70% completed, including parachain BSH, BMC, BMV, and ICON BMV, BMR. We are continuing implementation on these core BTP contracts.

Moonbeam will be our first integration target, followed by Acala, Plasm, and Edgeware.

Currently, we are integrating into Moonbase, which is Moonbeam’s testnet. And since Moonbeam’s MoonRiver recently won a parachain slot in Kusama, we’ll have BTP on Kusama soon as well!

Furthermore, additional ecosystem integrations are ongoing. Many in the community have noticed the GitHub activity, and we plan to share formal announcements and development progress shortly.

Lastly, we continue to develop the BTP user interface and dashboard. We hope to share more visuals, and information on these in the coming weeks.

ICE Blockchain

Two weeks ago, we announced the addition of a new blockchain into the ICON Ecosystem called ICE. ICE is a new EVM compatible side chain that enables developers to iterate and innovate much faster by using existing tooling and code from the Ethereum ecosystem. Additionally, we are adding eWASM support that puts us ahead of the game, preparing us for ETH 2.0 compatibility.

We plan to share a further update on ICE, and how it fits into our ICON ecosystem, in the coming days. In the meantime, check out this thread for more information.

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ICON official community

Homepage : https://iconrepublic.org/

Twitter : https://twitter.com/helloiconworld

Reddit : https://www.reddit.com/r/helloicon/

Telegram (ENG) : https://t.me/hello_iconworld

Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/helloicon/

Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/helloiconworld/

Community : https://forum.icon.community/

KakaoTalk (KOR) : https://open.kakao.com/o/gMAFhdS

Telegram (KOR) : https://t.me/iconkorea

Brunch (KOR) : https://brunch.co.kr/@helloiconworld

Medium (ENG) : https://medium.com/helloiconworld

Contact : hello@icon.foundation