Internet Computer ICP
Rank #59 by market cap
Last 7 days
▲2.70%What Internet Computer is
The Internet Computer launched in May 2021, built by the DFINITY Foundation under Dominic Williams. Its ambition is broader than most: not to settle transactions, but to host entire applications — including their web front ends — on-chain, so a site can be served directly from the network with no cloud provider involved.
It works through canisters, which are smart contracts that hold both code and data and can respond to web requests. Fees are inverted relative to most chains: developers pre-pay for computation, so end users can interact with an application without holding any token at all.
Its launch is the part worth knowing. The token debuted at a very high valuation and fell more than ninety percent within months, amid a public dispute over how early allocations and unlock schedules had been communicated. The node machines are also a permissioned set, approved through governance and subject to hardware requirements, which makes the network materially less open to participation than the marketing implies. Its architecture is largely self-contained, so the tooling, wallets and developer ecosystem that grew up around Ethereum mostly do not apply here.
Where ICP lives
Always verify a contract address against the project's own site before sending anything. Addresses are shown as published by the data source, not as an endorsement — and identical-looking tokens on other chains are the most common way people lose money here.
Price change
Internet Computer data synced 6m ago from CoinGecko. Figures shown in USD. This page is market information, not financial advice — and nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell ICP.