ANNOUNCING: ICONFI P-REP NODE
Dear ICONists,
We are proud to announce our candidacy for the ICON Public Representative (“P-Rep”).
ICONFi launched its public service earlier this year. Since our launch, we have developed several innovative services for ICON users. These include ICX Auto Staking, airdrip support for DeFi ICON projects, BALN and OMM, and a token swap service for obsolete ERC-20 ICX tokens.
The ICONFi team is now ready to take on another level of responsibility within the ICON community.
Gateway to ICON
The ICONFi application has become a major gateway for new users to join the ICON ecosystem.
To-date, we have focused on attracting the countless number of users who hold four of the largest digital assets in terms of market capitalization and adoption. You may recognize these from the ICONFi mobile application — BTC, ETH and major stablecoins (USDT and USDC). We have onboarded many of these large-cap crypto investors by incentivizing them with competitive interest rates on their holdings.
Once onboarded onto the ICONFi application, many of these users have naturally moved towards ICON-related services. Through ICONFi, many of these large-cap crypto investors have gone on to stake ICX and receive airdrip tokens of OMM and BALN — two DeFi projects that are part of the ICON ecosystem.
We will continue in our growth as an onboarding point for new users into the ICON ecosystem.
P-Rep
During our first six months of operation, the ICONFi team was focused on the development of the ICONFi application. Throughout this period, we received a substantial amount of ICX votes through ICONFi’s ICX staking function. We delegated these votes evenly to up to 78 P-Reps. P-Reps, using our votes, had the opportunity to gain exposure within the ICON community and make a positive impact.
However, by dispersing ICX votes to so many P-Reps, each P-Rep was limited in their capacity to create incremental impact. Given the small number of votes received by any individual P-Rep, the best option for some of these P-Reps was to sell off their incremental voting rewards.
Now that ICONFi has established its operations, we are ready to become a focal point of votes by establishing ourselves as a P-Rep.
Going forward, staking through the ICONFi application will result in votes being directed towards the ICONFi P-Rep. With these votes, our objective is to create a greater impact within the ICON community.
Transparency around funds and capital reserves is critical to the success of any distributed ledger project. To enhance confidence around how we manage user funds, we will be using our ICX voting rewards to accumulate and maintain a pool of ICX reserves. These reserves will serve to protect against any potential security breaches of the ICONFi platform.
We do this for two reasons.
First, is to enhance confidence in the ICONFi platform. With any digital asset product, users are concerned about the security of their deposits. This is particularly true for a CeFi platform, as users are assigning custody of their assets to an external entity.
By maintaining a pool of ICX reserves, users can have more confidence around the security of their deposits.
These reserves will act as a buffer against financial risk for our users who have made deposits into ICONFi. Our intention is that with this support mechanism, users will be more confident in entrusting their funds with ICONFi. This should be particularly reassuring to beginners who are attracted to ICONFi’s simple saving and staking features.
Second, is to provide security to the ICON ecosystem. ICONFi is increasingly becoming a gateway for many users into the ICON ecosystem. As a wise man once said, with great power comes great responsibility.
If any major ICON project, including ICONFi, were to be compromised, public trust in the ICON ecosystem may fall. ICX reserves would assist us in protecting the ICON ecosystem by acting as a barrier against platform failure.
We are true believers in the ICON ecosystem and believe that we can enhance user confidence around ICONFi and ICON by providing an additional level of transparency around fund reserves.
Summary
ICONFi has experienced significant growth throughout 2021. Our platform has served as a gateway for crypto enthusiasts to learn about ICON. We will continue to expand in this role by broadening our operations to include new asset types and services. We are excited to establish ourselves as a P-Rep and generate more impact for the ICON community as a beacon of stability.
About ICONFi
ICONFi is a digital asset savings platform that provides simple & intuitive earn products so that anyone can easily multiply crypto assets. ICONFi aims to simplify the complicated processes often associated with crypto assets and offers a sleek, straightforward user interface which supports saving, staking and airdrop activities at the palm of your hand.
