The Internet Computer Protocol Token – Scam or Legit? What Do You Think Now?
AUTHOR: Dolores Quintana
Cryptocurrency is a trendy yet controversial topic. Debates about the legitimacy of coins or tokens and cryptocurrencies based on creating new systems are particularly contentious. The Internet Computer (ICP) token has stirred up quite a lot of ill will but has its strident defenders. On one of the Internet’s most popular platforms, a commenter wanted to find out the overall opinion of ICP, and there were some interesting answers.
Let’s Get It Started
Here is what the forum member asked, “For the past couple of years, there has been a lot of skepticism around the Internet Computer (ICP) protocol, with many people on Reddit, especially those in the cryptocurrency subreddit, labeling it as a scam. But with the massive development and developer onboarding happening recently, I wanted to ask the community what they think now.
Undoubtedly, the Internet Computer has been gaining much traction lately, with more and more people showing interest in its decentralized approach to cloud computing. It offers a way for disparate data centers worldwide to collaborate and provide a decentralized alternative to the centralized internet cloud providers we have today.
Despite this progress, some people still doubt the ICP’s legitimacy. So, I’m curious to know, have your opinions on the Internet Computer changed? Do you still think it’s a scam, or do you believe it has real potential?”
An Alternative To The Internet As We Know It?
Internet Computer is not just a token but also a plan to create what the developers claim is a decentralized alternative to the Internet itself. Here are a few reactions to this objective.
“Sounds like a MySQL database with extra features. My man, if tps/scale/speed are the claims, it is not decentralized. People out here completely ignore the fundamentals of using a blockchain.”
“The blockchain aspect isn’t what’s interesting about the project. It uses advanced applied cryptography to bring 1000s of independent data centers together to make a network you can run any application on fully on chain. You get all the benefits of a blockchain and the speed of web 2. As someone planning to build, that’s more important than silly ethos. Besides, most Blockchains already run on AWS anyway. ICP seems to be the only one trying to build a completely sovereign infrastructure with 0 corporate cloud infrastructure.”
“Check back in 4 years. I want to see how it’s going. I suspect ICP will be an ancient artifact by then.”
“AWS is just a single entity controlling every aspect of the cloud computing infrastructure. In contrast, the Internet Computer Protocol is a novel blockchain-based platform that provides a decentralized infrastructure for creating and running dApps. Currently, ICP is working with 80 infrastructure providers, and if the project succeeds, it is expected to expand to thousands more. Moreover, ICP has complete on-chain governance, allowing anyone to update the protocol autonomously. Please excuse any misunderstanding if my interpretation of AWS’s structure is incorrect.”
Failure To Launch
One of the biggest criticisms of the token was how it was introduced into the crypto sphere. Allegations that the crypto entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), now in jail facing serious charges of fraud, “pumped” the ICP token run wild through the thread. Here are a few examples.
“FTX launched synthetic futures of $ICP before ICP was even found, driving the price to astronomical prices to be dumped at launch. SBF and Alameda did this to more projects, but ICP was the worst case because of other attacks. The exposing of SBF all started here.
After this dump, a ghost firm that had never done a report appeared. They were paid to write an essay about ICP and how it was a scam. Without a track record, the NYT picked this report up to write a hit piece, which caused even more harm. Who wrote this article? The same NYT journalist that was the only one SBF would talk to after everything went down. We all know how generous he was with his donations.”
“Manufactured perception, SBF created futures before the launch and pumped the price to ensure the token launch was overvalued. Then he opened shorts on it to make money and harm the public image of a competitor to SOL. Alameda (AKA FTX) gets paid SOL until 2028, so they had a vested interest in breaking the competition and keeping SOL on top.
This was hard to explain before FTX’s collapse, but people have warmed up to the idea that SBF is a scumbag, and this is what he would do.”
To Dfinity and Beyond!
The computer software company, The DFINITY Foundation, is the company responsible for the efforts to create a new decentralized alternative to the Internet as we know it. People making comments, including someone who claims to be a DFINITY engineer, had opinions on the subject.
“DFINITY engineer here (DFINITY is the foundation that does most work on the Internet Computer). If you want to learn how the IC works on a technical level, the best place to start is the ‘how it works’ page. By the way: The whole website in that link is hosted on the IC.”
“It’s got the best dev team working on it in the space. . It’s not competing against anything you’re holding unless you’re holding Amazon, Alphabet, or Microsoft shares. Just look at this, the whole thing is hosted on chain https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/distrikt-social/id1590176124, which is very impressive to me. It negates the need for firewalls, amongst other things, and has things like built-in geo-replication. Look at this https://dashboard.internetcomputer.org/. Right now, it’s doing 6,900+ transactions a second with a theoretically unlimited maximum. As you can see, there are currently 1,235 nodes dotted around the globe in private data centers, which is about 40k vCPUs. Canister growth over the last 12 months is at 600-700%. A canister is where you host a website or app and deposit the ICP, compared to dollars to run in Azure.”
Ugh, That Name
One humorous complaint was repeated multiple times and, therefore, worthy of note.
“The name is stupid.”
This thread inspired this post.
This originally appeared on AmmarRangwala.com.
Ammar has started several online businesses and is a blogger who loves providing quality content to help others. He is involved with affiliate marketing, domain names, NFTs, and cryptocurrencies. Check out my blog if you want to learn more about these areas and business in general.
