The DFINITY Foundation, the organization behind the Internet Computer general-purpose blockchain and web3 platform, today announced that a proposed upgrade to expand support for all canister smart contracts to be able to hold and transfer ICP tokens has been adopted and is now live on the network.
Voting 309,936,205 (approve) to 20,561 (reject) on proposal 31471, this long-awaited feature sets the stage for the creation of advanced DeFi applications on the Internet Computer blockchain, by expanding support for all canister smart contracts to be able to hold and transfer ICP tokens.
“Now the community has adopted this proposal, and the Network Nervous System DAO has upgraded the network, canister smart contracts on the Internet Computer have become able to hold and transfer ICP tokens for the first time, providing for the development of a new generation of DeFi, and the blending of DeFi with social media and games functionality in the form of SocialFi and GameFi, forging the path towards billions of end-users.”
– Dominic Williams, Chief Scientist and Founder at DFINITY
With its advanced cryptography, the Internet Computer public blockchain allows its community of token holders to vote on governance proposals, and the ICP protocol automatically upgrades itself via the Network Nervous System (NNS), a super-advanced DAO.
The ICP transferability upgrade has been eagerly awaited by Internet Computer developers. At a basic level, a dApp such as OpenChat, a decentralized version of WhatsApp, will soon be able to allow users to send ICP tokens to one another via instant messages.
Because smart contracts on the Internet Computer run at web speed and can serve web experiences directly to users, this functionality also heralds the advent of decentralized exchanges that run entirely on a blockchain, without the need for cloud nodes to process trades or create the front-end for users.
Execution of this feature is also an important step towards the implementation of dApp tokenization on the Internet Computer. An upgrade proposal for the critical Service Nervous System (SNS) feature is already under discussion within the community.
DFINITY is also currently working on directly integrating the Internet Computer with the Bitcoin network, which will leverage the combined strength of Bitcoin and the Internet Computer as a platform for efficiently executing smart contracts.
Within just a few months of its launch in May 2021, the Internet Computer has attracted thousands of developers and users of its dApps,