Home » Journal » Icon (ICX) can’t catch a break: it is allegedly possible that ICX supply can be doubled in only 4 years thanks to a whopping 20% annual token inflation

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Icon (ICX) can’t catch a break: it is allegedly possible that ICX supply can be doubled in only 4 years thanks to a whopping 20% annual token inflation

Torsten Hartmann

November 6, 2018

2 comments

It seems most of the major altcoins that came out with big promises are starting to show weaknesses now that the manic hype phase is over?  When ti comes to Icon, there is more and more “sloppiness” and “shady practices” with some disputable fine print from their official documents bubbling up.

It is time for real work and delivery on your promises which, apparently, even the most trusted coins in the space can’t pull off. Making promises and announcing announcements is easy, creating real value is hard.

After the news broken by TheIconist about sudden spike in circulating supply of ICX tokens, their founder reacted on Twitter:

Love how @TheIconistNews is doing investigative work bringing more transparency as a good media firm should do. We are nowhere near burning thru what we raised. We prefer to use $ICX to cover costs when vendors accept it. We see more vendors wanting $ICX. This is a good thing. https://t.co/1B79zybQIJ

— Min (@minhokim) November 4, 2018

This tweet simmered down the vigorous worries echoed by the majority of ICX community.

But, while that fire might have been squashed, yet another one enkindled with a claim that ICX whitepaper allows delegates of their network to mint new tokens at a 7-20% rate per year. The allegation is referring to the page 30 of the ICX whitepaper that covers token issuance.

“Additional issuance of ICX is determined by a cycle of 15,552,000 blocks (approximately 1 year). The
amount of newly issued ICX is an increment function of the growth rate in the ICON Network activity. In
practice, the amount can be further adjusted within a certain range through the consensus among CReps.
The purpose of taking into account the activity levels in determining quantity of issue is to check
ICX against volatility driven by spikes in demand. The activity level of the ICON Republic is measured
by the sum of monthly IISS scores of individual participants during the period of time that it takes to
generate 15,552,000 blocks (Approximately 1 year).

The annual rate of additional ICX issuances will be determined by the logistic function value of increase
rate regarding Iscore . The parameter is set so that the maximum rate of additional ICX issuances
does not exceed 20%. For example, when the increase rate of Iscore < is 0%, additional issuing
rate is 7%. The graph shows that the maximum parameter of 20% has been set as well.

Additional ICX issuance rate will be confirmed through the consensus of the C-Rep within the
Representation channel. Further adjustments can be made in the range of ±5%p only If more than 2/3
of the C-rep oppose to the calculated figure. Such mechanism will allow the network to be stable and
to deal flexibly with unexpected situations, including external financial shocks.

It does appear that the whitepaper really does state that ICX supply will possible grow by 20% per year, which will see the supply double in only 4 years. We have contacted the ICX team and are yet to receive their response to this information. This post will be updated should we get a reply to our inquiry from the ICX team.