'The story of the Internet Computer is not ordinary - it is an extraordinary project driven by a talented group of individuals whose vision, mission, and technology possess unique power.' - Dominic Williams
Today, we celebrate the fourth anniversary of the Internet Computer, and on this occasion, we would like to briefly review the achievements of the Internet Computer and its community over the past year and look forward to future developments.
In addition to this digital commemorative event, we look forward to gathering the community for an in-person celebration at the upcoming World Computer Summit on June 3, 2025, in Zurich. For more details about the event, please refer to the end of this blog.
The Real World Computer
DFINITY Foundation founder and chief scientist Dominic Williams often reflects on how he was initially drawn to the concept of the 'World Computer,' eventually leading to the founding of DFINITY. He has described his early experiences in the Ethereum community and discovered the potential of blockchain in terms of code, data, and computation.
For Williams, this means that blockchain can become 'an extension of the internet, almost capable of building any system and service based on smart contracts,' which may include social networks, enterprise systems, and AI models. He further envisions that 'blockchain will play the role of a world computer in a stack of everything.'
As an embodiment of this vision, the Internet Computer Protocol (ICP) aims to provide key advantages that go beyond the traditional IT stack. As DFINITY Foundation's CTO Jan Camenisch pointed out, 'The building of ICP is designed to replace the current IT stack and fundamentally address its rapidly rising costs and inherent vulnerabilities to network attacks.'
Moreover, applications built on the Internet Computer have autonomy as they reside on a decentralized network rather than proprietary infrastructure.
The developments over the past twelve months indicate that the Internet Computer (ICP) remains steadfast on the path toward achieving the vision of a world computer. For example, the DFINITY Foundation still boasts one of the largest R&D teams in the blockchain space. As DFINITY's Chief Business Officer Pierre Samaties noted, 'ICP may be one of the most ambitious projects in the entire Web3 industry.'
Growth and developer momentum
The foundation has also opened a newly expanded AI innovation center and research hub in San Francisco, enhancing its influence in the U.S. This investment in research and expansion is a key factor in attracting new talent to the ecosystem.
Electric Capital noted in its 2024 Developer Report that ICP ranks third in attracting new developers, with 2,155 new developers joining the ecosystem last year, placing ICP second in terms of growth in full-time developers.
Other metrics further showcase developer engagement with the Internet Computer, with over 4,300 new repositories added on GitHub since the last anniversary, representing a 19% year-on-year increase, and over 260,000 new Internet identities created during the same period, marking a 14% year-on-year growth.
The same goes for existing applications in the ecosystem. For instance, according to data from Token Terminal, OpenChat has over 233,000 registered users, and approximately 42,000 of those users have verified their identity through DecideAI, showcasing the power of community collaboration.
Empowering Builders
Over the past year, enhancing the developer experience has been our focus, including significant updates to tools like the web-based integrated development environment ICP Ninja, which enables developers to create and deploy smart contracts more easily directly from their browsers.
Major improvements include: enhancing developer productivity; AI learning assistants trained on ICP documentation; project sharing and export features; and the ability to save projects using Internet Identity or GitHub login.
Similarly, the ecosystem-led initiative Juno aims to encourage more engineers to join the Internet Computer.
Decentralized Network
The physical infrastructure of the Internet Computer (ICP), managed by independent node providers, has also seen significant growth. Currently, ICP is supported by 92 independent node providers and has 113 data centers in 34 countries.
This distributed global coverage enhances the security and resilience of the network, with substantial activity occurring on the network, as Samuel Burri pointed out: 'The amount of computation executed by ICP and the volume of data stored exceeds that of all other companies in the industry combined.'
Additionally, since the last anniversary, over 1.5 million ICP have been burned, representing a 2,500% increase from the previous year, reflecting the increased utilization of the network.
ICP HUBS
The mission of the World Computer is further supported by a global network of over twenty ICP HUBS. Emilio Canessa, head of global applications at the DFINITY Foundation, noted that these hubs 'have become powerful catalysts for driving ecosystem and community growth and applications.'
In 2024 alone, these centers hosted over 1,200 in-person events. The HUBS network recently welcomed new members - ICP centers in the United States and the United Kingdom, committed to ensuring that the Internet Computer is easy to understand and meaningful at the community level.
World Computer Show and World Computer Day
The World Computer Expo at the end of 2024 also provides greater momentum for realizing the vision of the World Computer, offering a platform to showcase ongoing progress and an ever-expanding ecosystem.
Subsequently, the Internet Computer community hosted the impactful World Computer Day in Davos in January 2025, gathering global thought leaders from the public and private sectors to discuss how emerging technologies like AI and Web3 are influencing policy and regulatory landscapes as well as best practices for innovation.
Artificial Intelligence on the Internet Computer
Over the past year, significant progress has been made in the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) with the Internet Computer.
Self-written internet
The key driving force behind these efforts is the vision of a 'self-written internet,' a paradigm that will fundamentally change software development, allowing individuals, even those without technical programming skills, to create, deploy, and manage web applications through natural language conversations with AI. This approach aims to democratize digital creation, overcome the complexities of infrastructure, and empower a new generation of builders.
In addition to the self-written internet, the Internet Computer's unique ability to directly host AI models as smart contracts on the blockchain has also garnered attention, paving the way for truly autonomous and trustworthy AI-generated services.
Last year, Dominic Williams showcased a compelling demonstration of this potential, featuring on-chain facial recognition to illustrate how complex AI tasks can be performed in a decentralized environment.
Artificial Intelligence and the ICP Ecosystem
The ecosystem is also committed to leveraging the AI capabilities of the Internet Computer, with many pioneering projects demonstrating this, such as DecideAI launching a version of the GPT-2 language model directly on the Internet Computer, opening new pathways for decentralized AI applications; Onicai launching a 1.5 billion parameter DeepSeek model in a 32-bit container on the Internet Computer; Kinic's personalized knowledge base; and Alice, an autonomous AI agent making decisions using advanced large language models (LLM) like DeepSeek.
In fact, multiple projects are currently exploring the potential of AI agents, a new economic activity enabling these agents to trade with each other, participate in decentralized governance systems, and buy and sell digital services, prompting a paradigm shift in how autonomous services operate on decentralized technology.
Collaboration has also fostered advancements in AI, including the partnership between the DFINITY Foundation and the AI Center at ETH Zurich, one of the world-renowned universities, aimed at exploring and advancing the integration of AI and blockchain technology.
Chain Fusion: Connecting Blockchains
In the past year, advancements in Chain Fusion technology have been our focus, as outlined by Samuel Burri at the World Computer Show, stating that Chain Fusion 'allows smart contracts on ICP to interact with other chains and directly control their assets,' a capability that will have transformative implications for the Web3 space.
Shortly after the third anniversary, the Tritium milestone was completed, providing comprehensive read-write support for the Ethereum ecosystem, including the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and Layer 2 solutions. This means that smart contracts on the Internet Computer can directly interact with and control assets on Ethereum without relying on error-prone centralized bridges.
Chain-key Encryption
One of the core elements of Chain Fusion is that ICP smart contracts (containers) can securely access addresses on other blockchains and sign transactions, thanks to chain-key encryption technology, which includes the adoption of advanced threshold signature schemes—a digital signature scheme in which the secret signing key is never stored in one location.
The Internet Computer Protocol has expanded support for these signatures, adding threshold Schnorr signatures on top of existing threshold ECDSA support, allowing containers to natively hold and trade native assets from networks like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and tokens from over 20 other blockchains.
Promotion, Adoption, and Next Steps
To further advance these developments, DFINITY organized several Chain Fusion Days, emphasizing that ICP serves as a foundational building block for projects and decentralized applications (dapps) on other chains.
The adoption rate of Chain-key tokens (such as ckBTC for Bitcoin) has surged; these Chain-key tokens are native to ICP and are backed by assets on other chains at a 1:1 ratio. Since the last anniversary, over 1.7 million Chain-key token transactions have been completed, marking a 118% year-on-year increase, with ckBTC having the highest adoption rate.
Looking ahead, the Helium milestone expected to be achieved later this year will enhance the functionality of Chain Fusion by bridging the gap between Solana and ICP, combining the strengths of both networks.
The Evolution of DeFi
The DeFi ecosystem of the Internet Computer has also matured significantly, with a recent important milestone being the official launch of OISY Wallet v1.0 in February 2025, providing users with a powerful and secure way to manage all their digital assets within a unified wallet.
In October 2024, the decentralized multi-chain exchange KongSwap also officially launched and integrated with the OISY wallet earlier this year.
The Orbit multi-custody asset framework was completed in March 2025, enhancing the security and flexibility of managing digital assets and smart contracts, offering multi-signature payment workflows, multi-approver governance, and automated control.
At the same time, collaborations with entities specializing in crypto data and software, such as Elliptic or Lukka, are expected to bring more institutional-level solutions to the ICP DeFi space.
BTC DeFi on ICP
In the past year, a vertical sector within the DeFi space has seen significant growth: BTC DeFi on ICP. In fact, the ICP ecosystem thrived during the Bitcoin revival wave that started last year, as ICP achieved native integration with Bitcoin through its unique chain-key functionality, meaning DeFi applications can benefit from the robust BTC ecosystem and its security, as well as the programmability of third-generation smart contracts on the Internet Computer.
Earlier this year, Odin.fun rapidly became a true giant in the BTC space, achieving a trading volume of $30 million in its first month. Odin showcased the value of connecting these two ecosystems and leveraging the unique capabilities of the Internet Computer using various Chain Fusion components.
Other successful projects, such as Liquidium, Bob.fun, and Omnity, are also leveraging the advantages brought by Chain Fusion in BTCFi. For example, Liquidium utilizes ICP's containers and threshold Schnorr signatures to offer frictionless instant loans within the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Future Milestones
Future developments will build on this foundation, with the upcoming Nexus milestone focusing on enterprise-grade ledgers, while the Echelon milestone will extend the Orbit framework, promising more complex DeFi applications and services on the Internet Computer.
A Year of Development, Participation, and Growth
The fourth year of the Internet Computer is characterized by widespread technological advancements and growing institutional interest. The developments in AI, chain fusion, and DeFi are not isolated efforts but integral components of the strategy to build a truly world computer.
Global Participation
This progress is attracting global attention, with the DFINITY Foundation and the broader Internet Computer community actively participating in numerous international and regional tech and blockchain events, sharing insights and fostering collaboration.
Highlights from the past year include key attendance at major gatherings such as the Lisbon Web Summit, ETHDenver, Token2049, and Paris Blockchain Week, where discussions often centered on the unique capabilities of the Internet Computer in AI, DeFi, and true decentralization.
These activities, along with numerous developer workshops, hackathons, and local events led by ICP HUBs around the world, have played a critical role in expanding the ecosystem and showcasing real applications built on the Internet Computer.
Expanding participation and development
Collaborations with governments and international organizations also underscore the growing recognition of the Internet Computer's potential to provide secure, scalable, and autonomous digital solutions, including partnerships established by the DFINITY Foundation with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Ministry of Industry, Science, Technology, and Innovation of Cambodia (MISTI).
Further enhancing this momentum is the vibrant growth of the ecosystem itself, with hundreds of projects actively building on the Internet Computer.
These projects cover a wide range of applications, from innovative social media platforms and immersive gaming to complex DeFi applications and powerful enterprise tools. Continuously improving tools and visualization features support these thriving development activities.
For example, the ICP dashboard recently underwent a significant overhaul, providing clearer and more comprehensive network metrics, node decentralization, governance activities, and insights into various projects shaping the ecosystem.
This transparency and the breadth of development activity lay a perfect foundation for the next steps in development.
2025 World Computer Summit
On June 3, 2025, the community will gather in Zurich, Switzerland, to celebrate the fourth anniversary of ICP at the World Computer Summit, featuring keynote speeches, panels, and demonstrations hosted by dozens of experts and ecosystem projects.
The program will focus on three elements:
Main Stage: Hear from global experts on topics such as digital sovereignty, AI innovation, the future of finance, and technology democratization.
Ecosystem Stage: Discover groundbreaking projects built on the Internet Computer showcasing real-world blockchain and AI innovations.
Networking: Connect with builders, researchers, investors, and enthusiasts throughout the day, culminating in an epic closing party!
From the initial vision to years of relentless human effort and innovation, to a thriving ecosystem oriented towards the future, the journey of the Internet Computer continues, and we look forward to meeting you in Zurich to plan the next phase together.
Book your spot now:
worldcomputer.com/wcs25
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