This is the rate at which cycles are being burned by the network.
Cycles are the digital fuel that powers computation on the network, and they disappear when consumed. When a user buys using a credit card, the payment provider purchases ICP tokens behind the scenes, converts them into cycles, and then charges up the user's hosted software or cloud engines.
1 trillion cycles is worth 1 XDR (known as a Special Drawing Right/SDR), a currency defined by the IMF. 1 XDR is worth about $1.44 USD.
dashboard.internetcomputer.orgCanisters are tamperproof units of serverless software hosted by the Internet Computer network.
Most canisters are standalone applications, but they can also serve as individual units of software within larger systems. They are capable of serving web-based user experiences, and storing and processing large amounts of data. Each canister is a combination of Wasm bytecode that defines its logic, and dedicated persistent memory pages that hold its internal state. Canisters communicate through function calls.
Canisters are “software actors” that run asynchronously, allowing scalable high-performance applications to be created on the Internet Computer. Data lives "orthogonally" in memory within abstract logic they define, fueling the modeling power of AI, and delivering a new paradigm where “The Program is The Database.”
dashboard.internetcomputer.orgThe Network Nervous System (NNS) is the Internet Computer’s open and decentralized governance and orchestration system, and runs as part of the network.
Anyone can participate, by handing ICP tokens to the NNS, and receiving voting neurons in return, through which new ICP tokens can be earned, by first increasing the maturity of the neurons involved in voting, and then by eventually using them to mint new ICP.
The NNS is one of the largest DAOs in existence, and the only DAO that runs as part of a network protocol to automate orchestration. Its purpose is to play the role of a decentralized and autonomous ICANN for the Internet Computer ecosystem.
dashboard.internetcomputer.orgThe network market cap is the number of ICP tokens multiplied by their price.
Network users convert ICP tokens into cycles that are burned and disappear (deflation), and they are generated by the network to remunerate node providers operating nodes, and by some participants in network governance (inflation).
ICP tokens exist within the network, and enable it to create a self-sustaining network economy without central points of failure.
Sovereign serverless cloud for AIware apps, created by an open, mathematical network — empowering governments, enterprises, and people to build a secure online future with AI.
Explore apps, emerging platforms, and AIware, built on the Internet Computer.
Move to Open SaaS, save money, and revolutionize your business by putting AI on the inside. Give AI tasks and questions, and tune what model gets used when.
Explore Open SaaS (opencloud.org)
Join hundreds of thousands of others. Describe the website, app or service you have in mind, and let AI build it on the Internet Computer. Keep the conversation going to refine the design and add features.
Learn more
The Internet Computer network has added support for "cloud engines" that provide enterprises unparalled control and configurability through an online console.
Explore cloud engines (opencloud.org)
The most popular authentication framework on the Internet Computer, which pioneered passkeys in 2021, while also offering support for SSO and more.
Explore Internet Identity (id.ai)
OpenChat is fully controlled by a DAO. Stay in touch with friends and join communities in one open messaging app, with your data and conversations under your control.
Learn more
A sovereign wallet that works in any browser. It holds crypto, stocks, commodities, collectibles, and encrypted notes, and it lets you trade, earn, borrow, and pay.
Learn more
Other venues put settlement on the network and keep matching on their own servers. Here the order book, AMM, margin, and vaults are all tamperproof code, assets stay native, and every balance is publicly checkable.
Learn moreApps are tamperproof network code. No app servers to break into, database servers to compromise, or firewalls to maintain.
Apps run as serverless code, without database servers or traditional infrastructure to go wrong. The network keeps them running and their data available.
Agents can safely improve live apps. Language frameworks like Motoko check that updates preserve existing data, and reject incompatible changes that could cause accidental data loss.
Cloud engines let you precisely choose where your compute capacity runs and who operates it, while your apps keep running — delivering dynamically configurable sovereignty and complete freedom from vendor lock-in.
Gain the freedom to put your agents to work without speed bumps.
See how the network runs appsThe Internet Computer turns an open network into a cloud where agents can build, host, and evolve apps — and work inside them.
2.5 Software AI can work inside
AI chat becomes a new way to use your software, working alongside its traditional screens. Analyze data across apps and orchestrate complex tasks through conversation, within your permissions.
“Review all Customer Success time-off requests. Approve those that preserve coverage in every time zone, and suggest alternative dates where requests conflict.”
One conversation can draw on Open HR, Open CRM, Open Email, and the enterprise’s wider data graph. The Assistant analyzes data and coordinates actions across the suite, using only the data and functions your permissions allow.
Select an agent to see what it can access.
What this caller can access
CEO chat can query HR, CRM, and Accounts. All memory groups in this example are accessible.
Languages for AIware
Motoko
A language designed for agents to safely and rapidly build and evolve enterprise apps, services, and infrastructure, and imbue them with AIware capabilities.
WebAssembly
The Internet Computer runs WebAssembly (Wasm), a low-level bytecode format for fast, portable execution. Supported by all major browsers and used across backend and cloud platforms, it is an open W3C standard.
Any language that compiles to WebAssembly can target the Internet Computer. Motoko and Rust are the two most popular.
2.6 Software agents can build
Data lives with your code in persistent memory. Agents can focus on the essential logic of your application, with less code to generate and maintain — and more scope to build sophisticated software.
Application logic+Persistent data
One program. Hosted by the network.
Motoko
persistent actor {
// Persistent data
let inventory = {
var stock : Nat = 10;
var orders : Nat = 0;
};
// Application logic
public func order() : async () {
inventory.orders += 1;
inventory.stock -= 1;
};
}Declare it. It persists.
inventory and the whole data structure it references are stored automatically, between calls and across upgrades. No loading. No saving.
Both changes. Or neither.
Each order() updates memory as one transaction. With no stock left, execution traps and every change is rolled back — even the order count. No half-written data.
If two orders arrive together, each runs against the latest inventory, so one cannot accidentally overwrite the other’s changes.
Motoko’s orthogonal persistence preserves persistent variables and the data structures they reference across calls and upgrades. Code works directly with this data, without translating it into database queries or file formats.
Fewer output tokens. Database queries, data conversion, and storage plumbing all add code. Removing that work means fewer code tokens for an agent to generate, which can reduce generation time and cost.
A simpler model to reason about. Orders, customers, and their relationships can be expressed directly as connected data structures. Agents can focus more of their reasoning on the app’s behavior, helping them build and maintain more sophisticated software.
In this example, order() has no await, so each call runs as one transaction. Work spanning asynchronous calls needs its own coordination. Read about execution boundaries.
Specialized hardware, and hyperscaler compute capacity, all over the world.
This 13-node example tolerates up to four faulty nodes. Progress needs timely communication. Record integrity requires certificate verification; an unverified query is not enough. How verification works
AI agents build vastly faster than humans can, and they have their own needs. The Internet Computer runs software inside persistent memory, introducing a powerful new paradigm where the program is the database. Now a program's essential logic persists data automatically, reducing complexity, and fueling the modeling power of AI, enabling AI to go further, faster, and at less cost.
AI agents can develop apps and enterprise infra at unprecedented speed. However, upgrading traditional production systems is risky, as mistakes can result in data loss. On the Internet Computer, new languages like Motoko automatically verify the safety of every upgrade, preventing mistakes resulting in data loss, so you can remove the brakes.
Traditional infrastructure is insecure and sensitive to components such as databases being misconfigured or failing. Apps on the Internet Computer are tamperproof, keep their data in persistent memory, and are guaranteed to run. This means apps don't need support from security and sysadmin teams, and you can give your agents far more autonomy.
More than half a billion dollars has been spent developing the technology that powers the Internet Computer, which represents the most sophisticated network the world has ever seen. The purpose of the project is to extend the internet, so that it can host software, as well as connecting software.
In recent years, the project has focused on developing the Internet Computer as agentic infrastructure. The Internet Computer unlocks the full potential of AI by force-multiplying agents that build apps, enabling the creation of AIware software that integrate AI much more closely than traditional software can, and removing security and sysadmin requirements, so agents can be allowed to work with far greater autonomy.
The latest innovation, "cloud engines," enables the creation of private subnets that can be arbitrarily configured, for example to combine compute hardware located in the home country, or operated by specific providers, unlocking the simple creation of fully sovereign tech stacks that meet national security needs, or regulatory needs such as GDPR compliance. Cloud engines keep on running even when the underlying compute capacity is swapped, making vendor lock-in history.
Explore the papers and presentations that explain how the Internet Computer works, why it was designed this way, and what it makes possible.
