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 that empower agentic nations, enterprises, and people – created by an open, mathematical network
The Internet Computer is a frontier serverless cloud for AIware apps, created by a mathematical, open network. It combines independently-operated hardware, including hyperscaler hardware, to form a universal tech stack that offers an alternative to traditional tech stacks. Tamperproof apps are immune to infrastructure attacks, always-on, can be auto-scaled, need minimal administration, and are digital assets onchain natives. It’s the ultimate platform for agents that build.
Explore live apps alongside new platforms in early access and development.
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.
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Describe the website or app you have in mind, and let AI build it. Keep the conversation going to refine the design and add features.
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Build and run apps in your own cloud. Choose the providers and locations that host them, with control over where your software and data live.
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An entire suite, installed as easily as a phone app. Free forever. AIware built in: one assistant across every app, enabling true agentic intelligence. Your data, your code, your choice of jurisdiction.
Explore OpenSaaS
Sign in to apps with a passkey instead of a password. A separate identity for each app helps keep your activity private.
Explore Internet Identity
Stay in touch with friends and join communities in one messaging app, with your data and conversations under your control.
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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 moreThese are nodes: computers in data centers around the world. Together, they run the Internet Computer.
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 builds using a new kind of software, and new languages. It focuses only on the UX and abstract backend logic of apps. The program is the database, because data lives in persistent memory, and is defined by program logic. AI can see this memory, and dynamically add logic, so AI chat can offer fluid extra functionality.
Upgrading production apps has always been risky, so how can AI be trusted? Program data lives in memory and is defined by program logic. AI must specify how to transform that data on updates. Mistakes that could lead to loss are detectable, and lossy updates are rejected, reducing potential disasters to AI coding retries.
Increasingly, online commerce relies on digital assets, including stablecoins. Custodying any kind of digital asset securely is hard, but AI is provided with multi-blockchain APIs, and tamperproof key custody and signing, safe even against the physical breach of an underlying compute node. Digital assets are simplified to abstractions.
The Internet Computer was developed by a multi-year R&D program. After initial work, the DFINITY Foundation was formed in October 2016, and has run one of the largest independent research operations in frontier computing since late 2017.
Its purpose is to develop internet-scale cloud that hosts a new kind of software — any language that compiles to WebAssembly, plus the domain-specific Motoko language developed in-house. Over the years, the network has benefited from the work of some of the world's leading researchers and engineers in secure distributed protocols, cryptography, execution environments, Wasm, and programming languages.
In recent times, an increasing emphasis has been placed on enabling the self-writing internet, where AI generates apps on demand. As the Internet Computer hosts ever more apps and services, it becomes increasingly clear that its time has come.
Explore the papers and presentations that explain how the Internet Computer works, why it was designed this way, and what it makes possible.
