The DFINITY Foundation Publishes 2024 Ecosystem Report, Highlighting the Ecosystem's Explosive Year-on-Year Growth

The DFINITY Foundation, a Swiss-based not-for-profit organization with the largest R&D team in Web3 and a major contributor to the Internet Computer (ICP) blockchain

The latest Ecosystem Report from the DFINITY Foundation, a not-for-profit organization based in Switzerland with the largest R&D team in Web3 and a major contributor to the Internet Computer (ICP) blockchain, highlights the ecosystem's explosive Year-on-Year growth, which includes a 13x surge in activity on the Chain Fusion interoperability protocol.

Chain Fusion is a unique ICP-based protocol that enables smart contracts to securely interoperate with multiple blockchain networks without relying on any trusted intermediary. This allows developers to build multichain applications by directly reading and writing data to various blockchains.

According to the report, the Chain Fusion subnet saw a staggering 1,230% surge in activity over the past 12 months, coupled with an impressive 2,040% surge in message counts. These figures exemplify the rapidly growing interest in and utilization of ICP’s innovative cross-chain capabilities. The year's adoption surge positions ICP as a sought-after interoperability layer for web3 due to its ability to facilitate direct, trustless interactions with any network without any intermediaries or third-party bridges.

Meanwhile, ICP saw continued growth across several other critical areas, including a 150% surge in overall network activity over the past year, reflecting the platform's increasing adoption and utility. Simultaneously, the full-time developer count on ICP has grown by 30%, bucking the trend of an industry-wide slowdown. This influx of talent highlights ICP's attractiveness as a development platform.

“The 2024 Ecosystem Report exemplifies what we’ve been building towards — ICP becoming the meta blockchain for cross chain innovation,” said Lomesh Dutta, VP of Growth at the DFINITY Foundation. “For instance, by using tICP as a co-processor, networks like Ethereum can now tap into ICP’s high-speed computing capabilities, enabling more secure, scalable, and intelligent applications. This breakthrough opens the door to entirely new use cases, such as integrating AI capabilities or making DeFi systems smarter and more adaptive. Chain Fusion is paving the way for a new generation of interoperable applications that are not only faster and more resilient but also equipped with advanced functionalities that were previously unimaginable.”

In particular, the report shows how ICP’s Chain Fusion technology is enabling a new wave of Bitcoin-focused innovations by allowing developers to build applications that leverage Bitcoin’s security and network effects while utilizing ICP’s smart contract capabilities. Chain Fusion enables smart contracts for Bitcoin as ICP can directly interact with the bitcoin network without using any trusted bridges. ICP is especially well-suited for implementing a Bitcoin layer zero solution thanks to a number of its unique key features, such as Bitcoin Light Nodes, which enable direct verification of Bitcoin transactions and blocks on ICP, and Chain Key Signatures, which are crucial for enabling secure cross-chain messaging, HTTP calls in smart contracts, which allow for easy integration of external data sources and oracles, and gasless transactions.

As a result, several projects are already leveraging ICP to bring advanced functionality to the Bitcoin network, including Rainbow Protocol (Bitcoin-based smart contracts and DeFi applications), Tap Protocol (complex financial operations directly on the Bitcoin blockchain), and Bitfinity (an Ethereum Virtual Machine on top of Bitcoin).

The report also details how ecosystem teams are leveraging ICP to develop with Runes, a new Bitcoin fungible token protocol that has led to significant growth. Since its launch, Runes has accounted for over 95% of the Bitcoin fungible token market.

Another standout feature of this year’s report is the emergence of Blockchain on Blockchain (BOB, a purpose-built solution that brings Proof-of-Work-like consensus — or, according to its developers, a mineable crypto that combines “Bitcoin’s consensus with Dogecoin’s utility.

By leveraging ICP as the primary mining mechanism or a way to buy mining cycles, the BOB ecosystem participants can choose how fast they want their miners to run, which affects the amount of ICP consumed.

Projects such as Bob.Fun and MSQ.Burn have driven a massive 100x increase in network within days of launch usage —. These projects introduceв a novel concept of “fair minting” that is similar to Bitcoin mining but is facilitated entirely on the ICP network. The surge in activity has led to significant burning of ICP’s native gas, creating deflationary trends for the token.

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