The developer of the Internet Computer protocol, the DFINITY Foundation, has released an updated roadmap that aims at boosting AI blockchain adoption. Although ICP has been a leading AI token and is now ranked 22nd among the top 100 cryptocurrencies, its recent price drop has prompted the Foundation to prioritise key areas to enhance the token’s value and protocol’s functionality.
Internet Computer Roadmap Highlights
The new roadmap introduces two crucial milestones: Tokamak and Stellarator. Tokamak aims to reduce latency by increasing the block rate of each subnet and adding a new synchronous ingress submission endpoint. On the other hand, Stellarator focuses on expanding the storage layer, allowing subnet blockchains to support over 1TB of smart contract storage and improving the consensus layer’s efficiency.
The Foundation also plans to integrate AI into the ICP protocol to address the high resource demands of AI training and inference. The Cyclotron milestone aims to enhance on-chain inference for larger AI models through improvements in the WebAssembly runtime and inference engine. Gyrotron will explore AI-specialised subnets with GPU support for intensive on-chain computations.
ICP’s Interoperability with Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana
The roadmap also emphasises expanding ICP’s interoperability with major blockchains like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana through Chain Fusion technology. The Tritium milestone will enable interaction with Ethereum and EVM smart contracts for cross-chain communication. Deuterium will extend support to new Bitcoin protocols, while Helium will enhance interoperability with Solana, allowing decentralised applications (dApps) to leverage both networks.
The Solenoid milestone will decentralise ICP boundary node operations, empowering network participants. The Levitron milestone will provide insights into the edge infrastructure of the Internet Computer, helping developers understand dApp usage and generate user statistics.
Additionally, ICP will feature two governance systems: the NNS (Internet Computer’s DAO) and the SNS framework for individual dApps. These systems are designed to incentivize voting and align DAO decisions with long-term goals, ensuring decentralised decision-making and community involvement.
Currently, ICP has seen a significant year-to-date increase of 120%, trading at $12.05, but remains 98% below its all-time high of $700 in September 2023. The effectiveness of the new roadmap in driving the cryptocurrency’s price up and boosting adoption for various use cases remains to be observed.