[ANN] ICGold (ICG) | Cycle mining on the Internet Computer

ICGold (ICG)
Proof-of-burn mining on the Internet Computer

Mining starts: October 9, 2026, 19:00 UTC

Website | Whitepaper | Litepaper | DFINITY forum thread

What is ICGold?

ICGold is a mining protocol that runs entirely on the Internet Computer (ICP), a public blockchain that hosts smart contracts ("canisters") and pays for their computation with cycles. Cycles can only be created by burning ICP.

ICGold turns that into mining. Instead of burning electricity on hashes, miners burn cycles. Each round, your chance to win the block is your share of all cycles burned in that round. No hardware, no ASICs, no pools you have to trust: the lottery runs on-chain, drawn from the Internet Computer's threshold randomness.

Because cycles are made by burning ICP, every block mined burns ICP.

Specifications

Ticker	ICG
Consensus for issuance	Proof-of-burn (cycles), proportional on-chain lottery
Block time	~10 minutes
Block reward	50 ICG
Halving	Every 210,000 blocks (~4 years)
Max supply	Under 21,000,000 ICG
Genesis block	Block 0 records 50 ICG that are never minted
Premine / ICO / presale	None
Token standard	ICRC-1 / ICRC-2 (DFINITY ledger)

Emission

Code:

first ~4 years: 10,500,000 ICG
next  ~4 years:  5,250,000 ICG
next  ~4 years:  2,625,000 ICG
next  ~4 years:  1,312,500 ICG
etc.

How mining works

Solo: create your own miner canister (about [2.5] ICP at the current ICP/XDR rate, never less than 1 ICP) and set its daily burn rate.
Pool: join the shared pool from 0.1 ICP. 1 ICP buys 24 hours of participation; every block the pool wins is split equally among active members.
Your odds equal your share of the cycles burned in the round. Burn more, win more often; there is nothing else to optimize.
At launch few miners compete, so early blocks are cheap. It gets harder as more cycles are burned.

Where every ICP deposit goes (enforced by code):

40%: converted to cycles (burning that ICP) and burned for mining
42%: paid to ICG stakers, in ICP
15%: locked buyback reserve: builds ICG/ICP liquidity on ICPSwap, then buys and burns ICG
3%: protocol fee that keeps the canisters supplied with cycles and future development

Staking: lock ICG for 7 to 365 days for a reward multiplier of up to 2x and earn a share of the 42% in ICP. An emergency exit before the lock ends burns 50% of that stake.

How to start on October 9

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Get a wallet: OISY, NFID Wallet or Internet Identity, and some ICP (on most major exchanges).
At 19:00 UTC, open icgprotocol.com and connect.
Join the pool or create a solo miner.
Stake the ICG you mine to earn ICP.

Until than nothing can be deposited or mined, by anyone, the developer included.

Official identifiers (beware of fakes)

ICG ledger: nuw4q-5iaaa-aaaad-qmhhq-cai
Website: https://icgprotocol.com

Any other "ICG" is not ours. The ledger ID is not a deposit address: never send anything to it. Deposit only through the website.

Transparency and risks

Source code will be published together with an external security audit, about six months after launch.
- Not audited yet. The code has been reviewed and tested internally only. Start with small amounts.
- Control: the developer can make an emergency pause (it freezes mining, deposits, staking and claims). A move to on-chain governance is planned.
- Monitoring: a watchdog canister checks the protocol every 15 minutes and alerts on any code or controller change, stalled mining or stuck transfers.
- Self-funding: the canisters top up their own cycles from the 3% fee.
- ICG has no guaranteed value. Mine and stake only what you can afford to lose.
Questions, bugs and feedback welcome in this thread.
Contact: janicg [at] proton [dot] me

Jan

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