The DePIN track has seen another significant financing, with Impossible Cloud receiving strategic investment from NGP Capital.

ICN represents the vanguard of Web3 technology infiltrating core IT systems in enterprises.

Written by: Haotian

There's a big news at DePIN Tracks that has been underrated recently! @Impossible_Cloud (ICN) recently received a strategic investment from NGP Capital, and its valuation soared to $470 million. You know, NGP Capital was an early investor in Helium and Xiaomi. The question arises, why is ICN recognized at such a high valuation? What's so unique about this project, which claims to be disrupting AWS? This article will dissect the technical business logic in an all-round way:

1. The traditional cloud computing market is dominated by the three giants AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, creating a form of "new centralization"—data, computing, and network resources are controlled by a few companies. This has directly led to several challenges:

1. "Platform taxes" are getting higher: Giants are increasing service prices year by year, forcing companies to accept the rising costs of cloud services.

2. Vendor lock-in is becoming increasingly deep: Once a business is running on a certain cloud, the migration costs are exorbitant, and users can hardly escape.

3. Data sovereignty no longer belongs to enterprises: Your data is actually stored on someone else's servers, and privacy and security completely depend on the platform.

In simple terms, ICN aims to establish a decentralized cloud infrastructure network that allows enterprises to regain data sovereignty, reduce costs, and avoid vendor lock-in. This is also the core value proposition of DePIN - to reconstruct traditional physical infrastructure using blockchain technology architecture and Tokenomics, reclaiming control from centralized monopolies.

2. How exactly is it done? The technical architecture of ICN may seem complex at first glance, but to put it simply, it breaks down the traditional unified cloud service into a three-tier "checks and balances" system.

1. Hardware Layer: Equivalent to the "infrastructure workers" of cloud services, contributed by global hardware providers (HPs) with enterprise-grade hardware devices, rather than ordinary PCs or idle computing power. This point is crucial because enterprise clients would never place their core business on unstable consumer-grade hardware. This model theoretically allows ICN to aggregate more computing power than the infrastructure accumulated by AWS and Google over the past 15-20 years, similar to the impact of the sharing economy on the hotel industry;

2. Service Layer: Equivalent to the "application developers" of cloud services, service providers (SPs) build various cloud products on top of hardware resources. Using the metaphor of Lego bricks, this layer emphasizes combinability, allowing the infrastructure to be restructured like building blocks, giving rise to more innovative services.

3. Monitoring Layer: It is equivalent to the "independent referee" of cloud services, and SLA Oracle nodes (SLA-ONs) are responsible for monitoring and verifying the quality of service. This layer directly solves the common "cheat verification" dilemma faced by DePIN projects – how do you ensure that the hardware is actually delivering the claimed performance? While traditional DePIN relies on "trust", ICN introduces a verifiable proof mechanism.

The coordination between these three layers is achieved through the ICN protocol (ICNP), which implements market-based pricing and automatically executes penalties and rewards, creating a self-regulating ecosystem.

Compared to storage-based DePINs like Filecoin and Arweave, which generally rely on "trust" to solve verification issues, ICN's three-layer decentralized architecture effectively adds a "cheat-proof system" to cloud services, addressing the inherent pain points of DePIN.

According to the statistics disclosed by the project party, the project has more than 1,000 European and American enterprise customers, with an annual revenue of more than 5 million US dollars, a growth rate of 2,000%, and the signed ARR will reach 32.7 million US dollars by the end of 2025.

ICN's business strategy is also quite clever. It focuses on serving B2B corporate clients through "storage" as its entry point. Why storage? Because once corporate data is on a certain platform, it naturally creates a "data gravity," leading to the migration of subsequent computing and networking services.

This approach targeting enterprise customers with a strong willingness to pay and stable demand allows ICN to establish a stable cash flow, rather than relying on burning investors' money to survive.

4. It is also worth mentioning that its Tokenomics perfectly aligns with its business logic, appearing relatively pragmatic.

1. Staking mechanism: Hardware providers must stake ICNT to connect to the network, which acts as a "deposit" to ensure service quality and prevent malfeasance; 2. Payment medium: Service providers use ICNT to purchase resources, creating real demand; 3. Reward tool: Oracle nodes and hardware providers earn ICNT rewards for their contributions.

This design makes tokens the "blood" of the network rather than speculative tools, with value derived from actual business scale rather than hype.

Unlike most DePIN projects that rely on continuous high inflation subsidies to attract participants, ICN's Tokenomics follows demand growth and will not fall into the "mining-sell-crash" death spiral. It should be noted that this sustainability has implications for the entire DePIN track.

Finally, one more thing to add, the ICN team's purely Western background is quite hardcore:

Co-founder Dr. @KaiWawrzinek previously created Goodgame Studios, which was indirectly listed on NASDAQ; the core team members have rich experience in the gaming and cloud storage fields, and the CTO also holds patents related to storage; the project has already secured $18 million in funding, with investors spanning both Web3 and traditional sectors.

As an early investor in Helium and Xiaomi, NGP Capital, backed by Nokia and managing $1.6 billion from top institutions, strongly endorses the development prospects of ICN.

Above.

According to market forecasts, the global cloud infrastructure market annual revenue is approximately $313 billion and is expected to reach $837.97 billion by 2034. ICN's goal is to become the "AWS of Web3"; even capturing a small portion of the market represents significant business opportunities.

However, in my opinion, ICN represents a vanguard for the penetration of Web3 technology into core enterprise IT systems. It is significant that ICN, a project that pragmatically integrates the advantages of Web2 and Web3, is paving a more viable path for the enterprise-level applications of blockchain technology.