Storage, Rather Than Silicon, Will Drive the Next AI Breakthrough | Opinion

With its mainnet launched in July 2025 by a team based in Switzerland and Germany, Impossible Cloud Network (ICN) is a decentralized infrastructure protocol designed to support enterprise-grade cloud services. ICN enables permissionless access to distributed hardware resources across storage, compute, and networking. The protocol aims to serve as a foundational infrastructure layer for digital applications, including artificial intelligence platforms, enterprise software, and web services. The network is governed and developed by the Impossible Cloud Network Foundation (founded in 2024), a non-profit entity incorporated in Zug, Switzerland. The Foundation manages protocol evolution, legal compliance, and ecosystem development, including incentive allocation and strategic partnerships. Core development was initially supported by Impossible Cloud GmbH (founded in 2021), a Germany-based enterprise cloud provider that validated the infrastructure in production settings with over 2,000 enterprise clients and $7 million in annual recurring revenue. ICN uses a modular smart contract architecture built on Ethereum and Base L2. The ICNT token is the native utility asset of the protocol. It is required for multiple functions, including staking by hardware operators, accessing network services by service providers, and participating in reward mechanisms. The network includes a node registration layer, where participants stake ICNT to run or delegate nodes, represented by NFTs called ICN Links. These nodes provide the underlying hardware capacity used by various service providers building on the protocol. As of its mainnet launch, ICN’s infrastructure includes over 100 petabytes of active or contracted storage capacity, distributed across data centers in Germany, the Netherlands, and Poland. The network is also preparing to integrate compute capabilities, supported by letters of intent from hardware providers in Europe and North America. ICN employs a demand-first go-to-market model, starting with integration into real-world business use cases. The protocol is used by Impossible Cloud GmbH as its backend infrastructure, and the roadmap includes onboarding additional service providers and AI platforms. Partnerships with other infrastructure projects such as Aethir, IoTeX, and Veera support network adoption and technical interoperability. The ICNT token has a fixed maximum supply of 700 million tokens. The token distribution is structured across multiple stakeholder categories, including the community, hardware providers, node operators, investors, and contributors. Vesting and lock-up mechanisms are in place to align long-term participation and reduce short-term volatility. ICN plans to implement additional governance functionality and developer incentives post-mainnet. Technical documentation, tokenomics details, and audits are scheduled to be made available in open-source repositories following deployment.