The Internet Computer developed by the DFINITY Foundation is a cryptographic platform and a protocol aiming to create a public decentralized cloud computing resource to become the next step in the evolution of the internet. It wants to shatter the dominance of centralized cloud service providers and redesign the internet to become distributed and secure while at the same time reducing IT maintenance and deployment costs tenfold. The protocol claims to be optimised for scaling achieving block times of a few seconds and transaction finality after only two confirmations. The project has been in development since 2015 attracting a notable interest from the crypto community. The first presale occurred in summer 2017 and a total investment exceeded $102 million. 50000 backers received ICP tokens in an airdrop in 2018. DFINITY launched the alpha mainnet of its “Internet Computer” on Dec. 18 2020. The mainnet beta version public launch is announced for Mar. 30 2021 with the release happening somewhere later in 2021.