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title Concepts
description Developer-focused explanations of ICP architecture, capabilities, and design decisions
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Understand the ideas behind the Internet Computer before you build on it. These explanations cover architecture, capabilities, and design decisions that shape how you write ICP applications.

Network

  • Overview: Subnets, nodes, consensus, and boundary nodes.
  • Node infrastructure: How ICP nodes are structured: IC-OS, virtual machine isolation, and Trusted Execution Environments.
  • Edge infrastructure: How requests reach ICP canisters: API boundary nodes, HTTP gateways, and asset certification.
  • Evolution & scaling: How ICP scales horizontally through subnet creation and upgrades its protocol without forks.

Protocol Stack

  • Overview: The four-layer architecture and how the layers interact.
  • Peer-to-peer: How replicas discover each other and exchange artifacts.
  • Consensus: How subnets agree on the order of messages.
  • Message routing: How messages are delivered to canisters after consensus.
  • Execution: How the Wasm runtime processes messages and manages canister state.
  • State synchronization: How replicas catch up after falling behind.
  • Performance: Throughput benchmarks and performance characteristics.

Canisters & capabilities

  • Canisters: Programs that run WebAssembly, hold state, serve HTTP, and pay for their own compute.
  • Principals: The identity model: who can call a canister, and how caller identity works.
  • Application architecture: How ICP applications are structured: canisters, frontends, and inter-canister communication.
  • Cycles: How canisters pay for their own compute, storage, and bandwidth, and why users pay nothing.
  • Orthogonal persistence: How canister memory survives across executions and upgrades without databases.
  • Timers: Periodic and one-shot scheduled tasks via the global timer mechanism.
  • Verifiable randomness: Cryptographically secure random numbers using threshold VRF.
  • HTTPS outcalls: How canisters make HTTP requests to external services with consensus on responses.

Cryptography

  • Chain-key cryptography: Threshold signatures that enable crosschain integration, fast finality, and chain evolution.
  • Certified data: How canisters certify query responses using the subnet's threshold BLS key.
  • VetKeys: Verifiable encrypted threshold key derivation for network-enforced encryption and secret management.

Chain Fusion

  • Chain Fusion: How ICP connects to Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and other blockchains natively.
  • Bitcoin integration: Native Bitcoin support via the Bitcoin canister and chain-key ECDSA.
  • Ethereum integration: EVM chain integration via HTTPS outcalls, chain-key ECDSA, and the EVM RPC canister.
  • Solana integration: Solana integration via the SOL RPC canister and chain-key Schnorr signatures.
  • Dogecoin integration: Dogecoin support using the same architecture as Bitcoin integration.
  • Chain-key tokens: Trustless 1:1 representations of external chain assets on ICP (ckBTC, ckETH, and more).
  • Exchange rate canister: On-chain oracle for cryptocurrency and fiat exchange rates.

Trust & governance

  • Governance: The NNS, SNS for app governance, neurons, and proposals.
  • SNS framework: How the Service Nervous System works: architecture, launch process, neurons, and governance.
  • Network economics: ICP native asset uses, voting rewards, supply dynamics, and SNS asset configuration.
  • Ledgers: How ICRC and ICP ledgers work, address formats, and scaling architecture.
  • Security model: Canister isolation, trust boundaries, and the threat model for app developers.