- Internet Computer (ICP) founder has published a new paper proposing new tokenomics that would reduce the annual inflation rate by 70% this year.
- It proposes two paths: reducing the number of tokens produced via rewards and raising the transaction fees by up to 5x.
Dominic Williams, the founder of the Internet Computer, has proposed a tokenomics overhaul of the project in favor of a deflationary setting where nodes receive lower rewards and users pay five times more for their transactions.
In a new paper titled ‘Mission 70,’ Williams and DFINITY Foundation economist Bjorn Assmann say that the Internet Computer is still stuck in tokenomics that were designed for a project in the bootstrapping phase. The network’s voting rewards remain high and the remuneration for the node operators is extremely generous, they claimed. Additionally, the minting of ICP is only partially offset by burning through cycles.
This requires an overhaul to protect the network’s future, and the DFINITY Foundation believes Mission 70 is the way forward. The goal is to reduce inflation by at least 70% by the end of the year.
UPDATED Mission 70 white paper — proposing to 5X the cost of ICP’s onchain compute as provided sovereign cloud will remain very competitive.
↗️↗️↗️ Caffeine & cloud engine demand
↗️↗️ cost of onchain compute
↙️ inflation (gov + nodes)
🔥 huge deflationhttps://t.co/T6HiI2wSUY— dom williams.icp ∞ (@dominic_w) February 4, 2026
Williams proposes that the Internet Computer first slash the reward it gives to node providers who run the network and governance participants who stake their tokens and vote on proposals. He claims that on its own, this approach would reduce the annual token inflation by up to 45%. It would also slow the constant sell pressure from the newly minted tokens.
Most of the community has agreed with cutting the rewards, even though some debate remains on how excessive the cuts need to be. Many believe that the new tokens continually dilute the value of the existing tokens, and for a project that’s struggling on the price charts, an intervention was needed.
ICP trades at $2.52, dipping 5.3% in the past day and nearly 20% in the past week alone for a $1.38 billion market cap. Initiatives like the new Swiss national subnet launched last month, and its AI-focused roadmap for 2026, have failed to reignite a price rise, with the token losing 62% of its value in the past three months.
Community Divided on ICP’s Mission 70
Cutting the rewards alone won’t meet the deflation target. Williams proposes that the network increase the number of tokens it burns.
On the Internet Computer, users don’t pay transaction fees directly. Rather, they convert ICP into cycles, which are then consumed for storage and computation. The tokens used to create the cycles are then burned, reducing the overall supply. However, Williams says the burn rate is too low and wants the network to accelerate.
Mission 70 aims to increase the cycle prices and therefore, make each unit of real activity on the network burn more tokens than before. According to Williams, the fees could more than 5x under the new tokenomics.
While there’s community consensus on cutting node rewards, increasing the fees has been widely criticized. Some point out that the network is already struggling as it is to attract users, and increasing the fees would drive away the projects that have stayed.
One user stated:
…running real apps 100% on-chain – the core ICP value proposition – eats a lot of cycles and would become prohibitively expensive if cycle costs increase 5x with this proposition. For most apps, that’s simply a 5-doubling of their costs of staying up and running.
Another user noted that projects on the network “are already struggling to compete with WEB2, not just token based apps. Jumping costs up by 5x could seriously hurt many of these projects at exactly the wrong moment.”
