As we approach the launch of Online+ and the ION Framework, it’s time to share some important updates to our tokenomics that directly benefit ICE holders and the broader community.
It’s been a year and a half since we released our whitepaper, and as we grow, we evolve. The new ICE economic model is leaner, smarter, and built entirely around the long-term success of our ecosystem — and what I believe to be the best deflationary model on the market.
Here’s what’s changing — and why it matters.
The following updates were first made public in an April 12, 2025 Spaces session hosted on ION’s official X channel.
New Utilities: Real Value, Real Use
ICE has always powered core functions on the ION blockchain — gas for transactions, governance, and staking. But with the ION Framework coming online, ICE will also fuel a wide range of new features associated with it and the dApp ecosystem it supports:
- Tipping creators: 80% to creator, 20% to Ecosystem Pool
- Premium upgrades: 100% to Ecosystem Pool
- Subscriptions to private content, channels, or groups: 80% to creator, 20% to Ecosystem Pool
- Post boosts and ad campaigns: 100% to Ecosystem Pool
- Tokenised community fees: ~1% per transaction, 100% to Ecosystem Pool
- Swap fees: 100% to Ecosystem Pool
And that’s just the beginning. We’re designing for utility — not speculation.
Rewards & Burn: 100% Goes Back to the Ecosystem
Let’s be clear: every cent of value that enters the ION ecosystem stays in the ecosystem. What this means is that all revenues will be channeled toward the ICE coin and the ION community.
Yes, you read that correctly — ALL revenues go back in. We stand by our words when we say we’re building a fair and honest ecosystem owned and run by the community.
Here’s how it breaks down:
- 50% of all fees collected via the Ecosystem Pool will be used for daily buybacks and burns of ICE.
- The other 50% goes to community rewards — creators, tokenised communities, contests, affiliates, ion-connect nodes, ion-liberty nodes, and ion-vault participants.
And to give you some context on the magnitude of what this means:
If we capture just 0.1% of global social media ad revenue (which hit $230B+ in 2024), that’s $115M worth of ICE burned annually. At 1% market share, that’s $1.15B burned per year — directly tied to usage.
We’re also merging the “Mainnet Rewards” and “DAO” pools into a unified Rewards Pool. These coins will never be sold, only staked, with the daily yield flowing into the Ecosystem Rewards pool. In five years, when the lock ends, that staked yield will support the ecosystem even as the burn rate increases.
The goal: a future where up to 100% of ecosystem revenue is used to burn ICE.
How do we get there? By turning yield into long-term sustainability. In five years, the lock on our unified Rewards Pool will end. At that point, the staked coins from that pool — which are never sold — will begin to generate significant monthly yield. That yield will be redirected toward community rewards, allowing us to allocate even more of the ecosystem’s active revenue toward daily ICE buybacks and burns.
The bigger the Rewards Pool grows, the more self-sustaining the ecosystem becomes. Eventually, we aim to replace rewards from active revenue entirely with rewards from staking yield — meaning 100% of all real-time revenue can go toward burning ICE.
It’s bold. But we’re building for the long term. And when we say deflationary, we mean it.
This is deflation with purpose — real activity, real value. I’ll let your math skills and imagination do the work on what this means for ION’s market cap.
A User-Owned Monetization Model
We’re flipping the script on traditional social media monetization.
With ION, users don’t just use the product — they own it. And they earn from it.
That’s why we’re introducing a referral program that rewards anyone — creator or user — with 10% lifetime commissions on what their invitees spend or earn.
Invite a friend to join any social DApp built on the ION Framework? You earn 10% of anything they spend or earn on there. Say your buddy John buys a premium membership to a DApp and makes a killing monetizing his content — you get 10% of both. Your friend Jane, on the other hand, watches ads — 10% of that ad revenue goes to your wallet. 10% flat, always.
This is a social economy built by people, for people — and it’s designed to deliver lasting value, not fleeting hype.
We’ve seen countless platforms and projects where users buy into tokens with no clear purpose — no utility, no burn mechanics, just speculation. That’s not what we’re building here. Every ICE interaction in the ecosystem is tied to real utility, and every revenue stream feeds into a sustainable, deflationary loop.
This is the future of online economies — owned by the community, driven by real use, and built to reward the people who power it.
Tokenized Communities: Turning Attention into Assets
Tokenized communities — something you’re likely already familiar with thanks to the hype around the likes of pump.fun — are yet another leap forward. The moment you post your first story, article, or video in the ION ecosystem, a creator token is generated for your account. Anyone can buy and trade these tokens.
But here’s how it’s vastly different on ION than the speculative projects out there:
When creators earn rewards, the system automatically buys their token from the market, increasing liquidity — and burns 50% in the process. As creators grow, so does value and deflation.
It’s not about hype. It’s about content-driven economics that reward creators and remove supply simultaneously.
Chain-Agnostic Partnerships: Burn Everything
The ION Framework is chain-agnostic — and this unlocks massive opportunity.
Any project, on any of the 20+ supported chains (representing 95% of all tokens on the market), can launch their own branded social dApp:
- With their own token integrated for tips, upgrades, ads
- With their own community, brand, and distribution
- With the ION burn-and-reward engine under the hood
50% of all fees go to burn the project’s own token, and the remaining 50% goes to the ION Ecosystem Pool to fund additional ICE burns and community rewards.
In short: projects benefit, their communities benefit, and the ION ecosystem becomes stronger with every transaction.
This isn’t theoretical. As you may have noticed, we’ve already begun announcing multiple partnerships — and there’s plenty more coming, lined up to drop every single week. To give you an idea — more than 60 projects and over 600 individual creators have already joined, and this is only the beginning. As these partners deploy social DApps built on the ION Framework, ICE burn volume will accelerate dramatically, exponentially.
Even the simplest interaction — like viewing an ad — will trigger burns of their native tokens. Boost a post? That’s a burn. Tip a creator? That’s more ICE entering the deflationary loop.
It’s all connected. And it all adds up.
We’re getting close. Online+ is around the corner, bringing the ION Framework with it. You can do the math on just how big it’s going to be.
Like all worthwhile endeavors, it’s taken time, so I’m thankful to everyone who’s stayed with us on this journey. These upgrades aren’t just tweaks — they’re the foundation for a decentralized, user-owned future.
The ICE economy is just getting started.
Let’s build.
Sincerely,
— Alexandru Iulian Florea, Founder & CEO, on behalf of the ION Team