At an industry summit held by ICON on January 31st, the company announced a number of upcoming projects, headed by a partnership with Smilegate. This South Korean gaming company is reputedly worth several billion dollars and is owned by South Korea\'s wealthiest man. Smilegate made Kwon Hyuk-Bin\'s fortune with the creation of Crossfire, the most popular FPS (First Person Shooter) video game in the world. Smilegate\'s user base extends to 650 million or more players.

The Memorandum of Understanding forms a partnership between ICON and Smilegate for the development of a new gaming platform. Called Stove, it is described by Smilegate as a \"next generation global social game platform\" and will run on the unique ICON blockchain. Stove proposes a consumer-to-consumer (C2C instead of P2P) network where global users will \"distribute and consume social content bi-laterally.\"

ICON\'s core mission is for their blockchain ID verification system to link customers with other financial services, including bank accounts and other initiatives like loyalty cards. The company\'s pre-ICO, in September 2017, raised a total of 150,000 ETH (very roughly, $450,000), half of it in the first six hours, though the value of ETH rose considerably thereafter. The native token, the ICX, is currently trading down from its year-end highs, but is still worth some 17 times what it was at the launch.