We are excited to announce the ICP roadmap update for 2025, where the DFINITY Foundation will further expand the capabilities of the Internet Computer Protocol (ICP), enhance the developer and user experience, and further embrace artificial intelligence, adding over 20 new features across various focus areas, grouped by milestones. With this updated roadmap, DFINITY is planning the path to realize the vision of the World Computer and provide sovereign software to the world.
The new features are defined based on the valuable feedback from the community, the roadmap to realize the vision of autonomous software, and the latest advancements in AI. They integrate a new self-writing internet paradigm, enabling anyone to become a developer and benefit from the unique attributes of ICP, while the overall vision and focus areas remain unchanged.
As the Internet Computer protocol continues to mature, the DFINITY Foundation will increasingly direct resources towards eliminating friction in the onboarding process for new developers, beyond the Web3 community, and support the creation of new types of applications. An exciting example is Caffeine, which makes its debut in the ICP roadmap.
The key factor in the success of the Internet Computer is the ICP community. We want to hear your voice: please share your feedback on the roadmap, what features are missing, and which milestones are most beneficial to you? You can submit and upvote DX-related feature requests on the DX feedback board or participate in discussions on the forum. We look forward to hearing your thoughts and updating the roadmap further based on your feedback.
Below, we provide a brief overview of newly added or significantly revised milestones based on different focus areas and reflect their importance.
ICP as a Computing Platform
Smart contracts are an excellent way to build software that enables secure, tamper-proof, resilient, and autonomous applications. The vision of ICP is that most software in the world will be built using smart contracts. The goal of the 'computing platform' theme is to eliminate any limitations on smart contracts, allowing all software in the world to run on ICP.
Flux Milestone
This milestone aims to enhance the computing power of subnets and balance the load between subnets. The former will require optimizing the algorithms for scheduling containers, managing sandboxes, and improving memory efficiency. The latter will address this by allowing developers to migrate containers between subnets. Developers will be able to take snapshots of containers, download them, and then upload them to a new subnet, which also has the benefit of allowing developers to back up containers and restore them from backups when necessary.
Magnetosphere Milestone
The second milestone of ICP as a computing platform is to increase the use of Trusted Execution Environments (TEE) to enhance ICP's integrity and security. This milestone will allow the use of TEE to protect node states, prevent tampering with code copies, and maintain the confidentiality of key sharing. By ensuring the trustworthiness of nodes, verifiable API BN access logs and secure queries will be unlocked.
Fission Milestone
Migrating containers to other subnets to balance loads is a very refined approach, best suited for a small number of containers. Another solution for load balancing is subnet splitting. This protocol has already allowed subnet splitting, but it can cause containers to go down for several hours. This milestone aims to make subnet splitting feasible, minimizing downtime.
Decentralized Artificial Intelligence
AI and ICP have tremendous mutually beneficial potential, a unique combination not found elsewhere! ICP allows code to be uploaded and run on the network, and then, thanks to orthogonal persistence and other ICP superpowers, dapps can be seamlessly upgraded and iterated in production. Now, AI can realize the vision of a self-writing internet paradigm where everyone is a developer, simply by describing their ideas to build and deploy their own dapps.
ICP can further address the major issue of centralized AI: opacity and the complete lack of verifiability, which requires users to blindly trust a single third party.
Decentralized Artificial Intelligence (DeAI) can address this issue. DeAI involves running AI inference (and subsequent training) in the form of on-chain smart contracts, solving the trust challenges of AI. Users can trust the integrity of the models they use and verify the inputs to the models, reducing the need to blindly trust them. However, AI training and inference are resource-intensive, and the limited computational capacity of traditional blockchain networks often cannot meet the demand. In contrast, the advanced design of the Internet Computer successfully combines the security of smart contracts with the powerful computational demands of AI.
Vertex Milestone
The Alpha version of the Caffeine platform allows for instant creation of full-stack applications, representing the convergence of unique ICP technologies (such as its serverless computing model, enhanced orthogonal persistence, and AI models for Motoko code generation), heralding the dawn of the self-writing internet.
Ignition Milestone
AI agents are an evolving paradigm in the software domain, and the Internet Computer has unique advantages to become a home for AI agents. Compared to traditional IT stacks, AI agents on the Internet Computer can securely and easily manage digital assets, trade with one another, operate completely autonomously, and be tokenized and governed by DAOs. This milestone focuses on providing access to foundational LLMs as well as basic tools to deploy agents on the Internet Computer as simply as possible.
Ignition will also introduce AI worker nodes specifically designed to handle LLM prompts. These AI workers will have similar security assurances as container smart contracts on the Internet Computer and provide powerful AI models in a service form that containers can call.
Chain Fusion
Chain Fusion utilizes chain key encryption technology to achieve direct interoperability with all major blockchains in a decentralized manner. ICP smart contracts can read and write to different chains, allowing developers to leverage the capabilities provided by ICP when developing applications for other blockchain ecosystems without relying on centralized cloud infrastructure or insecure chain bridges. In this area, we are currently working on the Helium milestone, integrating ICP with Solana, and the next newly added milestone is Meridian.
Helium Milestone
The Helium milestone achieved Chain Fusion for the Solana network, tying Solana and ICP closer together, combining the functionalities of both networks, making dapps that utilize the features of both networks look and feel like single-network dapps.
Meridian Milestone
Dogecoin's design is very similar to Bitcoin's, so the amount of work required to integrate ICP with Dogecoin is relatively small. Dogecoin is popular and has a high market cap, but it lacks smart contract functionality. With this milestone, Chain Fusion expands support for Dogecoin, allowing container smart contracts to hold and transfer Dogecoin and extend various new DeFi functionalities for Doge.
Privacy
Container smart contracts can be used to implement privacy-preserving dapps, allowing users to have full control over their data. Utilizing cryptographic protocols, ICP enables developers to build dapps that allow users to store and share encrypted on-chain data. Advanced cryptographic protocols will ultimately allow computations on encrypted data.
Niobium Milestone
vetKeys is a decentralized key management service that allows users to obtain cryptographic keys on demand in a completely decentralized manner. For example, this allows developers to build dapps that encrypt user data, thereby meeting the privacy needs on public blockchains.
Containment Milestone
This milestone enables the full utilization of Trusted Execution Environments (TEE), providing an additional layer of integrity assurances and preventing unauthorized access to container states, thereby further strengthening the privacy attributes of ICP.
Decentralization
The security of ICP is based on eliminating central control points, and users interacting with ICP do not need to rely on any party except for aspects of the architecture, such as edge infrastructure. This is also complemented by the operational aspects, supplementing ICP's DAO-based governance.
Levitron Milestone
This milestone enhances the visibility of Internet Computer's edge infrastructure by making aggregated and anonymous API boundary node access logs publicly accessible. Developers can gain deeper insights into the usage patterns of their dapps, enabling traffic analysis and user statistics. To ensure the integrity and verifiability of the logs, this milestone is based on the Trusted Execution Environment introduced in Magnetosphere.
Knot Milestone
The Knot milestone will define the next generation (also known as Gen3) node hardware specifications, improve reward calculations, and enhance network topology to improve network performance, efficiency, and the decentralization of the ICP infrastructure.
Identity
Most dapps on ICP interact with and authenticate users and may need some information about their identity, such as whether they are human, unique, and their age.
Indeed, security, privacy-preserving, sovereign autonomy, and user-friendly identity solutions are the fundamental cornerstones for adopting Web3. Users need to be able to seamlessly use their dapps across different devices, recover access when devices are lost, and ensure their security—after all, this is cryptocurrency, and users' assets are on-chain. Internet Identity addresses this issue, making life easier for both users and developers.
Pulse Milestone
The Pulse milestone centers around the user experience of Internet Identity, eliminating the need for anchors, supporting the OpenID standard, and untangling the relationship between Internet Identity, wallets, and integrated dapps.
Plexus Milestone
The Separatrix milestone, achieved in 2024, introduces verifiable credentials to Internet Identity. This milestone will revolutionize credential solutions for Internet Identity by adopting established credential standards, increasing interoperability in the issuance and use of credentials.
Digital Assets
DeFi protocols, tokenization of real-world assets, and other digital asset solutions are key drivers for the adoption of Web3. The Chain Fusion capabilities of ICP, its unparalleled scalability, and the ability to deliver web assets on-chain open up new categories of digital assets. Additionally, it makes ICP an attractive platform for building multi-chain custody solutions and wallets.
Nexus Milestone
This milestone expands the ICRC ledger standard suite to support the CMTAT (Capital Markets and Technology Association Token) framework to meet enterprise needs. It will unlock key use cases such as stablecoins and tokenization of real-world assets, driving the future of trustless digital asset management on the Internet Computer.
Echelon Milestone
Orbit is a secure solution for managing digital assets and smart contracts. This milestone will enhance its asset management capabilities through the seamless integration of native tokens from other blockchains (starting with ETH and ERC-20), creating a unified funds management platform that allows users to securely sign and send transactions across multiple chains. Additionally, we will introduce automatic smart contract upgrades to ensure that users can always access the latest security updates and features with minimal manual intervention.
Neutron Milestone
To further enhance the usability and accessibility of Orbit, we will improve the user experience through an intuitive approval process, an improved onboarding process, and a comprehensive documentation center. These improvements will ensure that the Orbit platform is efficient for individual users and teams managing digital asset management needs.
Dynamo Milestone
Laying a new foundation for a decentralized software marketplace, providing developers with a clear path for their applications to be adopted without relying on centralized platforms. By integrating transparent deployment processes and seamless discovery tools, this initiative lays the groundwork for a sovereign software ecosystem, allowing developers to easily package and distribute applications while users have full control over the installed applications.
Apex Milestone
From Zero to Degen-Hero: This milestone aims to promote the development of the ICP DeFi ecosystem by simplifying the discovery of new tokens, increasing the transparency of ledger controllers, and providing a more streamlined user experience among DeFi dapps.
Governance and Tokenomics
ICP has two built-in governance systems; the NNS is the DAO that governs the ICP protocol, and the SNS framework is a toolbox for creating DAOs to manage individual dapps. Both are open to everyone and facilitate decentralized decision-making. Tokenomics incentivizes voting participation and ensures that DAO decisions align with the long-term interests of the ICP community and the governed dapps.
Neon Milestone
The main focus of the Neon milestone is to expand the user base and improve user experience. Holding governance tokens is intuitive and seamless, ensuring that new users can quickly understand their holdings and easily explore and engage with new opportunities, such as the launch of the Service Nervous System (SNS). Other features aim to make the governance process more intuitive and streamline SNS DAO operations, laying the foundation for the next milestone.
Nucleon Milestone
This milestone is dedicated to increasing user participation in governance. It aims to foster a sense of belonging in the DAO community and encourage users to contribute to the fluid democratic process. The SNS community can easily apply their decisions through proposals.
Nucleus Milestone
This milestone integrates Orbit's multi-party approval framework with the Network Nervous System (NNS), designating the NNS as the root of trust. By allowing the NNS to 'bless' new versions, the Orbit platform gains a powerful, decentralized governance layer without requiring each council to implement its own governance from scratch.
Developer Experience
Developer experience is a key factor for developer adoption, which includes low-friction container development and operation, expressive smart contract languages, testing frameworks, and a rich set of libraries. Beyond container development, developer experience also encompasses inclusive and quality-assured protocol development.
Thorium Milestone
This milestone improves the circular management experience on ICP by introducing Cycles Ledger, allowing end users to seamlessly hold Cycles and manage their container Cycles balance more easily.
Additionally, by making a set of key metrics public, you can better understand how your containers are performing, especially being able to view breakdowns of your Cycles usage and which endpoints are the most costly in terms of calls.
Atlas Milestone
The second milestone of ICP Ninja introduces multiple AI-centered features, such as the ability to use AI-guided projects through the Caffeine platform. In addition, it aims to foster more community engagement and collaboration by releasing community projects and templates.
The DFINITY Foundation also plans a comprehensive overhaul of the CLI toolchain used for developing containers. We are not yet ready to share detailed plans, but significant updates are expected later this year.
Conclusion
This updated roadmap represents yet another bold statement of the Internet Computer's technological leadership and the vision of the World Computer. We invite the entire community once again to share your thoughts and suggestions at forums, on X, and at numerous events around the world.
For more details about the roadmap and an overview of what has been deployed in the protocol, please check the ICP roadmap. For an in-depth discussion of this roadmap update, please join the DFINITY Foundation for a live stream with Vice President of Engineering Samuel Burri and Research Director Björn Tackmann on March 7, 2025, at 3 PM (CET) on our YouTube channel.
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