Hello everyone,
We at the DFINITY Foundation have been working to provide greater visibility into our roadmap and more opportunities for the community to provide feedback on DFINITY’s contributions to the Internet Computer through forum threads, AMAs, community conversations, and 1:1 working sessions with developer teams. The next evolution of this work and something we have been very excited to get off the ground for some time now is the idea of technical working groups. Over the past few weeks, we have been discussing potential structures and topics for these groups both internally and with several members of the community. We would like to share the proposed path forward here.
Some guidelines on how we are thinking about these working groups:
- The goal of these working groups is to define shared objectives and priorities between the Foundation and the IC community. Each working group will identify initiatives that translate into a shared roadmap, where the Foundation can actively collaborate with community members on shared roadmap items.
- Working groups should focus on frameworks, standards, infrastructure, and public goods and not the commercial interests of anyone dapp, platform, or specific vertical (as many of the proposed technical topics cut across many verticals).
- Each working group will have a DFINITY lead, a community lead, and a coordinator.
- Forum threads will be created for each working group, similar to how DFINITY’s roadmap items are discussed today.
- Meetings will be hosted on Zoom, and all meeting notes will be made publicly available afterward in the respective forum threads.
- Proposed cadence will be monthly.
- Coordinating across all time zones will be tricky, so we will try out the below proposed time slots for now and adjust as needed.
The current plan is to roll out three working groups to start as a “pilot.” We will learn and gather feedback before launching additional topics, and iterate on any of the above guidelines as needed. From there, an NNS proposal can be put forth describing the overall framework, similar to this great example from the ENS community.
The first topics that will be rolled out include:
Topic: Catch-all (pending issues and sorting)
DFINITY lead: @benji
Coordinator: TBD
Forum: post
Cadence: Bi-weekly Wednesdays at 6 pm CEST (GMT+2)
First meeting: May 23rd, 2023
Topic: Identity & Auth
DFINITY lead: @frederikrothenberger
Coordinator: @marydwyer
Link to Forum: Technical Working Group: Identity & Authentication
Cadence: Monthly on the first Tuesday of every month at 5 pm CET
First meeting: April 5, 2022, at 5:00 pm CET
Topic: Developer Tooling
DFINITY lead: @dfx-json
Coordinator: @domwoe
Discord: Developer Tooling
Forum: Main Thread with updates
Cadence: Monthly on the first Thursday of every month at 7 pm CET
First meeting: April 7, 2022, at 7:00 pm CET
Topic: Ledger & Tokenization
DFINITY lead: @dieter.sommer
Coordinator: @benji
Discord: Ledger & Tokenization Channel
Forum: Main thread with updates
GitHub: GitHub - dfinity/ICRC-1: A fungible token standard developed by the Ledger & Tokenization working group for the IC.
Slides and Recordings: Link to Google Drive
Cadence: Bi-weekly on Tuesday at 6:00 PM CET
First meeting: April 12, 2022, at 5:00 pm CET
[Update Mar 2023]
Topic: NFT (subgroup of Ledger & Tokenization)
DFINITY lead: @benji
Coordinator: @dieter.sommer
Main thread: forum
Github: ICRC-7
Cadence: Bi-weekly on 2nd and 4th Tuesdays at 17:00 CET
First meeting: Tue 29nd Nov 2022
[Update July 2022 ]
Topic: Scalability & Performance
DFINITY lead: @abk
Coordinator: @domwoe
Discord: Scalability
Forum: Main thread with updates
Cadence: Monthly on the third Thursday of every month at 5:30 pm CET
First meeting: July 21, 2022, at 5:30pm CET
[Update September 2022]
Topic: Governance
Leadership: @bjoernek, @brutoshi , @lastmjs
Coordinator: @emmaperetti
Link to Forum: Technical Working Group: Governance
Discord: Governance
First meeting: September 29 on Zoom, see the calendar
Github Repo
[Update November 2022]
Topic: Education
Leadership: @Seb
Coordinator: @cryptoschindler
Discord: Education
First meeting: November 17 on Google Meet, see the calendar
Github Repo
[Update March 2023]
Topic: Blockchain Integrations
DFINITY lead: @Dieter Sommer
Coordinator: @Dieter Sommer
Discord: Ethereum integration (we currently remain on the Ethereum channel)
First meeting: March 22, 2023 on Zoom (Google calendar, Web calendar)
Public calendar for these and all future meetings here.
public calendar browser link (no google account required)
These topics were specifically selected as groups are already starting to form on these topics, or the topics are especially timely (e.g. defining ledger interfaces). So as not to delay getting started, we will launch the first three working groups with a DFINITY lead and a coordinator, and shortly after the working group is up-and-running, the groups can hold elections for a community leader.
Future topic ideas that have also been discussed:
- Canister Metrics & Reporting
- Security & Audits
- Languages
- Internet Protocols & Networking
- Network Governance
- Network Tokenomics
- Privacy
If you are interested in nominating yourself early as a community lead or a coordinator, or if you have ideas for additional topics for future working groups, please fill out this short survey.
We are so excited to kick these off and are very open to your feedback and suggestions. We hope to see you at some (or all!) of these working groups in the coming weeks.
