How Does an APP DEVELOPER make money?

Hi All,

My background is IT as my profile says. I am now a Node Provider and have a few servers up and running. My real love though is dev and I would like to kick this along as well. After a few months and going through the Node implementation cycle, I have a taste of the IC eco system but also have some questions. Apologies in advance if the answers can be found in the doco … Here are the questions that have formed for me and I hope the answers will give me a better understanding of this exciting global tech and DAO concept.

  1. Who owns an app once it goes through the voting process to be deployed on the IC?
  2. What are the rules of deployment and other than a vote, are there other controls in place as to what functions and features can be built and deployed on the IC. If so, can someone provide a link as to where this is defined.
  3. Does someone have a model built as to how much an APP will cost to development, deploy and operate in production based on storage and cycles? I have built a spreadsheet for calculating OPEX and CAPEX for being a Node Provider is there one anywhere for being a IC Software implementor?
  4. Being open source is there any protection over the source code of an APP. The question comes from … if I develop a widget that becomes a killer app … then can someone copy my code and using this as a base create a better widget and no reward is received for the hard yards.
  5. Can Paid Advertising be embedded into an APP that I develop and deploy?
  6. What is the monetization event? Is there any reward for the take up of an IC app.
    7 The assumption is that I get charged for cycles and storage and I pay for this with ICP. Is there a way that I can generate ICP from my APP or is the cycle buy ICP transfer to IC Wallet and pay with this.

All comments / answers and embellishment on this theme most welcome.

Cheers

Greg

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Are you specifically referring to SNSs (an implementation of ‘DAO’) or DAOs in general?

Ownership is hard to define. But anyone with voting power has control over how the dapp evolves

Nothing really. You have the IC’s capabilities as some limitation (e.g. HTTP outcalls exist, but they’re not as fast as in web 2), but otherwise there are no restrictions

We have our gas cost table here, but otherwise you have to try it out. Storage is very easy to estimate (~5$/GB/year), but anything else depends on a lot of factors

Sure, why not? You can host anything you want

You have to build a ‘business’ where people are willing to give you some kind of currency in excess of your cycles cost

2 Likes

Are you specifically referring to SNSs (an implementation of ‘DAO’) or DAOs in general?

Was specific to SNS implementation my exposure is limited to a course run my one of the developers recently.
However a DAO generally i can see has far broader areas of relevance.

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Hi @Anypoint

You raise some interesting considerations. I think the beauty of the IC ecosystem is it is still in the early stages. This means there is a lot of blue sky which developers could choose to pursue and develop into various dApps or services running on IC.

In terms of your questions about profit and liquidity events, an SNS decentralization sale is technically a liquidity event but the philosophy of such an event is turning the control of the dApp or service over to the community to be run as a decentralized organization and to exist autonomously from any sole party or organization going into the future. A really beautiful model and the SNS has made it profoundly easy to modulate one’s business or dApp into a DAO, something that used to be much harder to do. They have offered all the tools in the kit to use as one sees fit, so to speak. In a conventional business sense, you could think of the SNS as a sort of white label of the NNS that governs the Internet Computer itself which can be tailor made to fit the purposes of any service, organization, dApp or other entity. Now, this is of course subject to the approval of the IC community and a succesful decentralization sale.

Theoretically any web 2 business model could be ported into something that could be run on the IC as a DAO. There are certain areas I think are better suited to this ecosystem but that is in the eyes of the beholder.

I am a long time developer, IC ecosystem participant, long time forum lurker…I currently have some exciting projects in the pre development / iteration stage and happy to discuss further. I commend you for pursuing these kind of opportunities, we need more devs and builders creating interesting projects and ventures in this ecosystem.

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