ICDevs.org is getting back into governance...but we need your support

Developers Showcase
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We just published an updated and fresh set of ICDevs Guiding Principles — a public statement of what we’re optimizing for, why, and where we’re putting the work.

In the past we’ve moved away from proactive governance, but we don’t really feel that is appropriate any more. With DFINITY getting quieter, we feel we need to step forward even when we disagree. Our disagreements are on the edges and we generally agree with and appreciate where DFINITY has brought us. But with very little to lose at this point, there is not much reason to be very direct about where we disagree and why. Actually procuring a say that matters is a very long road, but we have to start somewhere. In the meantime it would be safe to say we are going to be a network agitant when it comes to network governance. Watch the skies. #Mission88

:backhand_index_pointing_right: Read it: ICDevs Guiding Principles

Why now

ICDevs is a 501(c)3 educational and scientific non-profit, independent of the DFINITY
Foundation. The ecosystem is at an inflection point: AI is changing who writes software,
governance is being tested, and commercial-focused organizations are making decisions that affect infrastructure the whole ecosystem depends on. The IC needs institutions whose mission
isn’t tied to a product roadmap or a fund cycle.

The headline ideas

  • Retain the builders who show up — with retroactive public goods funding that rewards proven, lasting impact.
  • Ensure Motoko has an independent, long-term future beyond any single commercial organization. (The motoko team DFINITY Caffeine Labs is AMAZING but we’re not super jazzed that they’ve been shipped over to an org with caffeine’s risk profile.
  • Maintain and improve core libraries, ICRC implementations, and developer tooling.
  • Develop AstroFlora as the permanence, provenance, and trust layer for asynchronous computing.
  • Build community-driven security, audit, and verification infrastructure.
  • Advance AI-native development methodologies and self-writing internet infrastructure.
  • Deliver a push-button EVM experience on the Internet Computer.
  • Develop sustainable, market-based node provider incentives that strengthen decentralization.
  • Restore long-term staking with an 88-year reward curve that rewards conviction and stewardship.

What we’re working on, and when

Underway now: builder retention / retroactive public goods · core libraries, ICRC
implementations & tooling · AstroFlora (provenance + verification)
Near-term: an independent, permanent home for Motoko · a push-button EVM on the IC
Medium-term: community security & audit infrastructure · AI-native / self-writing
infrastructure
Long-term (mostly governance + research): 88-year staking & long-term governance
alignment · sustainable, market-based node provider economics

The doc also lays out the governance principles we’ll use to guide our NNS voting —
including a two-tier idea where short-horizon stakers steer near-term decisions and
long-horizon stakers steer protocol direction, and replacing SNS launch gatekeeping with
verification (provenance + community audit) rather than permission.

It’s a living document — argue with it

This is v0.1.0 and we want it challenged. The source is in a public repo — open an issue or
PR against any principle: GitHub - icdevsorg/guiding-principles · GitHub

How to lend your support

We’ll have opportunities down the road to stake and donate maturity — we’re just finalizing
the front end for that. But honestly? Nothing beats giving money. Direct donations are
what fund every bounty, grant, and piece of public infrastructure we ship.

Read it, share it, and tell us where we’re wrong.

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Hard pass from me.

Last time y’all showed up it was mostly radio silence followed by random proposals that felt like ‘trust us bro, we code sometimes’.

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Thanks @icdevs having a hard pass from some… in fact makes me feel more ambitious to take part of.

I’ll read it over and see if there’s anything in there I could help & support (I.e. where my skills would be best suited/ used).

Are you making a way for us to gather, and discuss all this without being bullied for several more years?

I promise to be quiet and ask questions, “at the end of class”.

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if @Oldcrustyballs would also promise not to join, i might consider it :wink:

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who says i’m doing the sniffing? money would be lucky to have me

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I can’t tell if you’re friendly, foe, or average Joe.

All I can say is you earned the right to not want these @Oldcrustyballs around.

However, as long as it’s clear this is the only place I keep dragging them and it’s not because of nothing.

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Yes…trying to finalize a work on reviving an old forum software we have sitting around. putting an IC backend adapter on it. It will have a strict no-a**hole rule.

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It is kind of straight out of 1998 but conversations compact up nicely tagging and topic association is topic friendly. I’ve seen some other forum projects on the IC lately as well and I’m all for promoting good software, so we’ll see what we end up doing. Need a bit of tweaking, but it should just slide onto icdevs.org fairly easily.

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Unironically that is the good news here.

At least now we can donate value to someone running a legitimate non-profit. Not hiding in Switzerland behind legal lasagna.

I havn’t been around here as long as some of you so I will reserve judgement.

I know we are still a long way from end user products and they probably wont come until bull market comes. Oh well.

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Yeah, honestly I’m sitting here going, “it’s not what I wanted to be donating to / for, but it’s a damn good compromise / way forward.”

All I have to do is accept it’s not the exact type of donation I personally wanted, and that’s a me issue I can cry over with the boyz later.

I’m going to need like 3-6 months away from this place, and to stack up rewards to donate.

I’ll also have to ask my tax advisor if this is going to do what I think it’s going to do. Which would justify his cost annually as this is literally why I’m here…

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Oh and accept that it’s not MY 501(c)3 I didn’t do it.

Still cool with me.

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Was there something in particular that you felt ICDevs fell down on? We issued over $171k in bounties to developers over the last five years that has directly resulted in a significant amount of open source code on mops.one. Our lawyers advised us to get out of voting on SNSs and voting on governance proposals was generally abandoned after conflicts arose across different organizations and it became clear DFINITY was just going to push through whatever they wanted.

As far as I can remember the only NNS proposals we issued in the past were for our named neuron and maybe the anti-spam tokenomics proposal that Dfinity asked us to submit…but actually I think they ended up doing it.

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Welcome back Austin and ICDevs. I think it’s good for the ecosystem to have you involved in governance. I hope people will let you peacefully do your work instead of feeling the need to harass you all the time. Fortunately, there is a new generation of folks who are willing to fight the negativity and false narratives that are constantly coming from a few bad actors. I hope they decide you are one of the good guys and will help stand up for you if folks give you a hard time. I know you have thick skin and don’t need that kind of support, but sometimes it helps to know that others appreciate your contributions instead of only hearing from the vocal minority. Governance is difficult and it’s nice to know that good people such as yourself are willing to step up to formally help support the developers.

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The cure for this is simple.

Ship products that solve problems for end users.

Easier said than done, but you get the point.

Good luck Mr. Fatheree. I wish you the best.

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I mean I’m actively going to collect rewards and now that you can have the reward neuron spawned right to the ICDevs I might actually be able to keep writing off a few hundred or more a year, which will pay for the tax attorney and possibly lower my tax bill in a much more effective way than I have.

While someone uses the rewards to actually do something, or like for actual science and stuff etc

lol again it isn’t what I wanted. At this point though this is a solid middle ground compromise.

I hope my fractional rewards helps some random fucker do something cool on the IC.

Edit: I won’t even need to worry about if it’s being used for what they say it’s being used. I’ll just know with his 501(c)3 status he has to and then l can literally see the bounties be filled or whatever I donate to IRT

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At least one year too late, unfortunately.