The Internet Computer was supposed to be a beacon of transparency and innovation. But somewhere along the way, we lost sight of that.
Right now, too many people are benefiting from funding mechanisms without any real accountability. Projects receive grants, promise the world—and then vanish, leaving the community with nothing but disappointment.
This isn’t sustainable.
If we want to build a healthy, thriving ecosystem, we need to rethink the way developers are rewarded. Funding should be earned, not handed out in advance based on vague plans. Developers should be compensated for real, measurable contributions—code that ships, tools that work, features that get used.
Imagine a system where money is locked into tasks or bounties. Developers take them on, complete them, and submit their work for review. Only after community validation is the payment released. It’s transparent, fair, and performance-based.
This model could attract serious builders while giving the community more control. It ensures that only those who deliver value get rewarded.
Too often, we see proposals asking for community funds under the vague label of “development”—only for that money to disappear into a black box, with no clear results, no progress, and no accountability.
This has to change.
We need a system that ties funding directly to outcomes. If developers are being paid with community resources, there must be a clear and transparent link between the funds they receive and the work they actually deliver.
This isn’t about restricting builders—it’s about restoring trust. It’s about creating a culture where real contributions are valued, tracked, and rewarded. Where progress is visible. Where the community can see who did what and why they got paid.
The Internet Computer was built on the promise of openness and innovation. Let’s live up to that by making sure development funding follows the same principles.
No more blind transfers. No more empty promises.
It’s time to pay for proof of work—not words.
The phase in regarding release of funds is smart and ensures trust. How do we keep Devs engaged to see it out? We vet Devs and attract serious builders with performance base compensation.
This compensation includes not only funds, networking opportunities, community support, awareness, Dfinity and leadership acknowledgment along with a host of others tools to keep them engaged.
For toolkit we are working on such a feature, where you can “employ” people to the DAO with reoccurring payments (proposals) set er a certain interval, or contract somebody for work that needs to supply proof of work to the dao before the final payment happens.
Note that this all would be proposal based, from hiring to payout so if an employee would underperform the DAO would have the ability to reject the payment (there are still some fine grain details that need to be worked out)
Note that this would be a payed feature for SNSes as we also have to support and maintain toolkit itself
I think you just need to copy from how normal shares and stock and given as bonuses in ltd companies. They are usually tied to a contract that specifies what task needs to be done and in what time. Failure means the company can withhold or buyback the bonus.
Obviously some though needs to be given to the specifics in each circumstance.
One thing I believe and others may not agree, is that the founders of startups should either not be waged or have a very low wage until successful. Getting funding should be not to sustain a lifestyle. If you can’t commit sufficient time and resources you probably don’t have what it takes.
Here is concrete example how Superteam doing bonus for indie dev or fresher dev for getting more dev.
I saw the endless hackathon from icphub to build on certain topic. But the topic is very very big and vague. The winner also not a developer active contribute on ICP. Some of they just farm the hackathon.
Let try with small bounties or small grant like 500-1000-2000 USD for younger developer in developing country. It will get some traction.
I saw some grantee project just get grant and public it and leave the eco.
Why did they leave, why not they build on IC anymore? Is that a reason for that?
Totally agree, just think about yuku founder-Tiger, 3 months solary 7000ICP, 1 year, he got 21k icp, 4 year 84k icp, seems that the founder is not working for the project, he is for the 21k icp/year, and additionally, he is still unsatisfied, he’s abandoned real work to help scam projects acquire more ICP - such is human nature. How could this kind of projects succeed? I don’t believe at all.
Most of them, I built for my project but I open source the part that I think people will need.
What I get in return, nothing expect more Dfinity people know me.
I even I tried to ask grant for sunbeam from Otc 2024 via ICPHub, they said they reviewed it and never get response.
I’m used to be Superteam member, I know what they did to reward dev. If I build something like sunbeam or sns-mcp-server on solana I will get support how to make product from that, or at least I get some small reward like 500-1000$ for the code.
I know Dfinity don’t want a lot of money for liquidity and marketing but at least care about indie dev or fresher dev - they’re working for food not for your vision.
I like what Adam did to some SNS DAO. They deliver nothing, or product with small amount of user and they made up with fake number of user.
Why they get a lot of money for building that?
That’s the problem… finding a solid model to make it work. What I’ve seen so far doesn’t seem satisfactory to me.
I’m thinking of something similar to Git, where you can compare changes and approve merge requests. It should include a mechanism to discourage poor reviews and incentivize quality ones.
ICVC require you to create a corp and have a good business model - hard to do with indie dev - builders. The UI is bug to block people to submit project