Introducing the Contribution Proposal System

ICON Foundation
3 min readDec 23, 2020

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A decentralized autonomous grant program owned and operated by the ICON Network itself

Greetings ICONists,

ICON and the iBriz-ICONOsphere P-Rep team are excited to announce the release of the Contribution Proposal System. This release brings us one step closer to realizing the vision of Delegated Proof of Contribution, where network resources are allocated to specific contributions to grow the ICON Ecosystem.

The initial design of IISS had three categories: Public Representatives, DApp Booster Program (DBP), and Ecosystem Expansion Projects (EEP), all of which were meant to receive their allocation of inflation rewards. When we first decentralized this all fell on the shoulders of P-Reps, as the DBP and EEPs were not yet live. However, after gaining some community feedback during the early design process, we decided to combine the DBP and EEPs into one more clearly defined system, the Contribution Proposal System, with a more budget-based, targeted, and project-specific reward distribution.

With this release, the core responsibility of P-Reps becomes clearer. They are required, at the minimum, to operate a node and participate in Network Proposal votes (on-chain enforcement will be implemented in ICON 2.0). Active ICONists should then be looking to vote for teams that go above and beyond the core responsibilities through managing the CPS, sponsoring projects for the CPS, and/or have made contributions outside of the CPS such as building their own business on ICON, promoting ICON on social media, building tools for ICON, etc.

A detailed walkthrough of how to use the CPS, as both an ICONist and a P-Rep, can be found here. You can also ask questions in the icon.community telegram room if you are having trouble. Please direct any feedback you may have to the iBriz-ICONOsphere team or a member of the ICON Team.

As a brief overview of the Contribution Proposal System:

  1. Applicants submit proposals during the “Application Period”, which lasts 15 days, and select a “Sponsor P-Rep” to vouch for their proposal
  2. P-Reps that have registered to manage the CPS will vote on proposals during the “Voting Period”, which lasts 15 days
  3. Approved Proposals will receive funding in monthly installments, and the Sponsor P-Rep will receive a monthly reward in exchange for supporting a good project
  4. Approved Projects must share a monthly progress report to continue receiving funding
  5. P-Reps review the monthly progress reports, and if they are bad reports, the project can be discontinued

For this beta phase, the ICON Foundation will be allocating its block rewards into the Contribution Proposal Fund on a regular basis. The CPS will have initial funding of 250,000 ICX but will continue receiving block rewards from the ICON Foundation until ICON 2.0. After migrating to ICON 2.0, the CPS will be funded directly through network inflation.

As mentioned, the CPS is a decentralized autonomous grant program owned and operated by the ICON Network itself. The CPS is fully open sourced for the community to make amendments. Technical implementation of those amendments shall be funded by the CPS and reviewed by the community.

The goal of the CPS is to give anybody the opportunity to contribute to the ICON Ecosystem and receive compensation for their work. The types of projects we hope to see funded include, but are not limited to: Community building initiatives, non-profit infrastructure projects (analytics platforms, developer tools, ecosystem tools, loopchain core code enhancements, BTP bridges, etc.), educational projects, developer community initiatives, and bootstrapping for-profit businesses built on ICON.

We look forward to seeing the ICON Project turn into a fully functioning DAO with many innovative projects being funded through the Contribution Proposal System.

Thank you,

ICON Foundation x iBriz-Iconosphere

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