ICX Australia has been involved with ICON for just two months. But the prospective P-Rep team likes what they’ve seen. Callan Sarre, the team’s chief operations officer, points to the community’s deep engagement with the platform. He says, “We’ve been pretty well blown away to be honest at the amount of passion at the grassroots level.”
As a P-Rep, ICX Australia aims to bring value to the ICON network by, first and foremost, running a safe and secure node, something the team has plenty of experience doing. But beyond that, they aim to educate Australians about all ICON has to offer.
A two-pronged attack
ICX Australia is a collaboration between two blockchain consultancies, Melbourne-based Digital Value and Adelaide-based Cryptocate.
Digital Value’s the technology side of the operation, boasting experience running nodes on Tezos and BTC Lightning. Steve Daws, ICX Australia’s chief of technology, has two decades of experience in the field of cyber security, working with the likes of ANZ bank, Standard Chartered Bank, Cisco Systems, Telstra, SingTel and the Australian Military.
Cryptocate, on the other hand, focuses on community building and education. “We help people pay their crypto tax and other equally exciting things,” says Sarre, who also co-founded the South Australian Blockchain Association. “But they’re pretty necessary at this stage in the development because we’re trying to bring blockchain and cryptocurrency world into contact with the existing world. And that’s how we start to shift things to the decentralized world.”
Sarre points to the team’s two areas of expertise. “We’re really interested in doing what we do best. We’ve got this security component that’s handled by Digital Value. We want to create, first and foremost, a secure node,” he says. “On the other side of it, where Cryptocate comes in, is being able to orchestrate and manage community over here in Australia.”
Solving the tragedy of the commons
As a P-Rep, ICX Australia hopes to solve the so-called “tragedy of the commons,” at least as it applies to blockchain. Citing the work of Nobel laureate economist Elinor Ostrom, Sarre says the key to helping people better self-organize is getting them involved in the decision-making process. The team plans to do this by redistributing 80 percent of the representative reward back to the people who delegate to them.
But that’s not all. They also plan to create an ICX-enabled version of the crowdfunding platform LibrePatreon. This would help ICON develop into a platform on which communities can self-organize.
“We want to make it very easy for to reinvest that back into the community,” says Sarre. “No matter how small the project might be, we can get to that level of granularity of community support.”
A blockchain of blockchains
ICX Australia is impressed by ICON’s focus on interoperability. Sarre cites the example of the Internet, which is essentially a network of networks. Blockchain, too, is moving towards the “blockchain of blockchains.” This would make blockchain more secure since no single network would be open to attack. “If we’re trending towards this meta-network, if you will, then I think ICON fits incredibly well into that value proposition as the interoperable layer between the chains,” says Sarre. “That’s what really excites me about it.”
What the ICX Australia team really wants is to deliver value to the community. To do this, they want to turn their node security and community-building expertise into a solid foundation for the network. “Our main focus is creating a secure node and doing some solid community development groundwork,” says Sarre. “We want to have this core value that we can provide as a solid foundation for the ICON blockchain, and based on that solid foundation of trust and security, we can build a really powerful decentralized community. That’s what we’re interested in.”
“We’re really passionate about decentralization,” he adds. “We think it’s going to create a remarkable shift in the macro-economic and political landscape globally, and that’s why we’re in blockchain, to be a part of this movement.”
