Newroad.Capital believes in ICON.

“There are many projects with great technology that we know won’t make it in the future because there are so many good ones,” says team lead Kasper Van Der Valk. “But we believe that ICON with its community and the ICON Foundation, with their involvement and that of the Korean government, is very, very strong. And that’s what makes us believe that ICON is one of the few that will make it.”

Based on that belief in ICON’s future, the Netherlands-based blockchain and cryptocurrency development and consultancy company has jumped into the P-Rep campaign, bringing with it a history of reliability and efficiency as a node operator on Tezos and other networks. They also bring a passion for decentralization, especially ICON’s vision of connected but self-governing communities. Van Der Valk says, “This is really in line with how we feel decentralization should be.”

Room enough for the little guy

Founded in 2017, the four-man Newroad.Capital team started as a baker on the Tezos network. After half a year, they expanded operations into other networks, running nodes on the Cosmos, IRISnet and Chainlink platforms. Their search for value eventually brought them to ICON. “We continue to explore opportunities, primarily in PoS networks,” says Van Der Valk. “In our quest to find networks with high potential, we came across ICON. [The network] really interested us. And now we’re here.”

The team was particularly attracted to ICON’s combination of technical prowess and community enthusiasm. “There are many projects out there with great technology, including ICON,” says Van Der Valk. “But what got us really interested was the strong community.”

As a P-Rep, Newroad.Capital would focus on three priorities.

The first, of course, is providing a stable node. They will provide secure, scalable infrastructure to the network with a bare metal server. Running a stable node is something they know how to do ⁠— they’ve never missed a delegate payment on the Tezos network, where they enjoy an efficiency rating of over 100 percent.

The team’s second priority is to create a grant program for the ICON network. Van Der Valk says though it’s great that many larger teams are doing development and content creation for the network, it’s important to involve a lot more people to build a greater community, too. “I think when more people are involved and feel responsible for the network, the stronger it will be,” he says. “And we believe attracting people with the possibility of getting funded for their ideas is a great way to do it.”

In its Medium post on the grant program, Newroad.Capital describes its proposed grant program thusly:

“The grant program will be funded with ICX from a part of the earnings we will make when we are voted as a P-Rep for the ICON community. Yes, we’re taking our earnings and putting them directly into the hands of community members. Go build something.”

To kickstart the program, the team will contribute 50 percent of its earnings as P-Rep into the program for the first three months. During the next three months, it will kick in 50 percent of the profits. After that, the team will re-evaluate the funding needs of the program, engaging with grant recipients and the community to determine the best way forward.

Van Der Valk says, “Everyone who is willing to build on ICON is going to have a chance to be selected for a grant.”

Lastly, Newroad.Capital will concentrate on governance. Van Der Velk says his team will determine the best governance decisions in coordination with the community. He says, “If you look at Tezos, COSMOS and IRISnet, you’ll see we always participate in the governance.”

Spread your votes

Newroad.Capital warns against allowing a handful of large-scale validators from dominating the network.

“What I truly believe is that in decentralization, we must try to prevent having just a few very large validators. With the P-Reps, too, there needs to be good decentralization,” says Van Der Valk. “It’s good to spread your vote to three or four P-Reps you really feel connected to.”

He adds, “If you connect with one P-Rep, you can try to connect with a few more.”