The Iconist’s Contribution Proposal is being sponsored by ICON DAO.
Which naturally raised the question, “Why on Earth would a nice P-Rep team like ICON DAO sponsor the likes of us?“
Well, at the heart of their decision lies a desire to bring the DAO spirit to projects the ICON network supports.
“Our team became a P-Rep sponsor to give the community more input in the projects that the network supports via CPS,” says ICON DAO. “Internally we operate our team as a DAO and we are trying to bring that model over into the CPS voting process by allowing our ICON community members to use our icondao.moim.co community platform to decide together what projects ICON DAO CPS P-Rep approves or rejects.”
 “We hold a monthly vote, tally up the responses and use community consensus to make a final decision. We believe it is important to give the community a voice in decisions as impactful as CPS. In the long term, that is most important for us in our future as CPS Sponsor P-Reps.”
Giving opportunities to build the network
Community Proposal System (CPS) sponsor P-Reps play a direct role in deciding which projects receive funding for development on the ICON network.
This involves time, effort and money. Sponsors research and choose a project proposal that they believe will benefit the network. They back up that belief by putting up the bond required for the proposal — currently 10% of the overall budget of a proposal.
Sponsors should also maintain communication with the projects they sponsor to ensure they come to fruition.
“Actually anyone can become a CPS Sponsor P-Rep by applying to be a CPS P-Rep and offering to support projects they believe will add value to the network,” explains ICON DAO. “In the ideal scenario, a Sponsor P-Rep is a P-Rep that is committed to putting the time and effort into researching projects, voting for projects, keeping updated on project progress and holding some accountability on the outcome or the results of these projects.“
In particular, ICON DAO believes CPS P-Rep Sponsors should be open to sponsoring projects outside of their own team. Only 10 of 31 P-Reps are currently sponsoring projects, and of those, only some are sponsoring outside projects.
“Sponsors should be willing to listen and give the opportunity to other teams vying to develop ICON products that have potential but not the immediate monetary means to put up their bond to apply for CPS,” says ICON DAO. “This is imperative if we are to grow our ecosystem by making efficient use of CPS.“
“That is the reason our ICON DAO team has made it one of our P-Rep priorities to actively seek, reach out, welcome and sponsor proposals from any talented parties that we see in the community or that have reached out to us,” they add. “Our team prioritizes being active participants on the CPS to ensure a constant flow of development and marketing initiatives into the ICON ecosystem and we hope other Sponsors will do the same.”Â
Putting money where your faith is
As noted earlier, CPS Sponsor P-Reps must put up a sponsored bond of 10% of an approved proposal budget. In the case of The Iconist’s proposal, that means ICON DAO’s bond is 5,902 ICX.
Held for the entirety of the project and returned to the sponsor after the project is completed, the bond gives sponsors a way to provide their commitment to a project — to put their crypto where their mouth is, so to speak.
According to ICON DAO, it’s also a way to prevent funny business.
“By putting the responsibility on the Sponsor P-Rep to provide the bond, abuse of the CPS system by fraud or other malicious acts can be discouraged as the Sponsor must carefully consider their choice in what projects they put forth into the system,” says ICON DAO. “This is why the importance of research and communication of expectations between Sponsor P-Reps, project developers and the ICON community is a significant part of the CPS process.“
To incentivize meritorious behavior, sponsors receive financial perks, too. Sponsors earn a return on investment for having staked that bond and even a 2% reward from the project budget for having sponsored a successful project.
More participation would be nice
According to ICON DAO, the P-Rep sponsorship process is fairly straightforward. The only requirement is to be a P-Rep, that is to say, running a P-Rep node on the ICON network. Just head over to the cps.community website and use your registered P-Rep wallet address to sign in and select the option to be a sponsor.
Despite the ease of the process, however, participation has been lacking, says ICON DAO.
“Despite this seamless process of becoming a Sponsor P-Rep and making a difference in the ICON network, there are still only 31 P-Reps out of over 140 ICON P-Reps participating in CPS,” says ICON DAO. “We would like to encourage others to join and actively participate, to contribute towards future development of the ICON network.”
ABOUT ICON DAO
ICON DAO is a global P-Rep team composed of developers and blockchain specialists. As an ecosystem partner and builder on ICON blockchain, ICON DAO has contributed to several notable projects for the network. These projects include DeFi solutions BalancedDAO and Optimus, ICON’s future chain interconnecting protocol BTP, community platform icondao.moim.co and also educational initiatives such as the introduction of ‘Blockchain programming on ICON Network’ courses at Vietnam National University. With these projects under ICON DAO’s belt and a firm commitment to build even more, ICON DAO aims to be a leading development team for ICON’s expanding decentralized network.
