Austin Fatheree, October 11 2021
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Nice to meet you.
I am extremely excited to announce ICDevs.org. ICDevs is a Texas-based 501(c)3 non-profit with the stated mission of encouraging education, scientific discovery, and community building around the Internet Computer.
TLDR: Donate Now(https://icdevs.org/donations.html) and help build a developer-focused, 501(c)3 tax-advantaged, non-profit focusing on the IC developer ecosystem.
As I started developing for the IC, I kept running into some of the same issues around a lack of tools and technologies available to generate enterprise-level applications. As I started to build some of my own I quickly realized that there is a lot of down-in-the-mud, no-fun, un-profitable work that needs to get done to get us from here to there.
This need, coupled with the unique properties of how the ICP token works led me to the conclusion that there was both space and an opportunity for a US-based non-profit that focuses on developers. A 501(c)3 organization offers unique tax advantages to US Citizens and Corporations that may be looking to find advantaged tax treatment for their recent ICP investment gains and maturity income that also supports and accelerates their long-term holdings.
But we don’t expect to just help US Citizens and the tax treatment is a feature and not the mission of this new organization.
ICDevs.org’s immediate goals will be 1) fund and finance the non-profit tools and library work that needs to get done to make the IC go like a rocket 2) create and support the creation of educational material that brings more developers to the ecosystem 3) organize the community at in-person DevCon like events, and 4) advocate for the developer community on NNS proposals that affect how software is created for the IC. Down the road we will also lean in on 1) helping manage public services and infrastructure on the IC and 2) helping mature standards for the IC.
ICDevs has committed to putting 2/3 of all funds received into an 8-year staked neuron to create a funding snowball that will serve the community for years. Of the remaining 1/3, At least 2/3 will be used for directly funding community efforts across our 6 areas of focus. We’ve committed to using only 1/3 of 1/3 for administrative costs, and we hope that the majority of that will go to support staff that will become integral parts of the broader IC community. The maturity coming off our neuron will be reinvested into the charity with the same guidelines leading to a larger and larger pool of community funds to distribute year after year.
The priorities for our community funds will be directed by the [Developer Advisor Board(http://localhost:4000/developer_advisory_committee.html) that we are putting together. This means that all the cool kids you see banging around the DFINITY Developer message board and the development discord will be helping call the shots about what gets funded and in what priority. Becoming a developer advisor will be fairly easy and we’ll be hoping to have anyone and everyone in the developer community participate. This board will ratify the funding priorities of the charity and direct the vote of our endowed neuron on NNS proposals. I hope to announce our initial set of Developer Advisor Board members soon and we’ll be using IC tech to run it all.
As I’ve visited with key community members over the last couple of months about this I’m often asked why we need this organization if we have the DFINITY foundation and the ICA. The answer is three-fold 1) Decentralization makes us stronger 2) The community need a tax advantage entity in the US especially once the corporates start paying attention 3) Other organizations focus on a broad set of stakeholders and the dev community needs a strong organization focusing solely on our needs as the builders of the software that will run on top of the IC. This organization is not a competitor to those organizations and the intent is to come alongside and support those organizations in any way we can.
How can you help? This is the part where I beg for donations to get us going! Donation info is here. Beyond that, get ready to participate with our developer advisor board. I’ll announce a process for that soon. If you want to dedicate an NNS neuron there are some hoops to jump through at the moment(so if anyone on the NNS UI team wants to add back the “Follow Neuron” topic with proper descriptions of what it does it would help us out a ton!). If you have any interesting fundraising ideas, we’d love to hear them. If you are an ICP whale and live in the US you can have your tax accountant reach out to us anonymously so we can discuss donations and tax strategy with them and they can get back to you about what options might work for you.
Thanks to my amazing board and advisors that have helped me get this far and to the community members that have given me feedback and guidance.
Finally, help us spread the word:
We have an announcement on dscvr that you can updoot: The Post
We have a twitter: https://twitter.com/icdevs_org and a tweet you can retweet: https://twitter.com/ICDevs_org/status/1447524244636721154
We have a subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/icdevs/ and a post to updoot: https://www.reddit.com/r/icdevs/comments/q5tgkj/hello_ic/