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Our Guiding Principles: Building Permanent Institutions for Decentralized Computing

Austin Fatheree June 07, 2026

ICDevs Has Published Its Guiding Principles

We’ve published our platform document.

Read the full ICDevs Guiding Principles →

It covers where we stand and where we’re going across nine operational areas:

  1. Builder retention — retroactive public goods funding that rewards proven, lasting impact
  2. Motoko’s long-term future — independent of any single commercial organization
  3. Core libraries, ICRC implementations, and developer tooling
  4. AstroFlora — permanence, provenance, and trust for asynchronous computing
  5. Community-driven security and audit infrastructure
  6. AI-native development and self-writing internet infrastructure
  7. Push-button EVM on the Internet Computer
  8. Market-based node provider economics
  9. 88-year staking and reward curves that favor real stewardship

And six governance principles we’ll use to guide our NNS voting.

Why Now

ICDevs has always had a clear identity: we are a 501(c)3 educational and scientific non-profit, fully independent from the DFINITY Foundation. Our work has always been oriented toward public benefit — bounties, research, tooling, developer education.

But the ecosystem is at an inflection point.

AI is changing who writes software. Governance is being tested. Commercial organizations are making decisions that affect infrastructure the whole ecosystem depends on. The Internet Computer needs institutions whose mission isn’t tied to a product roadmap or a fund cycle.

That’s what this document is about.

Every priority in these guiding principles is something we intend to pursue through the tools available to us as an educational and research organization: publishing knowledge, sponsoring open-source development, educating developers, organizing the community, and advocating for sound long-term governance.

What It Means Practically

We are not pivoting. Everything ICDevs has done — bounties, ICRC research, Motoko libraries, tooling grants, developer resources — is exactly what we will continue to do.

What changes is the frame.

We now have a clear public statement of what we’re optimizing for and why. That makes it easier for developers, donors, node providers, and governance participants to evaluate whether ICDevs is worth supporting — and what to expect from us.

Read our guiding principles, share them, and let us know what you think — open an issue or pull request against any principle at github.com/icdevsorg/guiding-principals, or reach us on X and Bluesky.

ICDevs Guiding Principles: Building Permanent Institutions for Decentralized Computing →