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ICON Technical Community Update – Q1 2023

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January 1, 2023

TL;DR

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Full Story

Purpose

To support the growing technical community on ICON, we are publishing “ICON Technical Community Reports” on a quarterly basis. These reports are designed to inform ICON’s technical community about the ideological focus, milestones, specific goals, and planned timelines for a given time period. In this first update, we will discuss milestones and goals for Q1 2023. Let’s dive in!

Specs

Dates

January 1, 2023 - March 31, 2023

Focus

During this time period, our main focus will be on expanding collaboration patterns established in the community through the Sustainability User Group.

Prior milestones

  • Ongoing: Create technical tutorials page on https://icon.community site

  • Ongoing: Reorganize Blockchain Transmission Protocol (BTP) specifications

  • Ongoing: Organize current state of ICON project

    • Completed: Sub-goal — Create “SIG Contributor Experience”

    • Ongoing: Sub-goal — Create “SIG Documentations”

    • Not Started: Sub-goal — Create “SIG Communications”

    • Ongoing: Sub-goal — Create “SIG Core Blockchain”

    • Ongoing: Sub-goal — Create “SIG Execution Environment”

    • Completed, new: Sub-goal — Create “UG Sustainability”

Highlights

  • Partner with HYVE (web3 jobs platform)

  • Partner tr3butor (web3 jobs platform) releases Telegram bot

Goals

Create technical tutorials and templates

This endeavor is taking a multi-headed approach. The first part is the tutorials section and associated tutorials content being developed for the icon.community site. This development can be tracked in the icon.community Github repository. The second part is associated with the ICON Foundation and CPS Requests for Proposal (RFP). This RFP list is being built out to include tutorial and template requests. The template requests are recommended to ICONDAO / Devera Hackathon and internship participants and are partnerships with the Sudoblock and WeFuzz / Drogon development groups

Reorganize BTP specifications

We have determined a structure for a more well-defined, comprehensive set of specifications for BTP. We are working with the primary BTP developers, ICONLOOP, in order to create this specification set. As with last time, this is being integrated into the now-operational Interoperability Special Interest Group and is being tracked in the BTP and IIPs projects

Integrate CPS development with UG Sustainability

Note that this will take time. There are of course considerations about the security and robustness of the CPS services related to greater community integration in CPS management. Please provide feedback, but at this time we believe that integrating CPS developments into the Sustainability User Group is the best path forward for effective collaborations. That being said…

CPS, or Contribution Proposal System, is a reliable funding source based on a funding pool accumulated from native ICX token inflation. The determinations of the amount of inflation that goes to the CPS funding pool is still determined by Network Validators and not by this group

Efforts are being made to further decentralize the process that guides the decisions made with respect to the development roadmap. Code developments will continue to largely be made by Venture23 (fka iBriz). This is being integrated into the now-operational Sustainability User Group and is being tracked via that group and the CPS project. You can also participate in community discussions about this on the ICON Community Forum, on Twitter, or on Discord

Increase knowledge of ICON-Java Execution Environment

The ICON-Java Execution Environment, one of the SCORE (Smart Contracts on Reliable Environments) environments, is one of the two most common ways that technical community members interact with the ICON Network, the other of which being the RPC APIs. Efforts are being made to increase knowledge about this environment, including common usage patterns, secure development guidelines, and specifications about the execution environment itself. This is expected to be facilitated through a new Special Interest Group called SIG Execution Environment

Increase knowledge of ICON Consensus Environment

Similarly, the ICON Consensus Environment, commonly accessed and used via the goloop project, is very important to the ICON technical community. Efforts are being made to increase knowledge about this environment as well, including specifications of the ICON-Tendermint protocol adaptation, networking methods, accounts systems, and interoperability-specific mechanisms. This is expected to be facilitated through a new Special Interest Group called SIG Core Blockchain

Organize in-persion meetups

Perhaps the best way to promote all of the above endeavors is to be promote a more connected, motivated, and sustainable community. We are supporting and facilitating in-person meetups with local communities around the world. We saw some success by partnering with the W3N conference in Estonia on a medium scale.

If you have a community interested in web3, no matter how small, please let us know so that we can work together to best accomplish your personal goals as well as those of the overall community