ICDevs Guiding Principles: Building Permanent Institutions for Decentralized Computing

Jump to: TL;DR · Our Mission · Operational Priorities · Governance & Voting Principles · The Larger Goal

TL;DR

ICDevs is a 501(c)3 non-profit. We exist to build and preserve critical public infrastructure for the Internet Computer and decentralized computing generally — through education, scientific research, and open-source development.

Our priorities are:

Ensure Motoko has an independent, long-term future beyond any single commercial organization.
Deliver a push-button EVM experience on the Internet Computer.
Maintain and improve core libraries, ICRC implementations, and developer tooling.
Advance AI-native development methodologies and self-writing internet infrastructure.
Develop AstroFlora as the permanence, provenance, and trust layer for asynchronous computing.
Restore long-term staking with an 88-year reward curve that rewards conviction and stewardship.
Develop sustainable, market-based node provider incentives that strengthen decentralization.
Establish public goods funding mechanisms that reward long-term ecosystem contributors.
Build community-driven security, audit, and verification infrastructure.

We believe decentralized systems require decentralized stewardship, durable institutions, and incentives aligned toward decades rather than quarters.

We pursue each of these goals through our core instruments: educational programs, sponsored research, open-source bounties, developer resources, and community organization.

Our Mission

ICDevs was never intended to be another development organization.

It was founded on a simple observation:

Critical infrastructure cannot depend on the success or failure of any single company.

The Internet Computer’s future should not be determined by venture cycles, corporate priorities, or temporary market conditions. If decentralized computing is to fulfill its promise, it must be supported by institutions whose mission is preservation, continuity, and public benefit.

As a 501(c)3 educational and scientific organization, our objective is clear:

To research, document, teach, and help maintain the infrastructure, tooling, standards, and institutions necessary for the Internet Computer to thrive for generations.

Every initiative below reflects that mandate. We do not build products for commercial gain. We fund research, develop educational resources, organize the developer community, and sponsor the open-source work that keeps the ecosystem independent.

Operational Priorities

Motoko Must Have a Permanent Home

Motoko represents one of the most important innovations to emerge from the Internet Computer ecosystem.

As Motoko development increasingly shifts toward commercial organizations, the ecosystem requires a permanent and independent steward capable of preserving the language regardless of market conditions or organizational changes.

ICDevs intends to become that steward — through education, research, and open-source sponsorship.

Our research and educational work in this area includes:

Supporting and documenting system-level canisters written in Motoko.
Researching Motoko deployments beyond Internet Computer-specific environments.
Studying and publishing runtime integration patterns for additional platforms.
Developing educational materials around reproducible build systems and certification standards.
Researching trusted module registries and verification systems.

Motoko should become more than a language for one network.

It should become a durable, well-documented, openly studied platform for decentralized computing everywhere.

The EVM on the IC — As the Gods Intended

The Internet Computer should not merely connect to Ethereum. It should offer a first-class EVM experience.

Developers should not be forced to navigate fragmented deployment paths or partial compatibility solutions.

The question remains: Why is there no push-button EVM on the Internet Computer?

There will be.

ICDevs will contribute to this goal through research, developer education, and by sponsoring the open-source work required to make a seamless EVM environment a reality — one that combines Ethereum compatibility with the unique capabilities of canister-based infrastructure.

Execution environments should be portable. Developers should choose platforms based on capability, not compatibility limitations.

Core Libraries and ICRC Infrastructure

Strong ecosystems are built on dependable foundations.

ICDevs will continue investing in research and educational resources around:

Core Motoko libraries.
ICRC standard implementations.
Developer tooling.
Modular frameworks.
Shared infrastructure.

The goal is to reduce friction, increase interoperability, and give developers the knowledge and resources to focus on building applications rather than rebuilding primitives.

Self-Writing Internet Infrastructure

Artificial intelligence is transforming software development.

Soon, a significant percentage of software deployed to the internet will be generated, modified, and maintained by autonomous systems.

ICDevs intends to research and publish methodologies, frameworks, and infrastructure patterns that allow AI systems to safely and efficiently build applications on the Internet Computer.

The Internet Computer’s architecture uniquely enables persistent AI services through:

Persistent computation.
Native hosting.
Deterministic execution.
Decentralized ownership.

The next generation of software will increasingly be written by machines.

Our responsibility — as an educational and research institution — is ensuring that the infrastructure and the developer community around it remains open, transparent, auditable, and sovereign.

Verification will become more important than authorship.

AstroFlora: The Permanence Layer for Asynchronous Computing

One of Ethereum’s greatest innovations was permanence — the ability to verify deployed code, track its history, and independently audit changes.

As software evolves toward asynchronous architectures and autonomous services, those guarantees become more difficult and more important to maintain.

AstroFlora exists to solve this problem.

AstroFlora is a WASM registry, orchestration platform, and software provenance system designed to bring permanence, auditability, and verifiable trust to the Internet Computer.

If the EVM established permanence for smart contracts, AstroFlora aims to establish permanence for canisters.

It provides verifiable guarantees regarding:

What code is running.
Who deployed it.
How it was built.
Which modules were installed.
What upgrades occurred.
Whether deployed code matches certified source artifacts.
The complete historical chain of custody for software.

AstroFlora transforms software from something that must be trusted into something that can be verified.

ICDevs supports AstroFlora as a research and educational initiative. We study, document, and help develop the standards and tooling required to make decentralized software provenance a reality — not as a commercial product, but as public goods infrastructure.

As AI-generated software becomes increasingly common, software provenance becomes as important as consensus itself.

The future internet requires more than decentralized execution. It requires decentralized trust.

Sustainable Node Provider Economics

Decentralization requires aligned incentives.

Node providers should not merely be compensated for hardware ownership. They should be rewarded for contributing to the health, resilience, and long-term success of the ecosystem.

ICDevs supports the development of market-driven node provider incentive systems through research and community education. Our work focuses on systems that:

Reward long-term participation.
Encourage geographic decentralization.
Align incentives between node providers, developers, and users.
Support ecosystem infrastructure and public goods.
Strengthen operational excellence and reliability.

The objective is not maximizing node count.

The objective is building sustainable infrastructure markets capable of lasting for generations — and equipping the community with the knowledge to evaluate and advocate for sound economic design.

Long-Term Staking and Stewardship

Short-term incentives create extraction. Long-term incentives create stewardship.

ICDevs supports restoring staking mechanisms with lock periods extending up to 88 years and reward curves that strongly favor long-term commitment.

Those willing to assume the greatest risk and longest time horizon should receive the greatest rewards.

Governance should reflect commitment. Not convenience.

We advance this position through public education and community research — publishing analysis, educating stakeholders, and providing resources to help the community understand the implications of different staking and incentive designs.

Governance & Voting Principles

ICDevs will generally support governance proposals that advance the following principles. Our positions are informed by ongoing research and our commitment to educating the community on governance design.

1. Long-Term Governance Alignment

Restore staking periods extending up to 88 years with exponential reward scaling.

Short-duration voting positions should have influence primarily over short-horizon decisions, while long-duration participants should have greater influence over long-term protocol direction.

2. Decentralized DAO Formation

Retire official NNS oversight and gatekeeping of SNS launches.

The ecosystem should encourage a diverse marketplace of DAO launch frameworks, governance systems, and organizational structures developed by the community. Innovation should emerge through competition rather than central planning.

3. Market-Based Node Provider Incentives

Actively develop and support market-driven node provider reward systems — including incentives that encourage node providers to support open-source infrastructure, public goods, developer tooling, and community-maintained software.

4. Developer-First Economic Alignment

Economic policy should prioritize developer growth and ecosystem expansion until governance market capitalization sustainably exceeds network resource consumption.

Networks grow through applications. Applications grow through developers.

5. Retroactive Public Goods Funding

Establish network-driven and market-driven mechanisms for rewarding contributors who create lasting value.

Public goods should not depend solely on grants. The ecosystem should continuously reward proven impact.

6. Community Security and Audit Infrastructure

Develop decentralized auditing systems that allow communities, experts, and institutions to collectively evaluate software safety and security.

Network trust should emerge from transparent verification processes rather than centralized approval structures.

The Larger Goal

ICDevs is not attempting to become another protocol company.

We are attempting to help establish permanent institutions for decentralized computing — through the tools available to a 501(c)3 educational and scientific non-profit:

Researching and publishing critical knowledge.
Educating developers and the broader community.
Sponsoring open-source development through bounties and grants.
Maintaining public infrastructure.
Supporting independent developers.
Funding public goods.
Strengthening decentralized governance through informed community participation.
Building systems that survive beyond any individual organization.

The future of decentralized computing will belong to those willing to think in generations instead of quarters.

That is the work ahead.

And we intend to do it.

ICDevs.org is registered as The Internet Computer Developers Education and Discovery Corporation, a 501(c)3 Texas Non-profit. Meet our Board and Advisors · Read our Bylaws