A bit earlier than two months ago, on the 19th of May 2019, we have sent our application as a P-Rep candidate for the ICON Network. A detailed explanation of our application can be found here: https://icon.community/iconsensus/candidates/70/
We are a young, extremely motivated and experienced team, based in Zug, Switzerland with both technical and business/ marketing background.
Ilinca Alexiuc is an experienced Business Growth Manager in both B2B and B2C markets. Based in Germany, she developed her career starting as a marketing assistant, marketing coordinator and then marketing manager. She entered the blockchain space in early 2017, after which she shifted her career path towards business growth in the blockchain and cybersecurity space, with a focus on the asian market.
Ionut Scirlet is a Software Solution Architect and he has been working in the IT field since the beginning of his career. He showed his enthusiasm for the IT space from a young age by building his own PCs and writing his own applications in C, after which he had a nice transition towards much more complex topics like algorithm development, system integration, SAP, IoT and blockchain. He has experience working as a Software Developer and Architect for many big companies in Romania, Germany and Switzerland like Microsoft, cbs Corporate Business Solutions, tesa SE, SMA Solar Technology and Swiss Post. Currently, he is actively working on integration topics, API management and blockchain in both categories, open, permissionless and in enterprise context, where other challenges appear.
We are both very motivated to add a substantial contribution to the whole decentralized blockchain space and we think that adding extra value for the community is the way to go. At the same time, we think ICON and the ICON community are very representative not only for the Korean blockchain market, but for the Asian market as well, which is very well known world-wide for its enthusiasm and high adoption of innovative technologies. Therefore, we are proud to contribute with portals, tools, content, information, meetups and we hope this will help increase the already strong ICON community, while offering a better visibility of the whole ICON Ecosystem to the blockchain world.
As you will probably notice in our application, we came with a clear plan and strategy from the beginning and we didn’t promote general promises. Those are usually signs that there is no clear strategy or vision from the team, and it is probably just another try in the big space of blockchain.
Being in this ecosystem since 2014, we think one of the core components lacking in the open blockchain space is the act of CREATION . As a user, you see and hear many opinions from the sidelines and a lot of unclear text/ biased comparisons or some other general messages regarding community involvement.
Much earlier to these elections we already delivered some of the important things that we initially stated in our candidacy and we have already been active on multiple levels:
- We created the ICON Ecosystem portal — the entry point into the ICON Network for both new users and experienced developers. Besides having something similar to a DApp and Tools store, users also find future ICOs and IEOs on ICON and links towards known ICON news agencies. The development of this portal took quite a lot of time and resources starting from designing it, establishing strategies and adding the extra value. Other steps were developing the portal, including buying the domains and hosting. As you can probably notice, it is not just a website where you have only text as content. At your disposal there are also submit forms, where every community member can add tools or DApps, belonging to them or not. This form is linked to the backend and every submission is verified by our team so that we can make sure we don’t have any malicious tools or DApps on the platform. Adding to this, our team also benefits from cybersecurity experience in the blockchain space, and we are well aware of the weaknesses and threats the current blockchain ecosystem has. The whole creation of the ICON Ecosystem portal has eaten a lot of resources both financially and time wise.
- We created the #ICONweekly campaign , which already brings weekly updates from the ICON Ecosystem so that everyone has a comprehensive summary of all the events that happened within the ICON Network.
- We didn’t only run a node on Testnet since the beginning of phase 1 but we were pro-active in the blockchain validator architecture as well as supporting other P-REPs with node related issues and were in discussions with the ICON team regarding certain architectural design topics. This is often something that gets neglected but without having a strong, stable and secure network, we wouldn’t have anything. We already published an article regarding this topic: https://medium.com/@chainode.capital/the-importance-of-running-a-validator-in-blockchain-networks-since-their-inception-8d77c18691d9
All the above mentioned things we created and worked on started much, much earlier than the elections, so from our point of view we really proved that we are motivated to do this and to contribute to the ICON Network and Ecosystem. We didn’t wait for the elections and we started to invest our own money for the two nodes running successfully on ICON Testnet, for the domain, hosting and many collateral things, including a lot of time for creating the ICON Ecosystem portal and the #ICONweekly campaign. Both topics have and will continue to have an active status for how long we will be able to sustain them and we hope you, the ICON community, will help us on this journey.
We are available on all ICON related Telegram channels and will always be pro-active and contribute to discussions that are relevant and important for the ICON community and at the same time we will make sure that the act of CREATION won’t be sacrificed, as we think that a good balance between community interaction and adding extra value is the way to go.
Besides the topics previously mentioned, we are also debating a lot of ideas concerning what can make the ICON Ecosystem more valuable and useful for the community as the ICON Network starts to expand even more, but we will communicate or release them at a proper time. One strategy we think would add extremely good value to the whole ICON Ecosystem, not the portal but the idea behind it, would imply the collaboration and involvement as teamwork of as many P-REPs as possible in order to support different initiatives like Trezor hardware wallet integration, being listed on different exchanges or motivated projects wanting to build on ICON. We are really curious and excited to hear what the other P-REPs think about it.
Regarding the individual contribution, we will continue to first CREATE and then spread the word about it.
Nevertheless, we will organize meetups with focus on ICON in the heart of blockchain, Zug — Cryptovalley, where we hope to meet you, the ICONist .
In order for you to have an overview over the things we will do in the future, you can find a list below:
- Continuously add content, tools, DApps, ICOs/IEOs on ICON Ecosystem portal and continue to develop it/ add new features;
- #ICONweekly campaign;
- Create useful tools for the ICONist;
- Organize meetups with focus on ICON;
- Actively secure and improve the ICON Network;
- Actively participate in governance topics;
- Support innovative ideas, use cases, DApp and tool development;
- Partner with other P-Reps to launch community-driven events or support different initiatives like exchange listings or hardware wallet integration.
Regarding our funds, we are going to be transparent about the way we use them and make sure the ICON Ecosystem will benefit from having us as one of the 22 elected P-REPs. We are also thinking about involving the community in the decision making, as for how the remaining funds should be used.
We have only one last thing we would like to add for the moment: in general, we disagree with creating artificial incentives to be voted. This isn’t a good direction a DPoS based blockchain should head to and we think this is a great governance topic to be discussed on the panels or together with all P-REPs candidates.
As it is very easy to be loud on all the social channels these days, we want to emphasize on prioritizing the quality and long term contribution to the ICON Network. Bringing substance behind loudness will ensure that the results are consistent in the long run.
We encourage you all to take a few moments of your time and follow our journey, because it will be a long one: https://icon.community/iconsensus/candidates/70/
You can reach out to us anytime on all ICON related Telegram channels, as well as over our own social handles:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChainodeCapital
Telegram: https://t.me/ChainodeCapital
E-mail: chainode.capital@gmail.com
For feedback, questions or suggestions please don’t hesitate to get in contact with us.