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ICON Monthly Grant Recap — March 2020

TL;DR

"We are very pleased to announce a new initiative to provide monthly grant updates to keep the community informed of the initiatives ICON Foundation is funding with its Representative rewards."

March 27, 2020

Greetings ICONists,

We are very pleased to announce a new initiative to provide monthly grant updates to keep the community informed of the initiatives ICON Foundation is funding with its Representative rewards. As you know, the Foundation is committed to reinvesting 100% of its Representative rewards into the ecosystem. And we believe this initiative will provide better transparency into these efforts while also highlighting important ecosystem developments.

As part of this new update, each month, we’ll take a closer look at the Foundation approved grants, their respective progress against expectations, and updates to periodic reporting status.

Today, we’ll provide a recap of all the approved grants year to date. We also revisit the assessment framework used to review applications and provide an overview of the review process from the initial application to the final payment. In later posts, we’ll focus primarily on any new developments or activity relative to the prior month. This is the first iteration of this initiative and we plan to make improvements over time.

Assessment Framework

When reviewing the grant applications, the approval committee focuses primarily on three categories. These categories are outlined below:

Proposal Overview:

Does this benefit the ICON Network and/or community?
Does the proposal provide enough information?
Are there any risks for the ICON community with this proposal?
Is there an overlap between the proposal and other initiatives?

Feasibility:

Is the roadmap reasonable?
Do the team members have a relevant background?

Public Good and Transparency:

Does the project fairly justify its budget?
Are the deliverables and milestones verifiable and tangible?

Review Process

The grant review committee convenes each Wednesday to discuss proposals based on the above assessment criteria. From there, the operating procedure is as follows:

A 2 week assessment period by committee members
An initial review result
A final review result
Then if approved, periodic reporting and payment

Below is a flow chart describing the process in greater detail.

ICON Community Grant Program Operating Procedure## Monthly Update

As noted above, we will provide a recap of the grants funded year to date. In the months ahead, we’ll only focus on changes from the prior month.

January 2020

In January, we reviewed a total of 9 grant applications and approved 2; an approval rate of 22%. Of the approved grants, one was developer-focused and the other focused on infrastructure.

Approvals:

Education: devblockchain.tech (Sharpn)
Infrastructure: MyICONwallet (Reliant Node)

Devblockchain.tech Development update #1:

Devblockchain.tech is a platform that aims to provide a 3-part learning experience on SCORE (Smart Contract on Reliable Environment):

Discover: It would be useless to learn how to develop Smart Contracts without knowing the fundamentals of Blockchain technologies, their possible applications and the philosophy of this ecosystem. This short part will aim at educating users about these principles.
Learn: This section is the main part of the platform. It will allow users to learn interactively the development of SCORE in several chapters.
Build: To conclude, Sharpn will present all the professional opportunities available for ICON Ecosystem builders. Sharpn will present examples of teams and programs such as EEP or DPB.

Sharpn is aiming for a release on March 31st and will have 2–3 weeks dedicated to QA and background work on the Earn Campaign. ‘Sharpn Earn’ rewards selected users who complete the first course with a $15 ICX reward.

The Foundation is providing 245,000 ICX in 3 monthly installments based on the Periodic Report.

2020/01/20–81,600 ICX (Paid)
2020/02/13–81,700 ICX (Paid)
2020/03/31–81,700 ICX

MyICONwallet development update #1 and #2

MyICONwallet is creating a community-based web and mobile wallet that is backward compatible with ICONex. Below is the overview of what Reliant Node has built today and what was approved with their grant funding.

Based on the latest update, Reliant Node has completed 74% of the estimated work effort and has completed all the expected items from their first progress report. Beta testing will start in April and Reliant Node has a list of 20+ beta testers ready to go.

The Foundation is providing 250,000 ICX in 4 monthly installments based on the Periodic Report.

2020/01/20–62,500 ICX (Paid)
2020/02/13–62,500 ICX (Paid)
2020/03/14–62,500 ICX (Paid)
2020/04/30–62,500 ICX

February 2020

We reviewed 13 grant requests in February and approved 4; an approval rate of 30%. 2 of the approvals were for ICON to be included on DApp aggregator sites, 1 went to a content creator, and the other for community management.

Approvals:

Service**:** Dapp.com integration
Service**:** DappReview integration
Community**:** Korean community management
Education**:** ICX Comics — visual tutorials of ICON Blockchain

Dapp.com integration

The following have been implemented through integration:

ICON Column on Homepage and Ranking Page with DApp stats (ex: 24hr users, 7day users, transactions, dapp.com score, etc)
Dapp Page for each ICON DApp with profile, stats display, and user review function
ICON Column on Dapp Market Overview Page to provide comparisons with other leading blockchains by different data filters
Dapp Data Telegram Bot to report real-time ICON DApp stats in any group chat

The Foundation is providing $20,000 in 4 installments based on the Periodic Report. The amount of ICX will be determined and paid according to the price on the day of payment.

2020/02/25 — $5,000 (Paid)
2020/03/27 — $5,000
2020/04/26 — $5,000
2020/05/26 — $5,000

DappReview integration

The following have been implemented through integration:

ICON on-chain data integration, analytics computing scripts and pipeline, data cleaning and processing
Exclusive ICON section on DappReview, listing all the ICON DApps and ranking
Dapp page with detailed analytics for each ICON Dapps
DeFi projects running on ICON will be listed and tracked on the DeFi section

The Foundation is providing $20,000 in 1 monthly installment based on the Periodic Report. The amount of ICX will be determined and paid according to the price at 02:00 AM (UTC) on the day of payment.

2020/04/26 02:00 AM (UTC) — $20,000

Korean community management

As part of the approval, community member SimSulKim and team will manage the following Korean communities:

www.ICONkr.com
KakaoTalk
Korean Telegram Group
CoinPan
Naver Blog

In addition to community management, the team will translate English materials for our Korean media channels. As part of the approval, the Foundation set two KPIs:

At least one meetup per month at the ICON office
Growth of page views of the website, targeting 15% growth month to month

The team must submit the Periodic Report by the timeframes below (UTC):

2020/03/26
2020/04/25
2020/05/25

The Foundation is providing $6,000 in 4 installments based on the Periodic Report. The amount of ICX will be determined and paid according to the price on the day of payment.

2020/02/25 — $1,500 (Paid)
2020/03/27 — $1,500
2020/04/26 — $1,500
2020/05/26 — $1,500

ICX Comics

ICX Comics creates comics that translate and explain the ICON project’s technical documentation, developments, news, and stories. In total, the team will create 8 comics as part of the approved grant.

Below is an update on their progress:

As part of the grant approval, the team must submit the Periodic Report by the timeframes below (UTC):

2020/03/26
2020/04/25
2020/05/25

The Foundation is providing $3,000 in 4 installments based on the Periodic Report. The amount of ICX will be determined and paid according to the price on the day of payment.

2020/02/25 — $750 (Paid)
2020/03/27 — $750
2020/04/26 — $750
2020/05/26 — $750

The Foundation will be funding $3,000 of the total amount requested (of $5,800). Ubik Capital, a Main P-Rep, will be funding the remaining amount.

March 2020

We have approved 2 grants in March; 1 for infrastructure and the other for a new DApp. However, we expect to approve more in the coming days and provide more detail in next month’s update.

Approvals thus far:

Infrastructure**:** Fortmatic integration
DApp**:** FutureICX Price Prediction Trading Application

Fortmatic + ICON Support

Fortmatic will support ICON with a Fortmatic Whitelabel SDK — simplifying key management for applications built on top of ICON and attracting more mainstream developers and users. With this, there will be no need for browser extensions, seed phrases, or keystore files when interacting with our Web3 apps.

As part of the approval, Fortmatic must submit a Periodic Report by the timeframes below (UTC):

2020/05/25 02:00 AM (UTC)

The Foundation is providing $50,000 in 6 monthly installments based on the Periodic Report. The amount of ICX will be determined and paid according to the price at 02:00 AM (UTC) on the day of payment.

2020/03/27 02:00 AM (UTC) — $20,000
2020/04/26 02:00 AM (UTC) — $5,000
2020/05/26 02:00 AM (UTC) — $5,000
2020/06/25 02:00 AM (UTC) — $5,000
2020/07/25 02:00 AM (UTC) — $5,000
2020/08/24 02:00 AM (UTC) — $5,000
2020/09/23 02:00 AM (UTC) — $5,000

FutureICX Trading App

FutureICX is a trading-related price prediction game where the players can wager on prices for a particular asset at a specific time. Players’ wagers are pooled together, and the most accurate predictions are rewarded according to a multi-tiered reward structure. There will be 3 major milestones for this project including the realization of all UX/UI mock-ups and front-end integration of the platform, the beta of the platform, social functions, SCORE prototype on Testnet, and the launch of the DApp on the Mainnet.

The team must submit the Periodic Report by the timeframes below (UTC):

2020/04/25 02:00 AM (UTC)
2020/05/25 02:00 AM (UTC)
2020/06/24 02:00 AM (UTC)

The Foundation is providing $16,000 in 3 monthly installments based on the Periodic Report. The amount of ICX will be determined and paid according to the price at 02:00 AM (UTC) on the day of payment.

2020/04/26 02:00 AM (UTC) — $5,333
2020/05/26 02:00 AM (UTC) — $5,333
2020/06/25 02:00 AM (UTC) — $5,334

The Foundation will be funding $16,000 of the total amount requested (of $26,100). ICONation, a Main P-Rep, will be funding the remaining amount.

Thank you,

Hyperconnect the World

ICON Foundation

Homepage : https://icon.foundation

Medium (ENG) : https://medium.com/helloiconworld

Brunch (KOR) : https://brunch.co.kr/@helloiconworld

KakaoTalk (KOR) : https://open.kakao.com/o/gMAFhdS

Telegram (ENG) : https://t.me/hello_iconworld

Telegram (KOR) : https://t.me/iconkorea

Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/helloicon/

Reddit : https://www.reddit.com/r/helloicon/