Introduction

Our story starts back in 2010, at a time where all those Facebooks, Googles and Amazons finally reached mass adoption. Indeed, all of them did a great job. To realize how a game-changing technology like the Internet could disrupt existing business models requires deep understanding of customer needs, mastering the technology itself and of course a little bit of luck. But, with the rise of internet giants also massive issues came along, which affects all of us. Data breaches, centralisation of power and an extraordinary level of addiction are just a few examples of how a wonderful technology like the internet could be dangerously abused.

We ourselves have missed the chance to be a pioneer in the internet revolution and thus contribute to a positive evolvement. For the next time, we promised, we won’t make the same mistake again. Finally, 2014 we investigated blockchain technology and realized its potential of changing the world. Long story short: we’ve launched block42 Blockchain Company and are committed to contribute to a constructive growth of blockchain technology, because…

… we love to see blockchain technology flourish,

… we love the idea of how technology will change the world for the better and empower those who contribute and participate.

… we love projects, which contribute to a positive evolution of blockchain technology,

… and therefore we love ICON!





What have we accomplished so far?

We are not only talking, we are doing!

Setup of the ICON Europe initiative

– Held first ICON Europe call to coordinate our initial effords

– Held first ICON Europe AMA on Reddit (http://bit.ly/ICONRedditAMA)

– Held first ICON Europe call to coordinate our initial effords – Held first ICON Europe AMA on Reddit (http://bit.ly/ICONRedditAMA) Developed a staking calculation tool with re-staking options: https://icxstakr.io

Initiated the development of a community governance (voting) tool for ICON Europe

– Currently in alpha testing phase: https://vote.icon-europe.community

– Currently in alpha testing phase: https://vote.icon-europe.community Successfully created our Main-P-Rep network setup and helped the ICON network to decentralize

– Check out our network setup code here: https://github.com/block42-blockchain-company/icon-prep-network-setup

– Check our node’s uptime here: https://stats.prep.b42.tech/

Follow us on Twitter to stay up-to-date about what we are doing. Also feel free to check out our Medium Blog where we publish regular progress updates!

And finally, if you are a tech guy, check out our GitHub repositories!

(last updated on 30.10.2019)





1. Proposal introduction (What)

With the rise of industrialization and communication technologies our world got tighter connected. However, we’re still suffering from boundaries which are set by national states. Technological innovations have the potential to break those boundaries and seamlessly connect the world. Therefore, we strongly believe in ICON’s vision:

(…) Through ICON, communities can go beyond and be free from traditional economic system and promote frictionless value exchanges with other communities, eventually resulting in maximum total utility of society. (Source: ICON Whitepaper)

We would like to see communities be freed and fully connected. Our contribution to reach that goal and to support the ICON ecosystem encompasses four major areas:

Community - each ecosystem is only as strong as its community!

Our ICON EUROPE initiative will strengthen the ICON community with a special focus on the European region. We’ll give all European ICONISTS a voice!

Consulting - bridging the gap between real businesses and the blockchain world!

We consult various organizations from large corporates to startups on how blockchain will change their business models. Through our work, ICON will be introduced to the corporate world!

Development - building dApps, network services and developer tools!

Right now, we are developing a dApp on ICON with an Austrian-based digital marketing company. Our next project will be creating a DAO for our ICON EUROPE initiative!

Investing - supporting the ecosystem by allocating funds to it!

Within our business unit block42 Ventures we’ve already invested € 1m+ in digital assets. We’ll continue our efforts of providing liquidity to the market and especially focus on the ICON ecosystem.

Before you continue reading our application we recommend you to watch our video or visit our website. Take your chance to learn more about block42, our team and ambition of becoming a P-Rep.

Links

Our Website: https://block42.tech/icon

Our Twitter: https://twitter.com/block42_company

Our GitHub: https://github.com/block42-blockchain-company

Our Medium Blog: https://medium.com/block42-blockchain-company

ICON Europe Website: https://icon-europe.community

ICON Europe Telegram: https://t.me/IconEurope

2. Motivation of the proposal (Why)

There are three important reasons why we apply as a P-Rep

success | awareness | decentralization

The first one is about our convincement of ICON’s success. We already invested in the ICO and are strong believers in the project since then. We’ve witnessed the commitment of ICON’s community and the amazing progress the team makes. Most importantly, ICON plays no “bullshit bingo”. Instead, real customer needs are addressed by interconnecting blockchain communities.

Our second reason for becoming a P-Rep is a matter of building awareness. As mentioned above, an ecosystem is only as strong as its community . A hyperconnected world can only be realized if a certain number of people understand, want and contribute from/to the ecosystem. ICON’s community in the Asian region is already quite strong. In our experience, Europe lags behind. Our promise as a P-Rep: we will change that!

Last but not least ICON’s approach of decentralization brought us to become a P-Rep candidate. The ICON foundation proved their interest in a long lasting success of the ecosystem by giving away power. Power from one institution towards the community. In our opinion, decentralized indirect democracy is the way to go for building a global ecosystem. ICON perfectly designed this approach by following its Delegated Proof of Contribution (DPoC) consensus algorithm.

Furthermore, real decentralization can only be reached if the voice of the community, the P-Reps, are globally distributed. The existing P-Prep candidate list shows a strong focus on Asia (19 applicants) and the US (15 applicants), which could lead to aggregation of power in one place and thus reduced network security. We would like to balance the distribution by representing Europe as a P-Rep.

3. Execution plan of the proposal (How)

As already described, we will support the ecosystem within four areas. Read further to get an idea of what we actually plan to do:

Community

As a founding member of “ICON Europe” (https://icon-europe.community) we will represent all European ICONists within the ecosystem. Our credo is to “Give European ICONists a voice”.

Specific action items to expand ICON’s ecosystem to Europe will be:

Community Onboard all European P-Reps to our ICON EUROPE initiative Organize local ICON events and meetups to connect, to spread the word and to build together Start cross-border initiatives like organizing trips to ICON community events in other countries

Content Provide documents/wikis/tutorials in common European languages (other than English), e.g.: German, French, Spanish, …

Development Develop a treasury system (DAO) for ICON EUROPE, which collects 15% (*) of P-Rep rewards. Funds are used to expand the ICON ecosystem in Europe (both community initiatives and project funding). It’s comparable to EEPs, but with a clear focus on the European region. The funding decisions are made by the DAO which consists of all participating ICON Europe P-Reps. Develop a community governance tool to collect the sentiment of Europe’s ICONists regarding certain governance topics, so P-Rep decisions are much more aligned to the community’s desires.

Funding Community Initiatives (Events, Meetups, Hackathons, …) Support for early stage project building on ICON



(*) We expect it to be 15%, but it still needs to be decided upon by the ICON Europe P-Reps

Consulting

A lot of people heard about blockchain and different frameworks (Ethereum, Bitcoin, ICON, etc.), but only a few of them really understand how this technology will revolutionize our world. We consider ourselves as a “Blockchain Company” with the goal to bridge the gap between technology and organizations/communities. In more detail, we will do the following to support the ICON ecosystem:

Hold trainings, key notes and participate in panel discussions talking about ICON.

Host ICON Meetup bringing together like-minded people and exchange ICON insights - we’ve already hosted two Meetups at our office in Graz/Austria in the last couple of months.

Introduce corporates and startups to ICON during workshops.

Development

At block42 we do not build our own blockchain framework from scratch - others can do that better than us. Our strengths are choosing the right framework for each business case and build amazing applications based on that. Our development team mainly focuses on three blockchain frameworks: Hyperledger, Ethereum and of course ICON. At the moment we’re building a dApp for a digital marketing startup. Within the corresponding smart contract IRC-2 tokens are issued. A wallet will be developed and integrated in an already existing mobile application. Once the P-Rep election is finished, we will start coding the above mentioned DAO for organizing the ICON EUROPE community in a decentralized manner.

Investing

In September 2017 we invested in the ICON ICO and since then are stuck with it. Over the last two years we consistently invested more money into ICON. In total we own over 500k ICX and are planning to expand that number in the future. Furthermore, our business unit block42 Ventures invests into the digital asset space. We’re constantly screening for new blockchain projects, which deliver meaningful solutions. We hope to add more ICON-related projects to our portfolio in the near future.

Node Deployment

We want to align the hosting location of our node with our goals and vision for ICON, therefore we will deploy our node in a data center in central europe (Frankfurt, Germany). We are going to use Digital Ocean’s dedicated high performance virtual machines which provide a great balance between memory and computational power.

We will deploy our node infrastructure as soon as possible after receiving enough votes to cover our operational costs.

Representative Rewards

As of now we calculate with an i_rep score of 50k. Based on that, the price of ICX and the expected ICX delegated to us we came up with the following numbers:

(*) based on a circulating supply of ~ 473 million ICX and network delegation rate of 30%

(**) based on an ICX price of $0.20

We expect around $2,000 per month in order to run and manage the ICON node. This means based on the i_rep, the % of total delegated ICX and the price of ICX we will use at least 10% of the rewards (based on 3% delegation rate) for node operations.

15% always go to the ICON Europe treasury (*), in order to support and fund community initiatives as well as early stage projects building on ICON.

The largest portion goes towards ICON development, especially development for ICON Europe, so we can provide tools and services which benefit the whole ICON community.

Last but not least, a small portion goes towards marketing and other expenses (of which most will be in the context of ICON Europe) and towards a safety fund to cover unforeseeable costs.

(*) ICON Europe treasury development starts in Q4 2019. We plan to send 15% of our rewards into the ICON Europe treasury, but the number is not final yet and needs to be decided upon by the ICON Europe P-Reps.

4. Expected timeline of the proposal (When)

Network Node Setup

Frankfurt, Germany

We make use of multiple Citizen Nodes behind reverse proxies in order to handle high incoming load, which are attached to the P-Rep Node. See the image (https://www.icondev.io/docs/how-to-setup-network-infrastructure) from below for a visual representation of the network setup:

P-Rep Node: Ubuntu 18.04.3 x64, 128GB RAM, 32 CPUs (Intel Xeon Platinum 8168), 400GB SSD

Citizen Node(s): to be defined

Other: SSL Encryption, Load Balancers, Reverse Proxies, …

Our Team

Our team has a diverse background. Whether it’s business operation, consulting or development - we have the relevant experience. We also have have members in our team who already successfully founded companies in the past.

Feel free to check out our LinkedIn profiles below.

LinkedIn: