This report will explain the past, present and future structure and governance of the Internet of People (IoP) and introduce IoP Ventures, a hybrid between a venture and a company that has been established to ensure the ongoing development of IoP.
After splitting from the Fermat project, the members of the IoP community democratically agreed to join the Libertaria project. The community agreed that the Libertaria project was best placed to build the hardware nodes and peer-to-peer economy the IoP network requires. Conversely, IoP’s existing nodes, social graph and peer-to-peer communications network are a perfect fit for Libertaria’s goal of being the first project to build the full decentralization stack. Thus, it was immediately clear that a strong synergy could be formed.
Since then, IoP and Libertaria have jointly built Mercury, a fully decentralized peer-to-peer communications network and infrastructure layer that represents the first pillar of a decentralized society. Libertaria has saved valuable time, and IoP now has the tools to build its vision.
To support this collaboration and IoP’s decentralized vision, IoP Ventures was founded to place the IoP project on a healthy footing from the outset.
The Agreement
IoP Ventures acts as a venture and development company, guaranteeing the continuation and near-market orientation of the IoP software and securing and clarifying IoP’s position within the Libertaria movement.
IoP Ventures is responsible for coordinating the development and marketing for IoP and integrating it into Libertaria. However, the community has full control over the specifics of this. The community will decide for itself and will instruct IoP Ventures on what needs to be done.
IoP Ventures has two mandates: To develop the software necessary to realize the IoP vision within Libertaria and to develop a community governance system which shifts power away from the miners and transfers it to the community.
Who Are IoP Ventures?
IoP Ventures is a company set up specifically to build the IoP P2P network, work on the IoP token and community governance system and fix any problems that might occur.
IoP Ventures has around twenty developers working on the profile server, token, location-based network and content addressable network. In the coming months, work will begin in earnest on the community governance model, which was previously tested but needs some fixes to the code and system logic.
IoP Ventures works in close collaboration with the Libertaria project, so there is some development overlap. This shared expertise has proven to be a huge boost for both projects. Over the coming weeks, we will introduce you to some of the people behind both projects.
IoP Ventures has the following goals:
Development
IoP Ventures is an open source project, so anybody can contribute and make changes. The venture supports the core team of developers so they can advance the vision of IoP Ventures and keep the code secure. This is achieved by providing certain infrastructure and tools and paying developers to dedicate their time to IoP Ventures.
Empowerment
IoP Ventures will establish procedures and support tools to help the IoP community achieve the goals and projects they start. This will be done transparently and upon request of members of the community.
Education and Promotion
IoP Ventures aims to educate the public and promote the virtues of decentralization and how it is an important tool for defending privacy. This will be achieved by creating content and interacting with journalists and influencers so the message can spread to the widest possible audience.
Representation
IoP Ventures will defend the interests of the IoP community and developers in such places where an organized voice is needed and they cannot be present directly, or where a legal entity is required.
How Will IoP Ventures Be Funded?
Because it split from the earlier Fermat project, IoP and IoP Ventures have never had access to capital investment or money from a token sale. IoP is a grassroots movement. Therefore, IoP Ventures will be mining IoP tokens itself to pay full-time developers and provide bounties for community developers.
To ensure it has sufficient resources to fulfil the two mandates outlined above, the IoP community has awarded IoP Ventures 12 mining licences, the proceeds from which will be used in the following way:
Development costs (4 licenses)
Infrastructure costs (1 license)
Legal and management costs (1 license)
Marketing and communications costs (2 licenses)
Community development costs (1 license)
Miscellaneous costs, including repurchasing IoP tokens (1 license)
Community Fund (2 licenses)
To avoid conflict with the IoP Community’s goal of being a decentralized project, it is essential that IoP Ventures has no more that 20% of the total available mining licenses. This will avoid commercialization which runs contrary to the interests of the community, while ensuring sufficient initial funds to hire developers and build software to implement the new protocol layers needed for project Mercury.
The mining license pool for IoP Ventures ensures that there will always be a development fund. The vast majority of mined tokens, however, will go to the chapters who have an active mining licence. To avoid interfering with the decentralized nature of the IoP project, IoP Ventures will not participate in votes for the community mining licenses.
Roadmap
While writing this report, we finished upgrading the core to Bitcoin 0.15.0.1 This makes IoP the first and currently only altcoin to run on the latest Bitcoin core. This update also included our own fixes and enhancements, including multicore mining. Users will benefit from SegWit activation and a more robust lightning-ready network.
Over the next two months, the fixes to the profile server will be finalized, which will allow decentralized chat with multistream connection between devices without intermediates. This essential foundation for decentralized communication will be ready on schedule, before the end of this year.
A new SDK is also in development. Once this is released, app developers can start building decentralized apps on top of the Mercury infrastructure.
There will now be regular updates about IoP news and development. A detailed roadmap will be released by the end of October.