ICPSquad Weekly: Enter the Crypto Whirlwind

Despite ongoing bear market conditions, exciting developments are happening across the ICP ecosystem.

Despite ongoing bear market conditions, exciting developments are happening across the ICP ecosystem. I'm going to depart from the usual format to focus more on events in the physical world and new initiatives from several notable persons in the Internet Computer Community. Then, I'll overview a few recent NNS proposals, two of which will be a substantial boon to canister development.

There is a lot of ground to cover this week, so let's get started!

DFINITY ICP Meetups

On October 20, 2022, many individuals who have played a big role in the early days of the Internet Computer met up in LA. The gathering was a huge success and represents one event in an open-ended series of social networking opportunities.

Want to join the fun but don't live in the United States? We've got great news for our readers in the United Kingdom. Your turn is next! Registration for the London DFINITY ICP Party is open until November 9. Go on and snag an available spot!

Dfinity at Julius Baer

Dominic Williams, Riccardo Coli (DFINITY's Chief of Staff), and several others launched some excellent discussions about smart contracts and implications regarding ownership and exchange of digital assets. Julius Baer, an international reference for wealth management, hosted the event. ICP continues to make quiet but steady progress in attracting additional investors' attention.

Internet Computer Services Podcast

I mentioned the promising Internet Computer Services project in last week's newsletter. If you haven't been following this project's podcast, now's the time to start. The latest episode is an interview with Ritvick Paliwal, the founder of Internet Computer Services (ICS). You won't want to miss it!

ICP Ecosystem Growth Report

Cycles are being burned at increasing rates as ICP Dapp development accelerates. "In 2022 alone," Kyle Langham writes, "the Internet Computer has experienced +400% annualized growth of cycles being burned."

Three Recent NNS Proposals

Stable Memory Boost for Cannisters

Proposal 86279 passed. As a consequence, canisters' stable memory will be increased from 8 GB to 32 GB. This significant boon to developers is expected to rollout to the mainnet within the week.

Motion to introduce canister timers

According to the NNS text, "The goal of this proposal is to provide a way to run any number of periodic tasks with configurable frequency using a high-level timer library implemented in Motoko and Rust." The need for variable timers to facilitate software development on canisters has been felt for quite sometime.

ICPStakingNFT

The idea behind proposal 88287 is admittedly intriguing: users can purchase an NFT representing a share in a collectively staked neuron, thereby gaining SNS tokens without having to lock substantial amounts of ICP in a neuron for 8 years.  

"ICPstakingNFT is the receipt of ownership for ICP staked in Network Nervous System (NNS) Community Fund with 8 years dissolve delay. All ICP collected are staked in NNS Neuron 3254539716254637392. Utility of NFT is the option to transfer ownership for ICP staked, with NO locking period."

ICDevs.org is in favor, as are several other influential neurons, but overall, this idea may be too new for comfort. The proposal looks unlikely to pass.

Working Toward Ecosystem Solutions

Want to influence the direction of the Internet Computer? Have a suggestion? A project idea? Join the discussion with Bob Bodily on Twitter.