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5.6 Next steps

Advanced
Tutorial

Congratulations! You've completed the ICP developer ladder series, and are now an ICP astronaut!

You might be asking, "What next? Where do I go from here?"

In this final tutorial, you'll learn about some of the different resources to help guide you further in your personal developer ladder.

Developer grants​

Now that you have all the tools and skills to develop dapps on ICP, do you have an idea for a project that you'd like to develop? Would this project help to catalyze the growth of ICP's ecosystem by providing a dapp that's accessible and intriguing to users?

The ICP's Developer Grants program is designed to help support developers and development teams in their efforts to contribute meaningful projects to ICP's ecosystem by providing a granted amount of funding to the project's development team. Some focus areas for the grant program include:

  • Canister Development Kits (CDKs) and Agents.

  • Developer Tooling such as IDEs, logging libraries, and debugging tools.

  • Infrastructure, such as asset bridges.

  • Integrations and APIs, such as chat, email, or map services.

  • Applications and open Internet services.

You can learn more about the Developer Grant program, and you can read the guidelines for submitting a developer grant.

Want some inspiration? Check out some of the current projects running in the ICP ecosystem.

Developer bounties​

Developer bounties are tasks that have well-defined acceptance criteria, that can be completed by developers. If a developer submits a bounty that is accepted by DFINITY, the developer is paid the bounty's reward amount.

There are several different types of bounties, such as:

  • Traditional: One applicant works on the bounty task.

  • Multiple: Multiple applicants work on the bounty task.

  • Cooperative: Multiple applicants submit work on the bounty task and share the reward amount.

  • Contest: Multiple applicants submit work, but only one applicant is chosen as the winner and receives the reward amount.

Hackathons​

Hackathons are another resource that can be used to help guide you further. Hackathons traditionally have different goals or 'tracks' that help inspire developers to envision a project that meets a specific goal, then encourages them to develop and submit that project in return for a chance to win the hackathon's prize.

Some recent hackathon tracks have included:

  • Building a next-generation dapp that leverages the unique feature of ICP.

  • Building a layer-2 Bitcoin dapp.

  • Building a decentralized gaming dapp.

You can learn more about the current ICP hackathons, possible prize tiers, and how to register.

ICP.Hubs​

ICP.Hubs are local ICP communities that are taking shape all across the globe in several different regions. ICP.Hubs provide the ability for developers, educators, enthusiasts, experts, and entrepreneurs to come together in person to collaborate, develop, and educate others on all things Internet Computer.

Want to find an ICP.Hub near you? Check out the list of current hubs.

Contributing to ICP​

Several of ICP's repositories are open-source, and external contributions are encouraged. Some examples of repositories that you can contribute to include:

Developer resources​