DFINITY Foundation

Synapse.vote (original)

ICDevs.org

CryptoIsGood

Anvil

ICPL.app

ysyms

The Accumulators’ Neuron

RawTech Venture

Paul Young

ICPMANUAL

8yeargangDAO

Isaac Valadez

Krzysztof Żelazko

Nicolas.ic

Smaug’s Neuron for Retail Investors

ICLight.io

Synapse.vote (NEW)

Taggr Network

CodeGov

Sonic AMM

Rakeoff.io

OpenChat

ELNA AI

GEEKFACTORY

ICP Hub México

ICP Hub Poland

Jerry Banfield

WaterNeuron

ICP Hub Bulgaria

Gold DAO

NeuronPool

LORIMER ♾️ 🐶

B3Pay

ZenithCode

Aviate Labs

D-QUORUM

Yuku AI

CO.DELTA △

DragginCorp

Gwojda

Thyassa

🌮 TACO DAO Neuron

Cosmicrafts

Arthur’s Neuron (used to be cycle_dao)

Inactive (Request Removal) - The Fools' Court

$STACK

Always Rejects

John Wiegley

# Background 
As part of an ongoing effort to incentivise neurons to verify proposals in depth, voting neuron grants will be provided for candidates selected by the community. Overall, 2 candidates are selected for each of 7 proposal topics. **This is one of multiple motion proposals submitted today to select these candidates**: 

- one NNS motion proposal is submitted for each candidate and topic for which the candidate applied  

- for each proposal, the result is computed as the number of YES minus the number of no votes (#YES-#NO). Proposals that are not adopted are not considered.

- for each topic, the 2 candidates with the highest results get the grants 

You can read more about the motivation and the process [here](https://forum.dfinity.org/t/voting-neuron-grants-season-2). 

# Proposal Topic 
IC OS Version Election, Protocol Canister Management

# Is this a team grant application? 
yes

# [Application Text](https://forum.dfinity.org/t/voting-neuron-grants-season-2/53020/34?u=cryptoschindler)


## Voting Neuron Grant Application - Zenith Code

Hi Everyone - I am Manvick, founder of Zenith Code LLC, and my team is excited to apply for the “IC OS Version Election” and “Protocol Canister Management” grant. We have been actively involved in the IC community since mid 2022. We have in-depth knowledge of creating dapps on ICP including but not limited to writing smart contracts in Motoko and architecting/designing multi canister apps on ICP. We are a node provider on the ICP network and review IC OS version election proposals. We also have a flagship leetcode style product dedicated for learning ICP and Motoko for helping students and new software engineers easily learn Internet Computer.

Our ICP Learning Product

https://zenithcode.ai/

Node Provider: https://dashboard.internetcomputer.org/provider/pa5mu-yxsey-b4yrk-bodka-dhjnm-a3nx4-w2grw-3b766-ddr6e-nupu4-pqe

### Topics

1. IC OS Version Election
2. Protocol Canister Management

### Team Grant

We are a team of 6 software engineers

### Reviewers

* Manvick
  * Software Engineer by background with over 8+ years of experience in large scale Distributed systems and applications with 5+ years of experience in blockchain technologies.
  * Actively worked on Nutanix distributed software defined storage and I was responsible for designing and developing the service which provided deduplication, data resilience, and fault tolerance in the node cluster.
  * Education: Master’s in Computer Science from Texas State University, USA
  * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/manvick-paliwal-67441676/
* Yuvika Khardenavis
  * Software Engineer, University of Waterloo graduate
  * 4+ years of experience in Firmware and OS level design and development.
  * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ykharden/
* Ipsita Parida
  * 7+ years of experience in designing and implementing distributed systems including cryptography while at RSA, and AI/ML based projects…
  * Education: Master’s in System design engineering from University of Waterloo, Canada
  * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ipsitaparida/
  * Github: [ipsitaparida (ipsitaparida) / Repositories · GitHub](https://github.com/ipsitaparida?tab=repositories)
* Harsh Patni (Ex Microsoft Software Engineer)
  * 8+ years of experience in software engineering
  * Education: Master’s in Computer Science from Texas State University, USA
  * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hpatni/
* Vishal Kumar
  * 8+ years of experience leading software development teams in agile frameworks over various technology stacks.
  * Education: Master’s in Computer Science from Texas State University, USA
  * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vishalkumarmg/
* Yamini K
  * 5+ years of hands-on experience in full stack software development in technologies like ReactJS, GraphQL.
  * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yaminichowdary/

### Relevant Experience and Technical Knowledge

* Operating nodes for years on ICP (Zenith Code LLC).
* Relevant experience in installing IC OS and monitoring nodes.
* Strong understanding of the ICP infrastructure layer.
* As a development shop in the ecosystem, we have assisted various projects in setting up their proof of concept and MVP.
* Actively contributed to writing dapps in Motoko for in-house purposes.
* Over 7 years of experience in web3 and large-scale distributed systems.
* ICP enthusiast with a deep understanding of its core technology and architecture.
* Experience in designing large-scale distributed systems for storing user data across multiple nodes in RF-2 and RF-3 production clusters.
* Worked on the design and development of NDFS (Nutanix Distributed File Storage), similar to Google File System and blockchain data storage.
* Our flagship Internet Computer/Motoko learning platform https://zenithcode.ai/

### Current VNG Participation

Team members reviewing this topic are Manvick, Yuvika and Ipsita. We have been regularly reviewing the IC proposals for the last one year. Our reviews can be found here https://forum.dfinity.org/tag/IC-OS-election

Some recent reviews link

* [Proposal: 137795 & 137796](https://forum.dfinity.org/t/proposal-to-elect-new-release-rc-2025-08-07-03-33/54761/9?u=zenithcode)
* [Proposal: 137678 & 137679](https://forum.dfinity.org/t/proposal-to-elect-new-release-rc-2025-07-31-03-32/54241/3?u=zenithcode)
* [Proposal: 137578 & 137579](https://forum.dfinity.org/t/proposal-to-elect-new-release-rc-2025-07-24-03-31/53783/4?u=zenithcode)

### Why we want to be a voting neuron

* We, already review IC OS version election proposals for over a year now.
* We are committed to long term decentralization of Internet Computer
* Our team has the right required skill set to review IC OS Version Election and Protocol Canister Management Proposals.
* We want more people to follow our neuron on the above topics as we work close to infrastructure and application layer.

### Contributing to Long term success of Internet Computer

* Zenith Code is already a node provider in the Internet Computer Ecosystem.
* We have been reviewing IC OS version election proposals for over a year now.
* We have been actively working on a leetcode style Motoko/Internet Computer learning platform. https://zenithcode.ai/

### Why are we interested in the topics we apply for

* Our team is expert in Cryptography, Blockchain, Firmware Design OS level programming.
* We want to continue to expand our team's knowledge by reviewing the IC OS Version Election and Protocol Canister Management Proposals.

### Why would be remaining a voting neuron in long term

We are committed to long term growth of the IC network. We already contribute in the following ways and are looking to expand our impact to grow IC.

* We are a node provider in the IC eco system
* We review IC OS version election proposals
* We are actively developing leetcode style coding platform https://zenithcode.ai/

### Our voting principles

**Core Principle: Decentralization**

* Definition and Relevance: The Nakamoto Coefficient measures the number of entities that must collude to control a system. A higher coefficient signifies greater decentralization and, consequently, a more secure and resilient network.
* Application to Voting: Applying this principle to voting within the IC ecosystem, we emphasize the need for a diverse and decentralized set of voters to prevent centralization and ensure fair representation of the community’s interests.

**Ensuring Robust Decentralization**

* Diverse Voting Participation: By adhering to decentralization principles, our voting approach aligns with the IC community and foundation. This means advocating for broad participation across various stakeholders to avoid power concentration.

**Evolving with Community Decisions**

* Adaptive Voting Strategy: Our commitment to evolving voting strategies based on community discussions reflects a dynamic approach to maintaining and enhancing decentralization. We plan to formalize a process in which we will actively listen to community inputs and adapt our voting accordingly.
* Continuous Improvement: By aligning future voting with community conclusions on decentralization, our approach ensures that the network remains resilient to centralization risks, analogous to maintaining a high Nakamoto Coefficient.

We are eager to contribute to the ICP community in a structured and impactful way. Thank you for considering our application. ![:pray:|20x20](upload://9PeTmZs3gaRiLXRd53zcy0OA5QP.png ":pray:")

Voting Neuron Grants application of Zenith Code for topic IC OS Version Election, Protocol Canister Management