/founders
Founders
Founders are early operators who help prove that IICP can become a real network, not just a website. Run a genuine node, keep it useful, and your early contribution can be recognised permanently.
IICP recognises the people who built the mesh early. Run a genuine node — publicly reachable, cryptographically verified — and 30 days after your first registration you lock in a permanent founder ordinal, assigned in order of first appearance. The ordinal is tied to your operator key, so you can change your display name and keep your number. Three tiers: Genesis-50 (within 3 months of launch), Founders-500 (6 months), Founders-1000 (12 months).
How to earn a founder slot
Run iicp-node init so the network can recognise your node as yours.
Keep at least one node reachable and useful to the mesh.
Founder ordinals unlock after a 30-day window to reduce gaming.
Loading the founders board…
How slots are earned.#1 is the founder. #2 onward are genuine external operators — each must run at least one node that is publicly reachable and delegation-verified, and have served the mesh within the last day when the daily check runs, any time from day 30 onward. You can't fake serving the mesh for a month, which is the point: the badge means real contribution.
Reboots don't hurt you. The 30-day clock starts at your first registration and never resets. Windows updates, reboots, sleep, brief outages — none of it restarts the clock or disqualifies you. The daily check looks at the whole previous day, not a single moment: if your node heartbeat at any point in the last 24 hours, it counts as serving — even if it happens to be asleep when the check runs. If it misses a whole day, the next day's check picks it up, with no penalty. Self-hosters on home hardware are exactly who this program is for.
Check you're on the clock. Your 30-day clock only starts if you ran iicp-node init before starting your node — that command creates your operator keypair and signs your registration. Without it, your node is unattributed for founder recognition (no founder standing, no recognition progress). Verify by checking your node detail: the operator_verified field should be true. If it's false, run iicp-node init and restart — your clock will start from that first key-backed registration.
Privacy. The board shows only display name, number, and tier. Operator keys and contact details are never published.
The founder era started 6 June 2026. Ordinals are minted as operators pass the 30-day mark, so the board fills over the first weeks — that's the anti-gaming rule working as intended.