Governance
What is Governance?
From the Wikipedia page on Governance (opens in a new tab):
Governance is all the processes of interactions be they through the laws (opens in a new tab), norms (opens in a new tab), power (opens in a new tab) or language (opens in a new tab) of an organized society[1] (opens in a new tab) over a social system (opens in a new tab) (family (opens in a new tab), tribe (opens in a new tab), formal (opens in a new tab) or informal organization (opens in a new tab), a territory (opens in a new tab) or across territories).
In the context of cryptocurrency, governance is related to the network processes like block creation, but also to the person-to-person processes like ecosystem development.
How is ICON governed?
The ICON Network is a community-run organization. This is reflected in many ways, including that the large majority of projects from the official ICON project are open-sourced on Github (opens in a new tab).
The main blockchain-based network, as an extension of the computational network structure, contains community members with raised roles and responsibilities as voted upon by the community. These raised-role members are called delegates, who are responsible for proposing changes for the purpose of improving network state given current context and future goals. These are referred to as network proposals.