FFDW 2024 Annual Report

Welcoming the Decentralized Web  Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web (FFDW) is the sister nonprofit of Filecoin Foundation. FFDW is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit committed to preserving humanity's most important information and supporting the development and adoption of decentralized technologies. While Filecoin Foundation stewards the Filecoin network's future, FFDW promotes the broader development of the decentralized web (DWeb).   FFDW's work includes supporting open source software and protocols that safeguard critical data from centralized control and single points of failure. FFDW also empowers institutions to preserve vulnerable information by leveraging the resilience of decentralized storage.  FFDW's work in 2024 showcases the benefits of decentralized technology at a moment of growing interest in and adoption of the decentralized web.   Some of FFDW's work in 2024:  500,000+ cultural artifacts preserved on the Filecoin network  5,000+ DWeb Community members educated on decentralized technology In this report, you'll see the progress achieved by FFDW and our exceptional roster of project partners over the last year.  FFDW's Impact Areas  FFDW's efforts span the critical areas listed below. Each of these domains is vital in its own right, and FFDW's breadth of work reflects its commitment to driving meaningful change not just in one industry but across the expanse of the web.   DWeb Research and Development: FFDW supports initiatives that advance decentralized technologies. Education: FFDW champions initiatives that increase education and understanding of blockchain, cryptocurrency, and other decentralized technologies. Human Rights: Records of the fight for human rights can be some of the most vulnerable data in the world –– susceptible to tampering or total disappearance on unsecured platforms. FFDW's work with human rights organizations is dedicated to safeguarding this critical data.  Cultural Preservation: The world's digital artifacts are fragile –– many at risk of disappearing forever. FFDW's work in the area of cultural preservation aims to preserve and safeguard humanity's digital cultural heritage for the long term.  Government Datasets and Policy: FFDW educates policymakers about the promise of decentralized technologies and works to preserve government data using decentralized technologies like the Filecoin network.  Science and Environment: Scientific research produces large amounts of data, but there are limited systems in place to preserve this information publicly and for the long term. FFDW is working with universities and other scientific institutions to preserve scientific data by leveraging the reliability of decentralized storage. Impact Areas   DWeb Research and Development Distributed Press Distributed Press is a free and open source tool for publishing text and other multimedia works to the DWeb. Distributed Press creates beginner-friendly, open source publishing tools that offer creators an alternative to centralized publishing platforms. With FFDW's support, Distributed Press has built out a user-friendly, DWeb-native, no-code publishing platform that is both scalable and easy to adopt. The project automates the publishing and hosting of content using decentralized protocols like IPFS and Hypercore through the Sutty content management system. It also adds social features to websites by integrating with the Fediverse using ActivityPub. In 2024, over 100 websites used this platform to host content on the DWeb.  Library Innovation Lab at Harvard Law School As a specialized lab within the Harvard Law School, the Library Innovation Lab (LIL) explores new ways for libraries to share knowledge through technology. FFDW's support of the Democratizing Open Knowledge program is focused on enhancing discovery and engagement with open data and exploring new ways to preserve digital information.  In 2024, LIL facilitated the development and launch of the Institutional Data Initiative, aimed at improving data resources for AI training. Additionally, they published insightful pieces addressing key considerations for preserving assets for more than 100 years. They continue to spearhead efforts to revolutionize web archiving through tools such as Scoop and perma.cc, a service to prevent link rot by archiving a copy of the digital source and preserving it in perpetuity through a network of libraries and institutional partners.  Rust Foundation FFDW is a member of the Rust Foundation, an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to stewarding the Rust programming language, nurturing the Rust ecosystem, and supporting the global set of maintainers governing and developing the open source project. Spritely Decentralized storage focuses not just on storing data but also on enabling methods to authorize access to and process information without relying on centralized brokers or gatekeepers. Spritely is a nonprofit innovating in areas ranging from decentralized identity and social networks to encrypted and portable storage.  Two of Spritely's core projects are Spritely Goblins and OCapN, the Object Capability Network. Spritely Goblins is a library and toolkit to make secure, distributed programming the default. Since its initial release, the team has shipped implementations across two programming languages: Racket and Guile. OCapN is the powerful protocol behind Spritely's distributed objecting programming. OCapN is a standard that will let decentralized services link together securely and share processes, identities, and data. This ambitious, multi-year project will permit the DWeb to interconnect and share resources in a way that centralized tools cannot.  Web Foundation The Web Foundation advanced Sir Tim Berners-Lee's original vision for an open web that is safe, trusted, and empowering for all its users. FFDW's award helped Web Foundation to assess the current state of the web and determine how to use its voice to advocate for a better, re-decentralized future for the web.  Education  Center for Law Tech and Social Good The Center for Law Tech and Social Good (CLTSG) at the University of San Francisco's School of Law seeks to equip the legal, government, and policy communities with the knowledge and frameworks to grasp the challenges and opportunities of emerging technology. As part of this mission, the Center conducts government trainings –– diving into decentralization and demystifying encryption, blockchain, cryptocurrency, DAOs, and more. Examples of government agencies that have received these trainings include the National Association of Attorneys General, Executive Staff of the California Department of Motor Vehicles, the Federal Public Defender, and California legislative aides. In February, the Center partnered with FFDW to host a Social Impact Summit, bringing technologists, policymakers, lawyers, and changemakers together to explore how emerging and decentralized technologies can build a better web. Additionally, CLTSG launched the FFDW International Affiliated Scholars (IAS) Program to bridge global academic communities pursuing research at the nexus of blockchain technology and the law. The inaugural cohort includes blockchain leaders from Denmark, Rwanda, Brazil, and Ecuador exploring how emerging technology might solve issues relevant to their communities. An FFDW Teaching Fellow helped bring emerging technology into the classroom with a "DeFi and the Law" course offered in Fall 2024. Gray Area Gray Area is a San Francisco-based nonprofit counterculture hub with a mission to cultivate, sustain, and amplify a community of creative practitioners at the intersection of culture and technology. Gray Area and FFDW worked together to develop the DWeb for Creators course to help creators incorporate DWeb technology into their work. As part of this collaboration, Gray Area has brought together a team of internationally recognized artists, technologists, and museum professionals to design an open source curriculum to empower anyone with free access to use, modify, adapt, and distribute the content. Also in 2024, Gray Area's annual festival programming heavily featured DWeb creative practitioners as speakers. The event closed with an education panel where the curriculum creators explored why decentralization should matter for artists, makers, and GLAM institutions.  TechSoup TechSoup equips changemakers worldwide with access to solutions and strategies, skills development, and peer-to-peer community support that help them better use technology to make their organizations more flexible and resilient to the challenges of our world today. TechSoup launched Accelerating Makers, a DWeb education program designed to help early career civil society makers explore and develop potential use cases for decentralized technologies, then build and integrate decentralized applications into the civil society tech stack. Insights from this program inspired the launch of the Cultural Memory Lab, a learning incubator to empower libraries, museums, community archives, and other cultural organizations to put their learnings on decentralized technology and storage into practice. Human Rights  Freedom of the Press Foundation FFDW's work with the Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) supports infrastructure, user experience, and security enhancements for decentralized tools used by journalists around the globe. This collaboration has led to the design of a novel, zero-trust architecture for SecureDrop, an open source news and information submission system used by newsrooms worldwide for secure document exchange and communication between journalists and anonymous sources. FFDW's work with FPF also furthers FPF's efforts to preserve historically critical information, such as its comprehensive database of press freedom violations in the United States and government data that belongs in the public sphere.  Guardian Project Guardian Project is a global collective of software developers, designers, advocates, activists, and trainers who develop open source, mobile security software and operating system enhancements. Their free software is built from the ground up to support the DWeb.  Guardian Project has integrated decentralized storage into its suite of privacy-focused, open source mobile applications and software libraries, including ProofMode and F-Droid. The FFDW collaboration aims to expand access to these technologies for human rights defenders, journalists, and activists as part of the Guardian Project's ongoing commitment to empowering individuals against human rights abuses. Guardian Project's ProofMode app uses decentralized technologies to authenticate and verify "eyewitness" content through cryptographic signatures and metadata. In 2024, its adoption expanded with ProofCorps, a global network of creators documenting verified content. Guardian Project made its free, verifiable camera app for Android and iOS, along with web-based ProofCheck verification tools, available to aid organizations and citizens in securely documenting the 2024 U.S. election. Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) HRDAG has been turning raw human rights data into usable findings for nearly 30 years. The collaboration between FFDW and HRDAG focuses on outreach to and research with human rights organizations across the globe to explore how and when storing and accessing data on the DWeb may benefit their work. HRDAG is using the Filecoin network and IPFS to store multiple critical human rights datasets. In 2024, HRDAG uploaded to Filecoin and IPFS the largest dataset in the history of the human rights movement to ensure the data's resilient preservation. HRDAG partnered with the Colombian Truth Commission and amnesty courts in Colombia to bring this information about Colombia's 50-year conflict to light.  OpenArchive OpenArchive is a nonprofit committed to protecting our histories to advance human rights. Co-created by and for archivists and human rights defenders, they develop privacy-first, decentralized, easy-to-use archiving tools and resources to advance justice and accountability. Their flagship app, Save helps people securely archive, verify, and encrypt their evidentiary mobile media. Through the collaboration with FFDW, OpenArchive is implementing decentralized backends into the Save app to enhance verification, redundancy, and provenance of the media. This will enable people to preserve their media with decentralized storage via their mobile devices. Additionally, OpenArchive's Decentralized Archivist Community Program –– which includes seven international communities –– jointly supports, stewards, and leverages archiving, research, and decentralization to ensure their documentation is safe and accessible for the long term. Starling Lab Starling Lab is using Filecoin and other DWeb protocols to capture, store, and verify sensitive digital records, like evidence of war crimes and genocide survivor testimony. In 2024, the Lab hosted the "Trusting Digital Content in the Age of AI" conference, coinciding with the opening of the "To Trust or Not To Trust" exhibit at Stanford University's Green Library. This museum-style exhibit explores the evolution of digital authenticity and preservation, showcasing everything from 9th-century cryptography to 20th-century storage devices and cutting-edge Web3 projects. The Lab wrapped up the first edition of its "Designing for Authenticity" class at Stanford, which was expanded to an even larger offering the following academic year. Additionally, Starling collaborated with Numbers Protocol to develop authentication approaches, tested by photojournalists during the Taiwan election. Ushahidi Ushahidi's mission is to help people everywhere easily gather data and generate insights that help tackle the issues that matter most to them. Since its founding in 2008 as a tool to monitor and map post-election violence in Kenya, Ushahidi's open source crowdsourcing tools have been used by millions of people and thousands of groups to raise voices, inform decisions, stop suffering, and influence change. Recognizing the deep value of maintaining historical records of election-related data, FFDW collaborated with Ushahidi on the Election Data Resilience Initiative to use the Filecoin network's distributed storage to provide a resilient and verifiable repository of historical election data.  WITNESS WITNESS is an international nonprofit organization that helps people use video and technology to protect and defend human rights. With the rapid evolution of generative AI and synthetic media, FFDW and WITNESS are working together to secure the next generation of trustworthy human rights information by creating, preserving, and protecting human rights documentation and other public interest information. As part of this work, WITNESS is exploring how the DWeb can assist the work of activists, civic journalists, and smartphone witnesses who go to great lengths to capture human rights evidence. WITNESS creates and shares tried-and-tested guidance and resources in a free library for anyone anywhere using video for human rights.  Cultural Preservation  Artizen Artizen's mission is to unlock human creativity by reinventing how society funds art, science, technology, and design. Artizen leads a program that facilitates participatory funding of projects selected by its diverse community. With Artizen, FFDW co-funds the "Filecoin Fund for Cultural Preservation," a match fund that supports projects using decentralized storage technologies, including Filecoin, to archive, preserve, and disseminate cultural works.   Digital Public Library of America The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) amplifies the value of libraries and cultural organizations as Americans' most trusted sources of shared knowledge. It does this by collaborating with partners to accelerate innovative tools and ideas that equip libraries to make information more accessible. With FFDW's support, DPLA is uploading a dataset of 2.25 million archival government records with visual historical material to the Filecoin network. DPLA is also convening conversations with its partners about the impact of decentralized technology on the preservation of digital media. Flickr Foundation FFDW provided funding to launch a new cultural organization, Flickr Foundation, to develop and sustain a social and technical infrastructure to steward the invaluable Flickr collection for future generations. The nonprofit is striving to ensure this treasure remains available for people to contribute to, learn from, and enjoy for the next 100 years. In 2025, the team will launch an alpha of its Data Lifeboat concept, exploring how decentralized methodology can underpin such an enormous system.  MIT Open Learning MIT Open Learning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is transforming teaching and learning through the innovative use of digital technologies. MIT Open Learning makes educational resources and courses available to learners around the globe. With FFDW's support, Open Learning is exploring how decentralized technology can bolster its programs, including MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW). A core component of FFDW's work with Open Learning is exploring avenues to utilize IPFS and the Filecoin network to store and distribute OCW content. This could enable broader access to OCW's 2,500+ MIT courses that have reached more than 500 million people worldwide since the program launched in 2002.   MuckRock MuckRock is a vital resource for public records requests on the local, state, and federal level; a collaborative news site; and a long-term store for the data behind the news, backed up on IPFS and Filecoin. MuckRock integrated IPFS and Filecoin into DocumentCloud, a platform hosting over 5.5 million verified documents. To date, over 500,000 files –– including key documents from newsrooms, nonprofits, and researchers –– have been uploaded to the Filecoin network through this collaboration.  Over the course of its collaboration with FFDW, MuckRock has conducted three rounds of Gateway Grants to assist over a dozen global projects to analyze, preserve, and increase access to critical documents by leveraging decentralized storage technology. This initiative has helped newsrooms, researchers, and community groups upload and analyze a record number of materials, ranging from tracking governmental spending to FEMA housing reports.  Prelinger Archives The Prelinger Archives is digitizing and preserving a vast collection of archival 8mm, 16mm, and 35mm film footage to further its mission to make rare and one-of-a-kind films, especially films by and about members of underrepresented communities, accessible to the public.  Prelinger Archives has scanned nearly 5 million feet and over 3,000 hours of film. Prelinger Archives' collaboration with FFDW explores methods for uploading and accessing motion picture datasets to Filecoin at scale. The project currently uploads roughly one terabyte of new motion picture data to Filecoin every day.    Rohingya Project Rohingya Project champions stateless Rohingya, using blockchain-based technologies to equip them with a virtual community that can encourage collaboration and entrepreneurship. FFDW's collaboration with Rohingya Project supports digitization and archiving efforts to preserve the collective identity of the Rohingya –– safeguarding cultural artifacts for education, research, community building, and advocacy purposes –– along with the use of decentralized technologies such as Filecoin to advance the project's mission. Rohingya Project is also training Rohingya youth on decentralized archival methods. Shift Collective Shift Collective is a non-profit consulting and design group that helps organizations better engage, collaborate with, and reflect their local communities. FFDW's support enables Shift to explore decentralized storage solutions for Historypin.org and map the ethical and material digital storage needs of community-based archives. This includes work to build a pilot storage network in collaboration with institutional and community archive partners. The goal is to design a prototype for community-centered, affordable, and accessible long-term, decentralized storage that is also ethical, autonomous, and sustainable.  Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution is the world's largest museum, education, and research complex. The Smithsonian seeks to shape the future by preserving heritage, discovering new knowledge, and sharing resources with the world. The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History is working with FFDW to upload nearly 300 digitized sound recordings from Alexander Graham Bell to IPFS and Filecoin. Famous for patenting the first practical telephone in 1876, Bell also pioneered recorded sound. Experimental recordings from his Volta Laboratory in Washington, D.C., dating from 1881 to 1889, are some of the earliest recordings ever made. The surviving collection of about 300 records was considered unplayable until new technologies in the 21st century made it possible to hear them. TRANSFER Data Trust TRANSFER Data Trust is a decentralized, artist-owned archive and cooperative value exchange network for time-based media art. FFDW's collaboration with TRANSFER brings 10 years of new media and virtual artworks across five studios onto the Filecoin network. The Data Trust is a proof-of-concept prototype of open culture infrastructure for galleries, libraries, archives, and museums. Government Datasets and Policy  Authors Alliance Authors Alliance seeks to advance the interests of authors who want to serve the public good by sharing their creations broadly. The Alliance creates resources to help authors understand and enjoy their rights while championing policies that make knowledge and culture available and discoverable. FFDW backs the Alliance in its work to address restrictions on preservation and access to knowledge, especially concerning limitations on new technological use cases.   Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping build and sustain a thriving commons of shared knowledge and culture online. As part of its work, CC helps overcome legal obstacles to knowledge sharing and creativity to address the world's most pressing challenges. FFDW promotes CC's work through financial aid, technical advising, and communications amplification.   Democracy's Library The Internet Archive is a nonprofit digital library that has archived the web for decades and preserves other cultural artifacts in digital form. Democracy's Library is an Internet Archive initiative to preserve government research and publications from around the world. Since 2022, FFDW has supported the Democracy's Library project, which has also received funding from Filecoin Foundation.  As the Democracy's Library collection grows, the initiative is focusing on the preservation and accessibility of U.S. and Canadian government documents, including uploading collections to the Filecoin network. In addition, the project is exploring how it can empower countries that are currently under-resourced for public digital record keeping.    Fight for the Future Fight for the Future (FFtF) is an activist group focused on digital rights. Through its collaboration with FFDW, FFtF advocates for human rights-centered technology regulations and frameworks to promote data privacy, the right to code, and the preservation and distribution of knowledge and culture. Additionally, the project organizes privacy-preserving financial and data systems in new constituencies.  Foundation for American Innovation Foundation for American Innovation's (FAI) mission is to develop technology, talent, and ideas that champion a better, freer, and more abundant future. FFDW works with FAI to inform and educate American policymakers and leaders on the benefits and values of open, decentralized technologies. The project seeks to bridge the divide between the tech and policy communities through coalition building, educational outreach, translational research, and both in-person and online events.   Institute for Education The Institute for Education (IFE) is a nonprofit organization committed to helping the global community through the powers of data, innovation, and soft diplomacy. FFDW backs IFE in its partnerships with diplomats, entrepreneurs, technologists, journalists, and leaders across the political and technology spectrums to promote better understandings of next-generation technologies, like blockchain and distributed storage. IFE also works to educate students of all backgrounds in computer science through its CS@SC coding camp. Basic CS skills are integral to ensuring that every child has equal access to future opportunities. Public Knowledge Public Knowledge is a nonprofit shaping policy to promote freedom of expression, an open internet, and access to technology to benefit the public. FFDW supported the 2024 Emerging Tech Conference that convened industry leaders, policymakers, innovators, researchers, and technologists to exchange ideas and learn about cutting-edge technology, including the DWeb.  TechCongress TechCongress is an organization that provides one-year fellowships to bridge the informational gap between technologists and policymakers in Congress by placing technologists on Capitol Hill to serve as Congressional technology advisors. Funding from FFDW has supported fellowship participation, with technologists placed in offices including Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY); Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR); the Senate Finance Committee; the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee; and elsewhere. Science and Environment  Earth Species Project Earth Species Project (ESP) is a nonprofit dedicated to using artificial intelligence to decode non-human communication. ESP is building open-access machine learning tools to assist researchers as they endeavor to make meaning of their data. FFDW supports ESP's core work, including its explorations in using distributed storage technologies to redundantly store researchers' datasets.   The EASIER Data Initiative The EASIER Data Initiative at the University of Maryland leverages decentralized storage technologies, including Filecoin and IPFS, to transform data access and computation in the geospatial field.  In 2024, the EASIER Data Initiative expanded its work on the Web3 Geospatial Dashboard, which lets users click on Landsat scenes and see key Filecoin and IPFS metadata. They published compelling new decentralized geospatial use cases for crop classification data and GEDI tutorials and hosted a workshop bringing together over 30 experts to explore the intersection of geospatial sciences, open science best practices, and the decentralized web. The EASIER Data Initiative also continues to steward the world's first Decentralized Geospatial Web Working Group (dGWWG), a community of individuals passionate about decentralized applications for geospatial data. Building the DWeb Community  2024 Social Impact Summit The Social Impact Summit, hosted by FFDW and the University of San Francisco School of Law's Center for Law Tech and Social Good, gathered leaders to explore how emerging and decentralized technologies may enhance trust in the digital age. The day-long event featured discussions on various applications of blockchain and DWeb technologies, including document preservation through platforms like DocumentCloud, community-driven internet infrastructure, safe communication tools like SecureDrop, and applications for humanitarian aid distribution. Talks throughout the day highlighted how decentralized technologies are being used to address global challenges in financial inclusion, human rights documentation, and digital equity. The Summit emphasized the importance of thoughtful technology deployment that prioritizes community needs; regulatory frameworks that encourage innovation; and the critical role of decentralization in creating a more transparent, resilient, and equitable digital future. Looking Forward  We invite you to join us as FFDW continues to work toward broader DWeb adoption and development. Whether by engaging with our ongoing projects or staying informed about our efforts, the community's involvement is crucial to building a robust and decentralized web. Together, we can shape a more interconnected and empowered digital future.