67 open technology projects awarded NGI grants
The NLnet Foundation announced 67 new projects have been awarded grants today as part of the Next Generation Internet initiative, covering an entire technology stack from trustworthy open hardware, to services and applications providing user autonomy.
This announcement was originally published in the website of theNLnet Foundation. We are happy to announce that 67 new projects have been awarded grants today as part of theNext Generation Internetinitiative, across three different funds:NGI Zero Commons Fund,NGI TALERandNGI Fediversity. We congratulate the developers and engineers involved with these projects, and thank them for their forthcoming contribution to an open, resilient and human-centered internet. The selection covers the entire technology stack from trustworthy open hardware, to services & applications providing user autonomy. Privacy-preserving payments and a hosting stackAn NGI Pilot programme is executed by a consortium of hands-on partners that work on a practical solution in a specific domain. NGI Taleris building an electronic payment system that offers privacy for those that make payments, while enforcing transparency on those that sell. NGI Fediversityis a comprehensive effort to bring easy-to-use, hosted internet services withservice portabilityandpersonal freedomat their core to everyone. Each pilot has dedicated part of its budget for supporting outside projects that contribute to these goals. In the December 2025 and February 2026 open calls, six projects have been selected to contribute to the two pilots:Fleetbase × Taleris making low-cost, privacy friendly payments for logistics software,Taler PoSaddresses Point-of-Sale software, and two other projects are deliveringintegration of GNU Taler in the functional package management system GNU Guixandautomated UI testing and type generationfor Taler's iOS app. The two projects granted within NGI Fediversity are the file-hosting platformNocloudandMagic Nix VFS— which allows for the transparent distribution of software on-demand from cache servers to client machines, effectively creating a gigantic "virtual Nix store" available on demand. From flow batteries to causal AIThe projects granted withinNGI Zero Commons Fundrange from an open hardwareHybrid Flow Batteryto standards-compliantdistributed OpenPGP key server,virtualised microservicesin the Rust-based operating system Redox and an ambitiousDHTproject, a verification and compliance tool for the EUDI Wallet system (Ruuti) and an ActivityPub testing tool (DrFed). There are various efforts around independent browsers and browser engines, e. g. improvingwriting modesandmultimediasupport in Servo, as well as a new effort calledBisque(actually built on top of Servo) that aims to improve desktop integration of the browser. There are tools for chips/FPGA design such asCflexHDL, a porting effort forApiculafor the Gowin GW5A platform, and a libre-licensedCPU that will support a programmable decoderto be able to support multiple instruction sets in a single chip. Dot Product Unit(DPU) is an open-source hardware IP block for efficient vector dot-product computation across multiple numeric formats. At the level of Printed Circuit Boards there is a new effort adding various new format importers toRingdove EDA. There is also concrete hardware, such as the innovative open hardware encryption deviceEinszeitand the reverse engineering platformUnbinare RET, and the open hardware phonemikroPhone. Scientists and engineers will be happy to seeaccessibility improvements to the LaTeX ecosystem, a framework forZotero plugins, tools forSelective Data Disclosure, the cross-platform GPU multi-physics simulation engineNexus, the toolQUATTwhich helps to design and understand solid-state quantum circuits,procedural and mathematical visualizations, and integrationg of the volume computation and high dimensions sampling solutionOvolestiin GNU Octave. Open Instrument Controlwill implement a variety of open-source transport-level protocols for communicating with test and measurement (T&M) instruments. Andpgmpyis software for causal AI, the branch of machine learning concerned with cause-and-effect relationships rather than prediction alone. AppBundlermakes distribution of Julia software easier. There is continued innovation at the network and protocol level withMultiPath TCPandmicroTCP, enhancements to theRouting Policy Specification Languageand (on a completely different layer of the network) a solution to help with the rollout of actual physical(optical) Fiber infrastructure. DMRSECwill look into the security of Digital Mobile Radio, an important standard used by emergency services and critical infrastructure globally. OS innovation and evolution takes place through addingkernel observability to Landlock, the new sandboxing solutionIsland, improvingxdgmime. There are several wayland related projects, such as the non-monolithic Wayland compositor River that has a newwindow management protocolto separate concerns, another effort addingsupport for electrophoretic/e-reader displays in Waylandas well as adding Wayland support to theDisthro (audio) plugin framework. Software developers concerned about software supply chain security will loveSecObservePlusandSBOMVert. There is fundamental work on providing secure alternatives for critical environments such as a from-scratch implementation of the Erlang VM (AtomVM). Funkis a compiler for hard real-time, functionally safe systems. There is also a compiler from Scheme to JavaScript, Assembly (x86), C, Python, Prolog and twenty other languages (Ribbit), and a project improving support forgeneralized algebraic data types in Haskellwhich should help prevent a whole class of security issues in software written in Haskell. In the area of mapping, there are various efforts such as projects to improveiD-taggingandiD-presetsin OpenStreetMap, and the FOSS mobile mapping toolCoMaps. There are also projects around other large data commons, such asOpen Food Facts. Amond the grantees are valuable end user applications as well, such as adding Collabora Online'sFollow-me-slideshow to videoconferencing tool Jitsi, the podcast hosting toolCastopod, the communication clientPosca, and ERP toolDolibarr— with the latter gaining support for modern European e-invoicing standards. By improving the widely usedSCIM python framework, a variety of integrations of this privacy friendly log-in mechanism will be unlocked. Karrotis social software for group coordination and community-building. And by adding Tor toSelfPrivacy, several new scenario's for self-hosting are unlocked. Video as one of the largest consumers of internet capacity is not forgotten: next to the video streaming platformsMistServerandPeerTube, there is FOSDEM's hardware video streaming solutionFazantix. Toward a digital commonsTheNGI Zero Commons Fundprovides grants to people who help build the digital commons. Because all projects are free and open source technologies, all outcomes can be freely used, studied, shared and moderated by anyone. Together they provide the building blocks for a information and communication infrastructure that promotes digital autonomy and serves the common good. NGI Zerois a coalition of non-profit organisations led by NLnet that providespracticalandfinancialsupport to projects fix the internet. NGI Zero is made possible with financial support from theEuropean Commission. Meet the new projects!Trustworthy hardware and manufacturingApicula GW5A 60k & 138k— Open source toolchain for Gowin FPGAsCflexHDL— C-based flexible hardware/software systems designDot Product Unit - DPU— Hardware accelerator for computing vector dot productsEinszeit Quantum-Proof Encryption— Quantum-proof hardware security platformFazantix video streaming box— All-in-one Open Hardware capture and streaming boxFunk— Compiler for hard real-time, functionally safe systemsIron Electrolytes and Stacks for Flow Batteries— Hybrid battery technology built from readily available materials:Libre-Chip Programmable Decoder— Run multiple ISAs at full speed with an open CPUmikroPhone drivers + GUI— Full-featured expandable mobile phone from off-the-shelf componentspcb-rnd + sch-rnd alien formats— Importers for proprietary file formats in Ringdove EDAQUAntum bits of This and That (QUATT)— Design and understand solid-state quantum circuitsReverse Engineering Toolkit: Platform— Development platform for signal processingNetwork infrastructure incl. routing, P2P and VPNFiberQ + FiberQ Designer— Interoperable open tooling for fiber rolloutMultipath TCP on Linux mobile devices— Improve mobile support for MPTCP and add cost-aware path controlRPSL member enhancements— Enhance Routing Policy Specification Language + IRRDv4 implementationSelf-hostable SelfPrivacy via Tor— Making SelfPrivacy Resilient and Self-hostable via Tor with self-signed SSL certificates. µTCP— TCP/IP implementation derived from HOL4 formal specificationSoftware engineering, protocols, interoperability, cryptography, algorithms, proofsDMRSEC— Security audit of Digital Mobile RadioNexus— Cross-platform GPU multiphysics simulation for games, robotics, and machine learningOvolesti— Gnu Octave bindings for the volesti libraryRibbit— Ribbit: An Portable Platform for Language InteroperabilityStable GADT constructor syntax in Haskell— Generalized Algebraic Data Types for GHC (#402)Towards AtomVM v1. 0— From-scratch implementation of the ErlangOperating Systems, firmware and virtualisationDISTRHO Plugin Framework— Wayland, Web UIs and documentation/polishing for DPFLandlock observability and telemetry— Add kernel observability and telemetry features to Linux Security ModulePrismaFS— Portable userspace filesystem with isolated session layerRiver window management protocol— Dedicated window management protocol for non-monolithic Wayland compositorsServo Multimedia— Improve multimedia support in Servo browserServo Writing Modes— Improve Servo layout engine with writing modesVirtualized Redox— Redox as a Web Server Runtime, hosted in a Virtual MachineBisque— New Web browser based on Servo enginewayland-epd— Better desktop rendering on electrophoretic displaysxdgmime— Unit and fuzz testing for reference shared-mime-info implementationIntegration of GNU Taler in GNU Guix— Package Taler components in Guix functional package managerMagic Nix VFS— Lazy-loading Virtual File System for the Nix storeIsland sandboxing tool— Sandboxing tool to help secure day-to-day workflowsMeasurement, monitoring, analysis and abuse handlingAlternative algorithms for selective data disclosure— Alternative Algorithms for Privacy Audits of Aggregated Tabular DataDep-scan memory-safety risk analysis— Static analysis to identify memory-safety issuesDrFed— Web-based development and debugging platform for ActivityPubOpen Instrument Control (OIC)— Open protocols for test and measurementos-test expansion— Comprehensive POSIX compliance test suite for operating system implementationsSBOMVert— Generate, compare, and unify SBOMs and vulnerability reportsSecObserve+— Automated workflow for software supply chain managementMiddleware and identityAppBundler Expansion— Tool to create cross-platform installersDistributed key management in Hockeypuck— Next generation OpenPGP KeyserverSCIM Python Framework and Integrations— Further integration of System for Cross-domain Identity ManagementDecentralised solutions, including blockchain/distributed ledgerFogDHT— Secure, embeddable Distributed Hash Table in RustNocloud— Remote storage platform for individuals and familiesData and AIOpen Food Facts Explorer— Modern front-end for Open Food FactsOpenStreetMap iD tagging schema overhaul— Improve OSM iD tagging to expand capabilities of OpenStreetMap editorspgmpy: Open-Source Infrastructure for Causal AI— Machine learning for determining cause-and-effect relationshipsServices + Applications (e. g. email, instant messaging, video chat, collaboration)Castopod v2— ActivityPub-capable podcast serverFollow-me slideshow for Jitsi— Accessible Collabora Online slideshow plugin for videoconferencingFull Accessibility of the LaTeX Ecosystem— Systematic Tagging of Heading Structures in LaTeXMistServer Video-on-Demand— Turning MistServer into an open distributed caching and processing node for VoDPeerTube Scalability— Horizontally scalable video hostingPlugging end-to-end encryption in Posca— End-to-end encrypted communication clientFleetbase × Taler: Payments for Global Logistics— Enable Taler payments in logistics/supply chain softwareTaler PoSTaler iOS automationVertical use cases, Search, CommunityCoMaps Cycling Maps and Fresh Map Updates— Easy-to-use, privacy-focused offline mobile map appGeneric e-invoicing module for Dolibarr— Support for electronic invoicing platformsKarrot UX— Community self-organisation, building and governanceRuuti— Open-source EUDI-compatible development walletSacr3d— Scheme-based graphics and math rendering toolkitZotero Plugin Ecosystem and Infrastructure— Consolidate Zotero Research Management Platform plugin systemStill hungry for more projects? Check out theoverview of all our current and recent projects. . . AcknowledgementsThe NGI0 Commons Fund, NGI Taler and NGI Fediversity are made possible with financial support from theEuropean Commission'sNext Generation Internetprogramme, under the aegis ofDG Communications Networks, Content and Technology. Additional funding for the NGI0 Commons Fund is made available by theSwiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation(SERI). TopicsRelated partnerAreas of work