NGI0 Core, co-funded from the European Union's Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101092990, foresees as an eligible activity the provision of financial support to third parties, as a means to achieve the objectives of the Next Generation Internet initiative and to contribute to a resilient, trustworthy and sustainably open internet.
The internet was never designed with our modern usage in mind. Important decisions that shaped how the internet works today were made in the distant past, and we continue to run into the consequences — cascading effects and limited resilience, scalability issues, lack of strong privacy and security and a blind spot for energy efficiency. These may have seemed less important at the time, but currently they certainly are not, and we need to act.
We want a more resilient, trustworthy and open internet. We want to empower end-users. Given the speed at which the 'twin transition' is taking place, we need a greener internet and more sustainable services sooner rather than later. Neither will happen at global scale without protocol evolution, which — as the case of three decades of IPv6 introduction demonstrates — is extremely challenging. NGI0 Core is designed to push beyond the status quo and create a virtuous cycle of innovation through free and open source software, libre hardware and open standards. If we want everyone to use and benefit from the internet to its full potential without holding back, the internet must be built on strong and transparent technologies that allow for permissionless innovation and are equally accessible to all.
We work towards better technologies to restore and maintain European sovereignty and to secure democratic ownership of the digital society. NGI Zero actively works towards digital commons and trustworthy technological building blocks for the next generation of the internet. The goal is to help set the course of the evolution of technology, provide people with concrete new tools and more reliable infrastructure, which provides better overall security and allow them more agency and choice.
NGI0 Core is designed to help reshape the state of play, and to help create an open, trustworthy and reliable internet for all. This includes developing alternatives and improvements to core web and internet hardware, software and protocols removes gatekeepers, choke points and surveillance capabilities. But also tackling issues of security, privacy, interoperability, high availability and scalability of decentralised technologies to allow us to benefit from both 'local first' and from economies of scale without unnecessary centralisation. Other examples include mobile operating systems, encryption tools, videoconferencing services, open social media, open source large language models and portable/pluggable AI, virtual/enhanced/augmented reality and multimodal user interaction.
NGI0 Core supports independent researchers and developers working on digital commons in order to restore and maintain European sovereignty, and to secure democratic ownership of the digital society. NGI Zero Entrust aims to enable and assist independent researchers and developers to create powerful new technology that benefit end users, and to help them put it in the hands of future generations as building blocks for a fair and democratic society and an open economy that benefits all.
We are looking for troubleshooters that help society tackle the ossification of the internet and other hard but very very important challenges, each of which has significant social and economic consequences. We need new ideas and disruptive core technologies, while at the same time evolving and growing existing technologies that are still enough future-proof. The project results become available under an open source license, so anyone can read and validate the source code, and anyone can use the code to create technology that fits their own purposes. The right to reuse and right to repair not only allow for unrestricted scrutiny and permissionless innovation, but also help to reduce e-waste. And the use of standards enables interoperability and redundancy in implementation to reduce the risk of compromise and failure.
