Buzz is in the air — Swarm grants results are in!
At Swarm Alpha we announced the first Swarm grants call which concluded at the end of July. As Swarm’s new Bee client was just launched at the same event, the first grant call is by design quite loose and exploratory in nature as we were mostly interested in community’s feedback and projects who are already a bit familiar with Swarm. In other words, as stated on the application form: “… the purpose of this grants call is to kickstart Swarm’s grants while also enabling devs to get to know Swarm and start exploring. Dream big, start small!”
What applications are best?
- Experimental and playful.
- Interoperable with other applications.
- Giving the user control over data.
- Aligned with principles.fairdatasociety.org.
- Free and open source.
It is to our greatest joy to let you know that we received 21 (!) applications from a very diverse group of projects. Some of the projects are also outside of the blockchain space, illustrating Swarm’s potential use cases beyond Ethereum and inspiring us how a world computer enabled by Swarm can enrich the world.
Without much ado, here we proudly list the first Swarm grants recipients!
Swarm Grants: First wave
Grant amount given correspond to effort estimates expressed by grant applicants for reaching their first milestone where 10k DAI was the maximum possible amount.
Swarm.City
Decentralised marketplaces are one of Swarm’s stronger promises and we’re excited to support the Swarm.City project in making this happen. Swarm.City have a proven track record and have been part of the Ethereum space since forever. In their words:
“We have been building our alpha version but got stuck on messaging and storage. With Swarm we believe we can continue our mission of building a dapp.”
Lastly, if you want to further support Swarm.City’s development, you can donate through Fair data society DAC on Giveth.
Grant amount: 10k DAI/BZZ
Upala Digital Identity
Upala is an anti-Sybil system for DApps. It provides a digital identity uniqueness score valued in dollars. For the Swarm grant, Upala wants to build the BladerunnerDAO — the minimal viable identity system on top of Upala. BladeRunnerDAO will use membership in existing DAOs as an entry test (proof-of-human) and auto-assign scores to the members. It will also provide the functionality to add other entry-tests. Upala will store user data in a decentralized storage.
Grant amount: 6k DAI/BZZ
Etherna
We believe Swarm is a perfect solution for storing videos and permissionless publishing. For this reason it is very exciting to see a project like Etherna which is building a transparent video platform, opening video storage and index data with storage and databases on top of Swarm.
Etherna are planning to develop a storage layer for mongodb to use over Swarm and the grant is the first step towards it. Moreover, their indexes will also be stored on Swarm using a storage layer solution for mongodb developed by Etherna which database content will be readable by everyone. We can’t say what is more exciting: 1) Just imagine how awesome it will be using MongoDB on Swarm, or 2) video publishing without censorship?
Grant amount: 5k DAI/BZZ
XDV
Today we see a growing need for trustable data while we also see increasing needs for digital management of documents. With XDV you will be able to share signed documents securely without leaving home. Swarm will be used as document storage and messaging backend while the dapp handles UI interaction and wallet document signing.
Grant amount: 2.5k DAI/BZZ
GetLoginEth
GetLoginEth is a Đapp for providing a decentralized single sign-on solution for Ethereum-based social applications with a familiar (Web2.0-style) onboarding experience that does not require Ether or even any experience with Ethereum.
GetLogin was created to ensure interoperability between decentralized applications. Currently, GetLogin stores user data encrypted in the user’s local storage. With the grant, GetLoginEth wants to build a stable solution that allows decentralized applications based on Swarm’s Bee client to use secure authorization/authentication, in which all data belongs exclusively to the user.
Grant amount: 10k DAI/BZZ
Zetaseek
How do you find data? This is one of the fundamental questions in the digital world and it also applies to Swarm. In Swarm, we’d rather ask “How do you find data that wants to be found”.
ZetaSeek is a search engine with the primary focus of being used by each user separately — to organize their files, links and references in uploaded content to upcoming p2p storage networks like Swarm. Zeta nodes can connect with one another to share part of results, these peer formations are called REEFs.
Grant amount: 5k DAI/BZZ
Personium
Personium started as the first open source project within Japan’s biggest IT company, Fujitsu. To provide a bit of context, Japan is also the leading country in developing information banking. As part of the information banking regulations, certified personal data wallets in Japan also need to be interoperable with others, meaning THEY. SHOULD. NOT. LOCK. THE USER. IN. Yes, caps indicate we also feel very strongly about this and interoperability. It is to our greatest honor to support with a grant an effort towards interoperability between Swarm and Japan’s information banking industry.
Last but not least, Personium is also aligned with the MyData ecosystem and is among the first batch of MyData Operators.
Grant amount: 10k DAI/BZZ
FEDn by Scaleout
FEDn is an open source federated learning solution initiated and currently maintained by Scaleout. Federated learning enables machine learning without moving, pooling or disclosing data, and FEDn will enable commercial machine learning alliances where data owners can build strong machine learning models together. FEDn is a new distributed and secure architecture that solves the data isolation and data privacy challenges in AI.
In simple terms, federated machine learning enables training AI on your data without leaking that data to some cloud. It is how you would prefer also Siris, Alexas and co to run. Moreover, federated machine learning reclaims users privacy while enabling them to use the benefits of AI. With increased privacy, individuals can also start participating in the fair data economy on their terms.
Using traditional federated learning technology, a trusted third party is needed to orchestrate the federated learning process (Google does this, for example). To enable fully trustless federated learning, there is a need for trustless compute and decentralised storage. This project aims to develop the decentralised storage component.
Grant amount: 5k DAI/BZZ
Waggle
Spam-free, secure and decentralized email service on top of Swarm. Who can say no to this? :)
The main goal of this project is to create a spam-free email service on top of swarm inspired by the idea of a mail-transfer protocol proposed by Daniel J. Bernstein at the end of the 20th century named Internet Mail 2000 (IM2000), in which the sender and not the recipient is responsible to store the email messages.
Such approach was designed to reduce spam and have some advantages over the traditional SMTP-based email systems. Swarm provides mechanisms that can be used to implement and improve such protocol, allowing the development of a decentralized email service that ensures data availability and secure authentication using the outbox feed functionality and private channel feeds.
Grant amount: 10k DAI/BZZ
Meme-generator
If you believe memes are not important, create a meme and tweet it.
Grant amount: 450 DAI/BZZ
Bee archive
Censorship-resistance starts with saving data on Swarm. This also includes websites. Bee archive project is a chrome extension that allows you to make an encrypted backup of any viewed pages in Bee. The extension will have the following functionality:
- Create an account for a user of the Bee network with access by seed phrase or equivalent
- Ability to create a complete copy of the viewed browser page to save in Bee
- Encryption of saved pages using a seed phrase
- Ability to view and manage saved copies of pages
Grant amount: 500 DAI/BZZ
Twelve nodes of Fair data principles, art installation by Egor Kraft
The dark side of the Data economy has become omnipresent and well observed over the course of last years. Perhaps now, we may ponder on new kinds of future platforms collectively designed and hosted by new digitally sovereign societies. One of those is the concept of Fair Data as a research and action unit, a platform, certificate and a movement.
With Swarm we’re building a base layer technology that can also enable social change where we move from a zero-sum based game of surveillance capitalism to a fair data society that respects human rights and digital integrity also in the digital world. For social change to happen, there also needs a shift in awareness. This is why we believe that Swarm also needs to support efforts that communicate new ideas and values in a timeless matter. Art and fiction inspire new ideas that also inspire new technology development. We are on the cusp of a new world and the dialogue needs to be diverse.
Egor Kraft is a forward thinking and internationally recognised artist tackling questions of self-sovereignty, data, effects of increased digitalisation of our reality and interaction between the physical and virtual. The purpose of the Twelve nodes installation is to start and facilitate a wider dialogue on the importance of shared ‘moral overarching truths’ needed for democracy to not slide into tyranny. The truths can to some extent be embodied in the fair data society’s principles and can act as ethical guidelines to the growing ecosystem on Swarm.
Grant amount: 10k DAI/BZZ
Swarm and the potential for a Data Commons, research by Trilateral
Swarm allows a community of nodes (users) to manage data storage as a shared and collective resource. Commons discourse can help identify and describe models of community governance. The distributed, peer to peer architecture of Swarm lends itself to being conceived of as a data storage commons. The dilemmas associated with the shared use and governance of network storage can be approached as a commons dilemma, with successful governance strategies required to be built on principles of the commons. For instance, the principles may be extended not only to network storage, but the storage-related metadata generated by the network, prescribing instruments for the collective benefit of the creation of that data.
The research will develop guiding principles for a commons approach to distributed file storage. The approach will be based on the swarm base layer of the Ethereum stack. The research will detail (in the form of a research paper) the fundamental requirements for a data commons approach, outlining the specific requirements needed to ensure alignment with both the fair data principles and existing principles based personal data frameworks, such as the general data protection regulation. The paper will allow developers of the swarm stack and associated applications to apply data commons principles to their application and protocol development processes, especially as they relate to the ongoing development of the Swarm ecosystem. Trilateral will lead the research exercise by drawing on our expertise in data protection regulation, human rights, ethics, data commons, and existing methodologies for privacy, ethical and legal impact assessments.
Trilateral Research has a long record of successful project involvement on the privacy, social, ethical, and legal impacts of new data practices and innovation. We take a co-design approach to rigorous and responsible research and development, underpinned by an emphasis on privacy and security by design. Trilateral has worked on 55 EU projects and coordinated 6.
Grant amount: 7.5k DAI/BZZ
Boma
Boma is a blockchain enabled privacy conscious event programming app for iOS and Android servicing Shambala Festival, Greenbelt Festival, Cheltenham Jazz Festival, The Association of Independent Festivals and Nyeye Nyege Festival in Uganda.
Boma apps currently rely on localstorage and icloud / google backup facilities to persist data. However, Boma wants to provide a decentralised way to store data such as user settings, favourite performances, and ticketing information and enable interoperability between the various event’s apps using Swarm.
“Initially we propose to build a simple utility to enable us to back up and restore browser localstorage into swarm using encrypted data. We want to move away from google / apple backups to enable the user to retain data sovereignty. We want to provide a way that is cross platform interoperable and gives the user the ability to store and use their own data.
To achieve this, we will create a library using Swarm to encrypt, backup, store, retrieve and decrypt user specific data currently only held on each user’s device. “
Can’t wait to be swarming on festivals when lockdowns ease!
Grant amount: 9k DAI/BZZ
Giveth 2 Dapp
Giveth is a fundraising platform for non-profits, that allows the use of creative cryptoeconomic solutions for funding Public Goods. If you’re longer in the Ethereum space, chances are you have heard of Giveth. To our knowledge, Giveth has been the first supporting decentralised non-profit projects towards making the world a better place, and more decentralised. In fact, it has been essential also for Swarm to receive donations in the past and to announce first ecosystem collaborations. See ongoing Swarm on activities on Giveth here.
So, it makes sense that when we saw that Giveth wanted to make the first step towards a dapp on Swarm, it made our day.
Grant amount: 1k DAI/BZZ
Native integration with Fairdrop + Swarm in DAppNode
Fairdrop (decentralised “wetransfer” on Swarm by Fair data society) is arguably one of the most private ways to share files. Nevertheless, ISPs and other global actors might be able to know *who* is using Fairdrop, even if they can’t know what they are sharing. In order to make it easier for anyone to have their own copy of Fairdrop, run locally, we plan to integrate Fairdrop + Swarm in DAppNode.
DAppNode’s mission is to empower anyone, regardless of their technical ability, to be the owner of their own interactions with the web3, to never have to depend on 3rd parties to use any decentralized service, to advance towards full sovereignty in a new, human-centric internet. We believe that for this reason, it is a perfect companion for Fairdrop, allowing anyone, from current decentralization enthusiasts to journalists, activists or any conscious citizen to be able to store, share and receive completely privately.
For that, integration with Swarm will also be made native in DAppNode, allowing fairdrop or any other package to leverage the Bee node for any application.
Grant amount: 10k DAI/BZZ
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This wraps up our first batch of grants. Hope you’re as excited as we are and we’re looking forward to updating you on their progress on our future events.
Next grants announcement at Swarm Beta
Swarm is unstoppable in getting to 1.0 and the next major release is scheduled for Sept. 28th. At the event we’ll be releasing a bunch of things, and also announce new grants. We hope you join us in enabling a fair data economy! RSVP for the Swarm Beta event here.
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