Mapping the NGI Funding Landscape for Open-Source Identity Infrastructure

This is a snapshot of the Next Generation Internet (NGI) and NLnet funding ecosystem as it stood on 2026-05-30, from a single-pass survey against each programme's own page, not a rolling index, and programme deadlines, cadences, and open/closed status move faster than a static page can track. In that landscape, Solidus's own position is narrow and stated plainly: an applicant, with one proposal drafted and nothing awarded.

Why this landscape matters to open-source identity infrastructure

NGI is the umbrella under which the European Commission has funded internet-commons research since 2018, mostly disbursed through NLnet's small-grant mechanism (typically €5K–€50K, non-dilutive, no equity taken). Decentralized identity has had a home here before. NGI Assure funded identity and data-integrity work directly until it closed in 2024. NGI Sargasso's final open call listed "Digital Credentials" as a named topic before winding down. NGI TrustChain's first call was literally titled "Decentralised Digital Identity" before its five calls all closed and the programme held its final event in February 2026. None of these three is currently open: they are cited here because their existence and their closure are both part of reading the present landscape correctly: programmes that once matched this work by name have already run their course.

The current landscape, as of the survey date

Six programmes stood out as of 2026-05-30, with meaningfully different degrees of fit to open-source decentralized-identity infrastructure:

  • NGI Zero Commons Fund (NLnet), the broadest current match: open source, digital commons, open standards, bi-monthly cutoffs. This is the fund Solidus has drafted a proposal against, covering the SDK, did:solidus, and the BBS+ stack as open-commons R&D. A proposal is not a result; no decision had been reached at survey time.
  • NGI Transoceanic (a transatlantic EU–US consortium, not NLnet), its third open call names "Electronic Identities — next-generation, open, and trusted digital identity solutions" as a verbatim priority topic, funded up to roughly €150K on the EU side, and requires an EU+US partnership. This is the closest name-match in the entire survey to what Solidus builds, and it was un-tracked before this survey, call dates were listed only as "to be confirmed."
  • Sovereign Tech Standards (Sovereign Tech Agency, Germany, NGI-adjacent): a roughly €60K/year stipend for an open-source maintainer to do standards work at bodies like W3C, IETF, or ISO. Its first cohort closed 2026-05-19, ahead of this survey; a second cohort had not yet been announced.
  • Restack (an NLnet-led consortium), positioned as a roughly €10M Horizon Europe successor to the NGI Zero family, approved in February 2026 with calls described as opening "in coming weeks" but not yet live at survey time.
  • NLnet Open Social Fund, a separate NLnet theme fund (distinct from NGI Fediversity) for ActivityPub and Fediverse-decentralization work, with a plausible but secondary identity angle (portable DIDs, credential-based reputation).
  • NGI Zero Review, not a grant but a free third-party security/privacy/accessibility audit, available only to existing NGI grantees, and sunsetting around July 2026. It is listed here because it is the mechanism the survey identifies for a future audit if a grant is won, not evidence that one has been.

Where Solidus actually stands

To be direct about the one fact this page must not blur: Solidus has applied, not received. The Commons Fund proposal is drafted; the Transoceanic and Restack calls were, at survey time, not yet open to apply to at all. Nothing in this landscape has converted into a grant, a cohort seat, or an audit result yet.

The structural read

The pattern across the survey is a shift, not just a list. The identity-specific programmes that existed inside the original NGI Zero structure, Assure, Sargasso's credentials track, TrustChain, have already closed, and the newer vehicles replacing them (Restack, Sovereign Tech Agency's cohort programmes) are less likely to name "decentralized identity" as a standalone line item and more likely to fund it as one instance of a broader open-standards or digital-commons mandate. Reading this landscape correctly means tracking it by funding mechanism and by implementer, not only by whether a programme's title happens to say "identity."

This funding landscape sits alongside the standards-participation strategy described in /vision/standards-before-press, and alongside the regulatory backdrop, the eIDAS 2.0 mandate driving much of this funding's urgency, covered in /vision/eidas-2-the-regulation-that-built-our-market.

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Mapping the NGI Funding Landscape for Open-Source Identity Infrastructure · Solidus