NGI TrustChain Open Call

Funding for projects based in European Union and Horizon Europe member countries, which support the European Commission’s Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative.

TrustChain launched in 2023 under the European Commission’s Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative. The organisation aims to create a portfolio of NGI protocols and an ecosystem of decentralised software solutions. 

TrustChain has launched four open calls targeted towards developers, innovators, researchers, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and entrepreneurs working on NGI relevant topics, and will provide grants to fund these projects. The fifth and final call focuses on green, scalable and sustainable Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs).

TrustChain seeks innovative proposals that will employ digital identities, trustworthy data and existing novel mechanisms, in order to achieve high energy efficiency and optimisation of particular DLTs. All projects that can be seen to contribute to the NGI-TrustChain vision are welcomed, regardless of the academic field. Applicants are also able to align their projects with those successful in previous calls. Selected projects will last for a duration of nine months.

Projects should implement techniques such as:

• Development of energy-efficient consensus mechanisms.
• Introduction of sharding for scalable decentralisation.
• Optimisation of data management for energy reduction.
• Enabling DLT functionality without consensus. 
• Ensuring interoperability and scalability.
• Development of energy-efficient applications. 

To develop such mechanisms, applicants are requested to address current challenges, such as:

• Energy-intensive consensus mechanisms.
• Trustworthiness vs efficiency trade-off.
• On-chain/off-chain data management and transmission.
• Integration of digital identities.
• Compatibility with existing DLT infrastructure.
• Oracles and cross-chain bridges.
• Oracles for green certificates.
• Energy-efficient trusted enclaves.
• Energy-efficient decentralised physical infrastructure networks (DePINs).
• Token strategies for sustainable goals. 
• Balance between privacy and sustainability.
• Adaptation to the circular economy and waste reduction. 
• Efficient use of underutilised resources.