About

Origins

In June 2016, an early group of builders, archivists, policymakers, and journalists gathered for the first Decentralized Web Summit within the columns of the Internet Archive headquarters in San Francisco, home to one of the world’s largest digital libraries. Its founder, Brewster Kahle, issued a challenge to these early developers: let's use decentralized technologies to “Lock the Web Open,” this time for good.

2016's gathering was a call to the Dreamers to build a better Web.

2018's Decentralized Web Summit – Global Visions / Working Code is a demonstration of how far we have come. With scores of prototypes and apps now built with decentralized protocols, it's time to collaborate, communicate and engage the communities who need these tools the most.

Mission

Global Vision

Today, the Web we use is not private, secure, reliable or free from censorship. It lacks a memory, a way to preserve our digital record through time. By distributing data, processing and hosting across millions of computers worldwide with no centralized control, a new Decentralized Web has the potential to be open, empowering users around the globe to control and protect their own personal data better than before.

 

 

New Connections

Building a Decentralized Web will take Web architects, activists, artists, archivists and stakeholders from around the world. Together, how can we create infrastructure and tools we can trust? At the Decentralized Web Summit 2018, we’re convening diverse stakeholders to learn from each other. When we succeed, who will benefit? Can we come to a common understanding of what we mean by the Decentralized Web?

Strategies for Scale

The Decentralized Web is expanding every day. How can we harness that momentum to build something millions of people can actually use? What code is working and what’s still missing? Can we work together to identify and tackle the roadblock issues? Organized by the Internet Archive, this two-day Summit seeks to align the values of the Open Web with principles of decentralization. To generate code that supports privacy, security, self-sovereign data and digital memory.