TrustChain

**About Trustchain** The digital era and existence of the internet is revolutionizing our health, our wellbeing, our social life, our education, our information. Spirit of the first-generation Internet based on individual freedom and material progress. Nowadays, essential ethical and democratic principles that should underline this technology are at stake. The design choices of the past based on a mix of centralized networked and device-based technologies, makes today’s Internet obsolete when it comes to empowering all citizens to act in/for the green and digital transitions, as well as to create a more resilient, inclusive and democratic society, addressing inequalities and human rights, prepared and responsive to threats and disasters. Under the European Commission Next Generation Internet initiative, TrustChain is launched in January 2023. TrustChain aims to create a portfolio of Next Generation Internet protocols and an ecosystem of decentralized software solutions that reach the highest standards of humanity such as those chartered by the United Nations including the respect of human rights, ethics, sustainability, energy efficiency, our care for the environment and our respect for the World’s cultural history. TrustChain will tackle several challenges pertaining to trustworthy and reliable digital identity, to resilient, secure and reliable data pathways, to economics and trading of data, to energy efficiency for data storage, transport and sharing, to seamless services and data flows. A new trustworthy data governance and sharing model will be developed in line with the European regulatory framework and taking into account European values while ensuring Trusted Data Ecosystems. Through its five Open Calls, TrustChain will support top Internet innovators (academies and high-tech companies) with a total amount of 8,8 M€ distributed with focus on topics of the (1) Decentralized digital identity, (2) the User privacy and data governance, (3) Economics and democracy, and (4) Multi chains support for NGI protocols, and (5) Green scalable and sustainable DLTs. Overall the purpose of the 5 open calls is to: - Attract and engage as much Blockchain & DLTs technology researchers, startups and SMEs; - Leverage the development of new research fields and innovative products/ service applications; - Build upon existing tools; - Implement and feedback on Project new business models; - Boost the innovative research topics, experiments and applications, broadening the portfolio of the TrustChain offers; - Increase outreach towards new regions and enhance the TrustChain concept footprint towards exploitation; - Ensure that potential market barriers are removed through validated demonstrations; In the 9 months long implementation timeframe for each Open Call, the innovators will receive funding and support in terms of mentoring and coaching as well as adequate implementation of the human-centric approach. More specifically, the first two months will be dedicated to the users requirements with the involvement of end users and innovators whereas the last 2 months will be dedicated to testing and validation by early adopters. All the innovators will spread the word on the latest TrustChain advances in top events as well as become part of a wider ecosystem of experts, investors and innovators alike.