The R&D process typically does take significant time, and regularly is the work is spread over a longer period. Currently about a quarter of the total work hours have been claimed, and outcomes verified. Even though there is a buffer of work done which is done but not yet claimed, that means there are many projects still underway towards completion in the second reporting period.
Obviously some projects are actually completed, and are gaining uptake. The Taler project meanwhile has been granted its own 5+ million euro programme (
https://ngi.taler.net(si apre in una nuova finestra)) and will be introduced not just through a local currency but also as a payment system in Euro, Swiss francs and Forint. Taler has been endorsed by several national banks, as a sane building block for issuing so called CBDC (“Central Bank Digital Currency) as well as allowing for safe digital cash exchange. Nominatim is the default search engine for the widely used OpenStreetMap.org. The GNU Name system was published as RFC 9498 by the Internet Engineering Task Force.
The cluster on W3C ActivityPub has continued to strengthen and is now in fairly broad usage. NGI Zero Entrust provided the seed funding and scaling up for many of the most exciting projects in this space, such as ActivityPods, Bonfire, Castopod, Flarum, ForgeFed, GoToSocial, Funkwhale, Kbin, Keyoxide, Lemmy, Mobilizon, PeerTube, PixelDroid, Pixelfed and Pleroma. This cluster builds on the solid base of previous NGI Zero programmes that funded much of the pioneering efforts in the Fediverse, such as GNU social, Hubzilla, Mastodon, Mobilizon, Owncast, PeerTube, Pixelfed, and Xwiki. The cluster has led to another 3 million euro pilot granted by the European Commission, NGI Fediversity. For most of the efforts which are still ongoing, there are already interesting outcomes available as well - due to the development in public as free and open source software. For the total overview of projects and their current status we point to the annexe.
