A curated list of peer-to-peer, federated, and local-first protocols, applications, and developer tools. Thanks to the Decentralized Web Summit for the inspiration.

Scope. This list is about the decentralized web: peer-to-peer protocols, federated applications, and distributed data — projects where decentralization is the core design, not a feature or a marketing claim.

Out of scope:

• Cryptocurrencies, blockchains, tokens, NFTs, DAOs, DeFi and other finance-related projects. (Merely using an existing blockchain as a neutral public record, with no token of its own, can qualify, see the contributing guide below.)
• AI tools, agent frameworks, and "decentralized AI" platforms.
• Commercial products without significant open-source or decentralized relevance.

Please read CONTRIBUTING.md before submitting a project.

Entries marked Dormant still work but their source repository has had no activity for over 2 years — the tag states the measured date. Dead projects live in the Graveyard section at the bottom.

A quick taxonomy — four words that often get mixed up:

• Federated — many independently operated servers interoperating through a shared protocol; you choose which server to trust instead of trusting a central one. (Mastodon, Matrix, XMPP)
• Peer-to-peer — participants exchange data directly, with no single authoritative application server; trackers, bootstrap nodes or relays may assist. (BitTorrent, Scuttlebutt, Tox)
• Distributed — only means data or computation is spread across many machines; centralized services can be distributed too. A distributed system is decentralized only when no single party controls it.
• Local-first — the authoritative copy of your data lives on your own device, and the network is optional: sync happens when connectivity allows. (software built with Automerge, Yjs or Willow)

• Decentralization at a Glance
• Choose by Goal
• Protocols and Technologies
  • Federation & Social Protocols
  • P2P Networking & Data Transfer
  • Application Frameworks
  • Local-first & CRDTs
  • Mesh & Off-grid Networking
  • Identity & Personal Data
• Applications
  • Social Networks (Fediverse & beyond)
  • Media Streaming & Publishing
  • P2P Messaging
  • Code & Collaboration
  • File Storage, Sync and Sharing
  • Databases
  • Anonymity & Overlay Networks
  • Web, Search and Archiving
  • Identity & Key Management
• Graveyard
• Other Related Lists
• Contributors

A few representative systems — deliberately not all of them — classified on the axes that decide who controls what. Decentralization is not automatically privacy, anonymity, resilience, or censorship resistance: each of those must be designed for separately, and the sibling list awesome-resilient-communication (under Other Related Lists below) covers several of them in depth.

✓ holds by design · ◐ partial or configuration-dependent · ✗ not provided — and in the relay column, ✓ means the system works with no centrally operated helpers at all

The conditional cells, from each project's own documentation:

• Mastodon and Matrix — your data lives on whichever server hosts your account, so full control means self-hosting; Mastodon migration moves followers but not posts, and Matrix replicates room history to every participating homeserver.
• Matrix relays — nothing in the protocol requires it, but matrix.org remains the default homeserver and identity server for a large share of users.
• Bluesky — personal data servers are practical to self-host, but Relays and AppViews are resource-intensive, so the network in practice depends on a few operators.
• Nostr — identity is a client-side keypair, but notes persist only on the relays that accept them; any relay works and clients publish to several at once, yet some relay is always required.
• Delta Chat — rides on ordinary e-mail, so any provider works, but some provider is always in the loop and sees message metadata.
• Scuttlebutt — feeds replicate between mutual follows over LAN or the internet; optional pub and room servers only aid discovery.
• IPFS — content-addressing removes location trust, but content stays retrievable only while some node pins it, and default configurations bootstrap through project-run nodes.
• BitTorrent and Syncthing — swarms bootstrap through trackers or DHT bootstrap nodes; Syncthing's default discovery and relay servers are project-run but self-hostable, and pure-LAN sync needs neither.
• Radicle — repositories are local Git; sharing them requires seed nodes your peers can reach.
• Solid — the specification is stable on paper (protocol 0.10) but deployments remain small.

Starting points, not endorsements — the trade-off column is the part to read twice.

Protocols, stacks and building blocks for a decentralized web.

• ActivityPub - W3C Recommendation (2018) for federated social networking, defining server-to-server and client-to-server APIs; the protocol behind most of the Fediverse.
• AT Protocol - The Authenticated Transfer Protocol, an open protocol for decentralized social networking with portable identities (DIDs), powering Bluesky; global views of the network rely on resource-intensive Relay and AppView services.
• ForgeFed - ActivityPub extension for federating software forges: a server-to-server API for pull requests, forks, and subscriptions; implemented experimentally by Forgejo.
• Matrix - Open specification for federated, persistent communication rooms whose history is replicated across every participating homeserver rather than owned by one; bridges connect it to other chat networks.
• Nostr - Minimal protocol in which cryptographically signed notes are published to any number of independent relays; identity is a client-side keypair, and removing content requires every relay carrying it to cooperate.
• Scuttlebutt - Offline-first gossip protocol that replicates signed append-only feeds between mutual follows over LAN or internet; no servers are required, though optional pub and room servers aid discovery.
• XMPP - The Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol, an open IETF standard for federated messaging with thousands of independently operated servers.

• BitTorrent - The dominant peer-to-peer file-distribution protocol, specified as open BEPs; swarms find each other through trackers or the Mainline DHT.
• cjdns - Encrypted IPv6 overlay network with distributed hash table routing.
• GNUnet - A network protocol stack for building secure, distributed, and privacy-preserving applications, with strong roots in academic research.
• Hypercore Protocol - A fast, scalable, and secure peer-to-peer protocol for everyone (evolution of the Dat Protocol), now maintained by Holepunch as part of the Pear runtime.
• IPFS - The InterPlanetary File System, a content-addressed, peer-to-peer protocol for storing and sharing data; content stays retrievable only while some node pins it, and default nodes bootstrap through project-run infrastructure.
• IPLD - A content-addressed linked-data model underlying IPFS and related systems.
• Iroh - A toolkit for direct peer-to-peer connectivity: QUIC hole-punching, content-addressed blobs and document sync.
• libp2p - A modular peer-to-peer networking stack, the connectivity layer used by IPFS and many other decentralized projects.
• Named Data Networking - A content-centric Internet architecture with active research implementations such as NFD.
• WebRTC - W3C Recommendation (2021, with companion IETF RFCs) for direct browser-to-browser media and data channels; peers still need an application-provided signaling channel and commonly STUN/TURN servers to establish connections.
• Yggdrasil - An end-to-end encrypted IPv6 overlay network that scales without central coordination.

• Fedify - A TypeScript framework for building federated server applications on ActivityPub.
• Freenet - A decentralized, real-time platform for building and running applications entirely on a peer-to-peer network; a ground-up rewrite by the original Freenet founder (the classic Freenet lives on as Hyphanet).
• Holochain - A peer-to-peer protocol for data sharing and integrity, backed by authoritative hashchains for data provenance.
• Pear - A peer-to-peer application runtime and deployment system built on Hypercore, by Holepunch.
• Spritely - Distributed object-capability framework (Goblins, OCapN) for building the decentralized social web.
• Veilid - An open-source, peer-to-peer, mobile-first networked application framework with strong privacy, by Cult of the Dead Cow.
• WebXDC - A specification for portable web apps that run inside chat messages and sync over any transport, with no server of their own.

• Automerge - A CRDT library for building local-first, collaborative applications that sync without a central server.
• Earthstar - An offline-first, distributed, syncable, embedded document database for use in peer-to-peer software.
• m-ld - Library enabling consistent, zero latency read and write of shared information, using RDF (JSON-LD) and CRDTs. Dormant (no repository activity since 2024-08)
• p2panda - A collection of building blocks for local-first, peer-to-peer applications.
• Willow - A protocol for synchronisable, multi-writer data stores, by the authors of Earthstar.
• Yjs - A high-performance CRDT for building collaborative, offline-first applications.

Listed here for their who-controls-the-network role; the sibling list awesome-resilient-communication covers off-grid operation in depth.

• LibreMesh - A modular framework for creating OpenWrt/LEDE-based firmwares for wireless mesh nodes.
• Meshtastic - Open-source, off-grid mesh communication over inexpensive LoRa radios; channel encryption defaults to a well-known shared key, with private channels and public-key direct messages available.
• Reticulum - Cryptography-based networking stack for building resilient networks over almost any medium: LoRa, packet radio, WiFi or TCP/IP. Released under a custom non-OSI license with field-of-use restrictions.

• Decentralized Identifiers - W3C standard for globally unique, cryptographically verifiable identifiers that need no central registry.
• Decentralized Web Nodes - DIF draft specification for personal datastores that sync between a user's own nodes with built-in permissions. Dormant (no repository activity since 2024-09)
• Encrypted Data Vaults - A privacy-respecting mechanism for storing, indexing, and retrieving encrypted data at a storage provider.
• remoteStorage - An open protocol for decoupling data from apps.
• Solid - Specification for personal data pods with app-agnostic access control, based on Linked Data principles; the published protocol is at version 0.10, but real-world deployment remains small.

Things built with decentralized protocols and technologies.

• Akkoma - Fork of Pleroma, a lightweight federated social networking server on ActivityPub.
• Bluesky - Social network built on the AT Protocol; personal data servers are self-hostable, but in practice the network depends on resource-intensive Relay and AppView services that few parties other than Bluesky operate.
• Bonfire - Modular open-source framework and application for building federated digital spaces.
• BookWyrm - Federated social reading and book reviews, on ActivityPub.
• diaspora* - Federated social network with its own protocol, organized around aspects (contact groups); one of the oldest running Fediverse projects (2010).
• Friendica - Federated social platform that speaks several protocols at once — ActivityPub, diaspora*, and others — acting as a bridge between networks.
• GoToSocial - Lightweight ActivityPub social network server.
• Hubzilla - Federated publishing and social platform built on the Zot protocol, whose nomadic identity lets an account and its data move or mirror between servers.
• Lemmy - Federated link aggregator and discussion forum, on ActivityPub.
• Manyverse - Mobile client for Secure Scuttlebutt, an offline-first gossip protocol that syncs social feeds over LAN or internet; content can be encrypted, but the social graph and metadata are public by design.
• Mastodon - Decentralized, federated alternative to Twitter.
• Mbin - Federated content aggregator and microblogging platform (community fork of /kbin), on ActivityPub.
• Misskey - Feature-rich federated microblogging platform on ActivityPub (Sharkey is a popular fork).
• Mobilizon - A federated tool that helps you find, create and organise events.
• PieFed - Federated link aggregator and discussion forum with a focus on moderation tooling, on ActivityPub.
• Pixelfed - Federated photo sharing, on ActivityPub.
• Pleroma - A federated social networking platform.
• Socialhome - Decentralized and federated profile builder with social networking features.

• Castopod - Self-hosted podcast hosting with ActivityPub federation.
• Funkwhale - A community-driven project that lets you listen and share music and audio within a decentralized, open network.
• Mediagoblin - A free software media publishing platform alternative to Flickr, YouTube, SoundCloud.
• Owncast - Self-hosted live video streaming with ActivityPub federation.
• PeerTube - Decentralized federated video streaming platform using P2P, ActivityPub and WebTorrent.
• WriteFreely - Minimalist federated blogging platform, on ActivityPub.

• Berty - Peer-to-peer messenger over libp2p with Bluetooth LE and local-network proximity transports, requiring no accounts or servers; still beta software.
• BitMessage - Encrypted message broadcasting in which every node relays every message, hiding who reads what; the network still runs, but the reference client's last release was in 2018.
• Briar - Messenger that syncs over Tor when the internet works and over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi when it does not; relays only between mutual contacts, not strangers. Audited by Cure53 (2017).
• Cwtch - Metadata-resistant group messenger built on Tor onion services, with untrusted relay servers for offline delivery.
• Delta Chat - Decentralized messenger with end-to-end encryption that works over the existing e-mail network.
• Jami - Distributed peer-to-peer communication (text, voice and video), free and open-source.
• Retroshare - Establish encrypted connections between you and your friends to create a network of computers, and provides various distributed services: forums, channels, chat, mail.
• Ricochet Refresh - Maintained fork of Ricochet in which every user is a Tor onion service, leaving no server-side metadata; the original was audited by NCC Group (2016), before the v3 onion migration.
• SimpleX Chat - Private messenger without any user identifiers, using decentralized relay servers.
• Tox - Serverless peer-to-peer encrypted messaging protocol and implementations (its own documentation notes it has not been independently audited).

• Darcs - Free and open source cross-platform distributed version control system.
• Forgejo - Self-hosted software forge (Gitea fork) implementing ActivityPub-based federation via ForgeFed.
• Pijul - A free and open source (GPL2) distributed version control system.
• Radicle - Secure peer-to-peer code collaboration without intermediaries.

• instant.io - Streaming file transfer over WebTorrent, entirely in the browser with nothing to install.
• magic-wormhole - Transfers files between two computers using short one-time codes over a PAKE-encrypted connection; a public rendezvous server (self-hostable) assists the handshake.
• OnionShare - Hosts the selected files as a hidden service on the user's computer.
• Peergos - End-to-end encrypted, peer-to-peer file storage, sharing and communication network.
• Perkeep - Personal, content-addressed storage system designed for lifelong data archiving independent of any provider; development continues at a slow pace.
• Syncthing - Continuous peer-to-peer file synchronization that works fully on a LAN with no internet; relay and discovery servers are optional and self-hostable.
• Tahoe-LAFS - A private, encrypted file storage system that decentralizes data across multiple servers.
• Tribler - Privacy enhanced BitTorrent client with P2P content discovery.
• WebTorrent - An in-browser torrenting that works without requiring users to install anything extra.

• GUN - Real-time graph database that syncs between JavaScript peers, in practice through relay "super peers"; conflict resolution is eventually consistent, with optional encryption via its SEA module.
• OrbitDB - Peer-to-peer database engine of append-only, CRDT-merged logs replicated over IPFS pubsub; eventually consistent, with availability depending on which peers are online.

• Hidden Lake - Anonymous friend-to-friend network built on queue-based messaging, designed to resist traffic analysis even by a global observer.
• Hyphanet - Formerly Freenet, a network aimed at activists and people living in repressive regimes (the new Freenet is a separate rewrite by the same founder). It uses a web of trust in high security mode, which makes users on the network very difficult to detect.
• I2P - Decentralized garlic-routing overlay for hidden services and peer-to-peer applications; recent academic work documents design weaknesses across its implementations.
• Tor - Onion-routing anonymity network, the base for onion services and the pluggable-transport ecosystem; repeatedly audited (most recently Cure53, 2023) with a publicly tracked vulnerability history.

• Agregore - A minimal web browser for the distributed web. Supports IPFS, Hypercore Protocol + more.
• Cactus Comments - A federated comment system for the open web built on Matrix.
• Ceno Browser - Censorship-resistant mobile browser that shares and retrieves web content through the Ouinet peer-to-peer cache.
• IPWB - An interplanetary wayback machine.
• yacy - Distributed Peer-to-Peer Web Search Engine and Intranet Search Appliance.

• Dark Crystal - Set of protocols, libraries, techniques and guidelines for secure management of sensitive data such as cryptographic keys.
• Keyoxide - Decentralized, cryptographic identity proofs; a self-hostable Keybase alternative.
• OpenTimestamps - A standard format for blockchain timestamping.

Projects that shaped the decentralized web but are no longer maintained. Kept for the historical record. Domains of dead projects are sometimes squatted or hijacked — where that happened, links point to archived copies.

• AvionDB - Mongodb-like database on top of OrbitDB. Discontinued
• Backfeed - A technology to enable decentralized and user-owned governance and reputation management for a community. Discontinued
• Beaker - A peer-to-peer Web browser, made for users to run applications independently of hosts. Discontinued
• BigchainDB - A scalable database that layers blockchain technology over decentralized data. Discontinued
• Bit451 - Decentralized / distributed anonymous peer-to-peer media network. YouTube meets BitTorrent meets Bitcoin. Discontinued
• bitnation - The World's First Virtual Nation – a Blockchain Jurisdiction. Discontinued (domain no longer controlled by the project; link goes to an archived copy).
• CacheP2P - A distributed caching platform. Discontinued
• Cryptosphere - An open-source P2P web application platform for decentralized, privacy-preserving software. Discontinued
• Dat Base - Future-friendly apps for your research data pipeline. Discontinued (the Dat project wound down).
• Dat Medium - A markdown blog system for Beaker inspired by Medium. Discontinued
• disaster.radio - A disaster-resilient communications network powered by the sun. Discontinued
• ferment - Peer-to-peer audio publishing and streaming application. Discontinued (repository deleted).
• git-ssb - Decentralized Git repo hosting and issue tracking on secure-scuttlebutt. Discontinued (repository archived in 2018).
• IPDB - A federated database network built on BigchainDB and IPFS. It is maintained by a network of caretakers around the world, at least half of which are nonprofits. Discontinued
• Jolocom - A decentralised digital identity for everyone. Discontinued (domain squatted; link goes to an archived copy).
• LevelNews - A leftist news aggregator designed for an open web, and dedicated to journalism without censorship. Discontinued
• libdweb - A community effort to implement experimental APIs enabling dweb protocols in Firefox. Discontinued
• Mediachain - A media library built on IPFS that makes it easy to publish, track, and discover creative work. Discontinued (acquired by Spotify in 2017).
• Onename - Domain registrar for Blockstack. Discontinued
• OpenBazaar - Marketplace, with store fronts and moderators. Discontinued (shut down in 2021).
• ORC - The Onion Router Cloud, a distributed, anonymous, object storage platform owned and operated by all of us. Discontinued
• Patchwork - A decentralized messaging and sharing app built on top of Secure Scuttlebutt. Discontinued (repository archived; successor: Manyverse).
• PeerPad - A realtime P2P collaborative editing tool, powered by IPFS and CRDTs. Discontinued
• Ricochet - Completely anonymous and potentially metadata-free chat Discontinued
• Rotonde - Decentralized social network defined as a shared JSON specification, whose clients ran over the Dat protocol; it faded when the Dat ecosystem wound down. Discontinued
• Samizdat - A platform for the self-hosted, peer-to-peer, cryptographically-secured internet. Discontinued
• Shift - Decentralized hosting infrastructure for dApps. Discontinued
• StrongLink - A searchable, syncable, content-addressable notetaking system Discontinued
• Swarm - A distributed storage platform and content distribution service of the Ethereum stack; the original Go implementation was archived, but the project remains active through the Bee implementation. Excluded (modern Swarm depends on BZZ token economics, out of scope for this list; kept here for the historical record).
• Tahrir - Encrypted, decentralized Twitter-style microblogging built on a web of trust, by Freenet's founder. Discontinued
• trsst - Encrypted, decentralized Twitter-style microblogging built on syndicated feeds. Discontinued
• Twister - A fully decentralized P2P microblogging platform leveraging the free software implementations of Bitcoin and BitTorrent protocols. Discontinued
• Webnative - JavaScript library that decouples user data from apps and hosts it on IPFS. Discontinued (Fission shut down in 2024).
• Wikipediap2p - A peer-to-peer version of Wikipedia. Discontinued
• ZeroNet - A peer-to-peer web built on the Bitcoin cryptography for addressing, and identity and Namecoin for .bit domains. Discontinued (community fork: zeronet-conservancy).

• alternative-internet - A collection of interesting new networks and technologies aiming at decentralisation.
• Awesome-decentralized-id - Resources for creating a Decentralized, Vendor Agnostic, Self Sovereign Identity System for people organizations and things.
• awesome-offline-knowledge - Content, tools, and infrastructure for keeping knowledge accessible without the internet.
• awesome-resilient-communication - A curated list of open protocols, applications, hardware, and resources for communication during internet shutdowns, disasters, censorship, and off-grid operation.
• delightful-fediverse-apps - A curated list of Fediverse applications and services.

• Contributors

This list is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.