2025

Executive Summary

Network Performance, Protocol Reliability, and the Foundation of Decentralized AI

For nearly a decade, libp2p has defined secure, modular, and high-performance peer-to-peer networking, now powering more than 30 major blockchain networks, content distribution systems, IoT deployments, and emerging autonomous compute fabrics. Collectively, these systems secure and move over $100B in value across the open internet. Since the launch of the libp2p Core Fund, the project has entered a new phase of maturity — evolving from a widely adopted networking library into foundational infrastructure for internet-scale, decentralized systems.

Today, libp2p underpins critical production environments including Ethereum light clients, rollup sequencers, and data availability networks such as Celestia, Avail, and EigenDA. Its lightweight, modular design increasingly powers browsers, mobile devices, IoT hardware, and embedded systems, environments where resilience, energy efficiency, and low-latency communication are non-negotiable. This breadth reflects libp2p’s core strength: enabling secure, resilient connectivity across heterogeneous, adversarial, and resource-constrained networks.

This momentum is sustained by a uniquely durable ecosystem: over 10 active implementations maintained across more than a dozen organizations, and a contributor base exceeding 300 active developers per month. Recent advances across QUIC, GossipSub, and WebTransport have materially improved throughput, reliability, and interoperability, enabling wallet-as-a-node architectures, ultra-light RPC networks, and real-time state retrieval for Ethereum’s Portal Network. Interoperability is no longer aspirational; it is becoming a product guarantee.

Looking ahead to 2026, libp2p is consolidating its role as the communication fabric for decentralized AI and autonomous systems. Its trust-minimized messaging layer enables agents to discover one another, negotiate, coordinate, and exchange value without centralized intermediaries supporting agent economies, on-device intelligence, and distributed compute networks. These same properties make libp2p critical for IoT and embedded AI, where secure, private, and resilient peer-to-peer communication must function under unreliable network conditions and constrained hardware.

Across all of this work, privacy-preserving communication and an open, modular, multi-implementation architecture are foundational design constraints, not optional features. This approach benefits the entire Web3 ecosystem by enabling secure, neutral, and interoperable networking primitives that any blockchain can adopt without lock-in.

As more Web3 projects build on libp2p, these guarantees help strengthen cross-chain interoperability, developer trust, and long-term resilience across the broader decentralized ecosystem. Reducing metadata leakage, supporting confidential networking, and maintaining neutral, shared ownership across ecosystems are essential to libp2p’s long-term relevance and trust.

At the frontier, libp2p continues to explore high-upside domains through applied research and proof-of-concept deployments, including next-generation P2P primitives for financial coordination, real-time cross-chain communication, and post-quantum interoperability. These efforts ensure that as decentralized finance, modular blockchains, and autonomous systems evolve, the underlying network fabric remains robust, future-proof, and interoperable by default.

Together, these advances position libp2p as the essential network fabric for the next decade of decentralized compute, agent coordination, embedded intelligence, and resilient internet infrastructure, enabling a more open, autonomous, and durable digital world.

ROAD MAP 2026

Direction & Scope

Looking ahead to 2026, the libp2p roadmap is anchored in strengthening privacy-first, confidential networking as a default property of peer-to-peer systems, while deliberately investing in a set of high-upside areas that will shape the next generation of decentralized infrastructure. This includes early work on next-generation P2P primitives for financial coordination and RWA-enabled DeFi, cross-chain communication patterns spanning chains, rollups, and modular stacks, and a more modular developer ecosystem with tooling and extensions that lower the barrier to building and operating P2P applications across environments.

These directions represent areas of active exploration and continued investment. Over the coming weeks, we’ll be working closely with Web3 and AI leaders to pressure-test these themes, refine priorities, and shape how they move from concept to implementation. More concrete milestones and initiatives will follow. Watch this space.

Production & Scale

Areas where we see the strongest pull today and where libp2p is already becoming foundational infrastructure.

AI & Agent Networking
Agent-to-agent communication, coordination, discovery, and trustless transport for autonomous systems.

• Roll out AutoTLS for secure browser-to-browser connectivity
  • Launch improved circuit-relaying for web-to-web connections
  • Integrate browser-native connectivity into at least three major Web3 frameworks

Resilience & Scalability
Operating reliably under real-world conditions: heterogeneous networks, adversarial environments, and internet-scale throughput.

• Ship significant upgrades to Python, C, and Kotlin implementations
  • Improve performance benchmarks for transports (QUIC, WebRTC) by 20%
  • Reach production-readiness certification for at least three new implementations

Research & Community Growth
Sustaining long-term adoption through research, interoperability testing, and an engaged builder community.

• Launch the new libp2p Developer Center with unified docs, tutorials, and API references
  • Publish ten new hands-on examples and cross-language guides
  • Integrate all language-specific docs into a single search and navigation system

Open & Modular Architecture

Maintaining libp2p as shared, extensible open-source infrastructure with multiple implementations and broad ecosystem ownership.

• Achieve Universal Connectivity across all libp2p implementations
  • Publish updated Universal Connectivity specifications
  • Establish a continuous interoperability test suite across all major implementations
  • Reach 95% interop coverage across Go, JS, Rust, Python, C, and Kotlin

2025 achievements

libp2p as a Networking Layer for Ethereum Light Clients

The Portal Network adopted libp2p transports + gossip for ultra-light Ethereum RPC and state retrieval, enabling true mobile and home-run light clients.

libp2p GossipSub Increasingly Adopted in Multiple L2 Rollup Sequencer Networks

libp2p GossipSub is becoming the preferred coordination layer for emerging decentralized sequencer networks and shared sequencing architectures (Espresso, Astria, Radius). OP Stack ecosystems are evaluating and integrating compatible meshes.

Strengthened QUIC + WebTransport availability

QUIC maturation that enables lower latency, significant mobile battery savings, more viable browser/light nodes. WebTransport makes it possible to run native browser-based peer-to-peer connections without extensions, which in turn will enable a “wallet as a node” model.

libp2p powering DA sampling across multiple modular stacks

Celestia, Avail, EigenDA clients leverage on libp2p for sampling, blob propagation, and data retrieval.
libp2p upgrades directly improve DA throughput and user experience of rollup block times.

libp2p’s P2P Test & Interop Framework is now used across ecosystems

libp2p’s test & interop suites are now used across: Ethereum client testing, Polkadot substrate networking validation.Filecoin proofs and retrieval markets. This prevents network forks and cross-client divergence. A full overhaul of transport interop testing now provides 200× faster test execution, significantly improving developer velocity across languages.

Browser-Based P2P Connectivity Through AutoTLS and Web-to-Web Relaying

AutoTLS, native browser-to-browser connectivity, and improved circuit relaying now bring web applications directly into the broader libp2p network. This unlocks true browser-native Web3: frontends that can directly connect to sequencing networks, key-management networks like LIT, and DeFi dApps and exchanges — without centralized RPC or backend intermediaries.
The AutoTLS client specification is also a strong example of collaborative progress across the ecosystem, with the Waku Foundation’s nim-libp2p team contributing directly through PR #682 — a clear illustration of active community participation at the specification layer.

2025 R&D HIGHLIGHTS

GossipSub scaling push (research → practice)

nim-libp2p researchers are driving concrete GossipSub improvements, with coordinated cross-implementation work at libp2p Day @ DevConnect and new interop tests landing in the test-plans suite over the summer. These upgrades are already producing healthier, more predictable GossipSub behavior under high load, which directly strengthens block, attestation, and blob sidecar propagation across Ethereum L1/L2s and major rollups. They also reduce split-brain risks and cross-client regressions when teams upgrade, improving network safety. Celestia’s data availability layer benefits as well: lower latency and reduced bandwidth cost for DAS improve rollup block times and user experience. This research feeds into the next-generation Lean Consensus work, with the revived cpp-libp2p (Qvdrm leanp2p) and upcoming RLNC features pushing throughput ceilings even higher, setting the foundation for future Ethereum scaling.

P2P Network Monitoring

ProbeLab’s network monitoring suite continues to benchmark and validate libp2p across seven major networks [link]— Ethereum, Gnosis, Base, Celestia, Filecoin, Avail, Polkadot, and IPFS — with Optimism underway [link]. This work provides real-time visibility into performance and reliability, allowing teams to detect issues early and prevent network forks or client divergence. The expanded interop matrix now covers Go, JS, Rust, Nim, Zig, Python, C, JVM, .NET, and eth-p2p-z (i.e. zig-libp2p), with new caching and targeted GossipSub interop tests. Transport interop improvements now run at a 200× speed increase while reducing code by 80%, dramatically improving developer velocity and test consistency [link]. Together, these efforts ensure that libp2p implementations behave predictably across languages and ecosystems, strengthening the reliability of every network built on it.

Other networking transports

libp2p supports and advances quic-go and webtransport-go, two foundational transport libraries used by thousands of projects. QUIC improvements deliver ~60% mobile battery savings, significantly improving the viability of light clients, mobile wallets, and Portal Network participation. Faster connection setup and reduced head-of-line blocking improve gossip propagation under congestion. WebTransport progress brings modern, secure browser-to-node
connectivity and is already powering early-stage work in shared sequencing and cross-rollup messaging. These improvements bolster the networking foundations for modular L2/L3 ecosystems, helping ensure credibly neutral and high-performance rollup interoperability.

Libp2p is advancing peer-to-peer networking more broadly by supporting implementations of quic-go and webtransport-go and making them available to the world. These are direct dependencies for go-libp2p, but also used by many other projects:

• Quic-go is an optimized, production-ready implementation of the QUIC protocol with 11.4k dependents. From community benchmarking, QUIC brings ~60% battery savings in mobile contexts - where better energy/perf means more viable light clients and wallets (Android/iOS), healthier Portal Network participation, and broader user-run nodes across web3 communities. Lower connection setup latency and head-of-line blocking avoidance also helps with timely gossip during congestion events.

• Webtransport-go implements the WebTransport protocol (over HTTP/3, on top of quic-go) that currently tracks the IETF draft-02 spec;. It has 434 dependents, 119 known PkgGoDev importers, and a growing ecosystem (though is still under-funded). For the Optimism Superchain and other modular rollup ecosystems, libp2p’s advances in transport reliability (QUIC/WebTransport) and peer discovery directly strengthen cross-rollup communication and shared sequencing—helping ensure modular L2s and L3s remain credibly neutral and performant.

Decentralized AI & Federated Learning

Libp2p’s role in decentralized AI moved from concept to implementation in 2025. New Python-based examples demonstrated how libp2p can power federated learning, collaborative model training, and agent-to-agent coordination without relying on centralized parameter servers. These reference implementations serve both as research tools and as practical blueprints for privacy-preserving, resilient AI systems, aligning naturally with emerging needs in edge computing, on-device intelligence, and autonomous agents. Industry & Volunteer Contributions. A defining strength of libp2p in 2025 was the depth and quality of volunteer contributions from industry engineers. Engineers from Huddle01, NVIDIA, DDN (Data Direct Networks), Hypertensor, and Linux Foundation Edge contributed code, design reviews, performance testing, specifications, and real-world operational feedback.

These contributions improved transport efficiency, observability, browser and media-path networking, AI-adjacent workflows, and large-scale deployment resilience. The participation of engineers working on video infrastructure, high-performance computing, enterprise systems, and edge platforms reinforced libp2p’s position as a neutral, production-grade networking layer that meets the needs of both Web3-native and traditional infrastructure organizations. Beyond libp2p itself, the broader transport layer also strengthened. quic-go and webtransport-go, used by thousands of projects beyond the Web3 ecosystem, received critical performance, security, and standards-alignment improvements—benefiting the wider internet as much as decentralized systems.

Implementations

go-libp2p

go-libp2p advanced significantly across browser connectivity, reachability, and performance, reinforcing its role as the most widely deployed libp2p implementation. Stabilized WebRTC-Direct now enables browsers to connect directly to IPFS and libp2p nodes without TLS certificates or domain names, unlocking truly browser-native P2P and making wallet-as-a-node and rich client architectures far more viable. AutoNAT v2 introduced per-address reachability detection (IPv4, IPv6, and browser addresses), improving accuracy for relay selection and connectivity decisions, while shared TCP/WebSocket ports and refined address management increased node efficiency. Across releases [link], substantial work landed on QUIC upgrades, DoS protection (including source address verification and connection rate limiting), WebRTC stability and handshake performance, logging and observability improvements, and ongoing refactors to networking, resource management, and developer APIs. Together, these improvements meaningfully strengthen reliability at scale, improve browser and mobile participation, and continue to mature go-libp2p as a robust foundation for production P2P systems.

rust-libp2p

rust-libp2p continued to solidify as a production-grade, high-performance networking stack, with recent work emphasizing correctness, transport stability, and long-term maintainability. A major milestone was the complete removal of async-std support across all crates in favor of tokio, simplifying the developer experience and aligning with the wider async Rust ecosystem while retaining flexibility for alternative runtimes. Significant improvements landed across core transports (QUIC, TCP, WebSocket, WebRTC, WebTransport, relay), strengthening reliability, configurability, and interoperability—particularly through standardized peer-record handling and safer connection management. GossipSub saw extensive fixes, refactors, and observability enhancements, improving mesh stability, scoring behavior, and performance under load. Alongside API cleanups, improved examples, and ongoing CI and dependency hygiene, these changes further reinforce Rust-libp2p’s role as a dependable foundation for security-sensitive and performance-critical systems such as blockchain clients and decentralized infrastructure.

js-libp2p

js-libp2p made major progress on browser connectivity, solidifying its role as the primary networking stack for decentralized frontends. Browser nodes can now reach far more peers using WebTransport or Secure WebSockets, making true extensionless, serverless Web3 applications possible. The Amino DHT bootstrapper provides a publicly available, production-stress-tested discovery service. Continued work on WebTransport and AutoTLS expands native browser connectivity, while enhanced WebRTC and relay integration allow browsers to dial nodes without CA-signed certificates, improving reliability and reach. These advances unlock new UX paradigms for dapps, enabling frontends, sequencing networks, and key-management layers to connect directly over P2P rather than relying on centralized RPC infrastructure.

nim-libp2p

nim-libp2p advanced steadily as a lightweight, performance-oriented libp2p implementation optimized for constrained and specialized environments. Recent releases delivered GossipSub 1.4 support, AutoTLS for secure WebSocket (WSS), and substantial memory and CPU reductions, reinforcing its suitability for low-overhead nodes. The team made strong progress on QUIC—transitioning from ngtcp2 to lsquic to improve behavior under adverse network conditions—while continuing stabilization and latency improvements. Kademlia DHT implementation progressed across core RPCs with active interop testing, alongside work on IPv6 support, a discovery manager, and a universal connectivity app. Additional efforts included C bindings to expose nim-libp2p functionality, production-readiness refactors, and cross-implementation performance discussions (notably around GossipSub), positioning nim-libp2p as a robust, efficient choice that maintains protocol compatibility across the broader libp2p ecosystem.

py-libp2p “Road to 1.0”

The Python implementation is progressing along its “Road to 1.0,” led by a new maintainer and targeting feature parity with Go, JS, and Rust. A production-ready py-libp2p unlocks powerful capabilities for research, simulation, testing, MEV tooling, and ZK/privacy prototyping within the Ethereum ecosystem, enabling rapid experimentation with new gossip strategies, transport behaviors, and Data Availability Sampling (DAS) techniques before they reach production clients. The team is collaborating with Multiformats, IPLD, Huddle01, NVIDIA, and Starknet contributors to strengthen transport layers, security channels, and interoperability. At the same time, key supporting libraries — py-cid and py-multiformats — are being expanded to better serve researchers, data scientists, and AI/ML engineers building interoperable, multichain, and agent-based applications. Adoption milestones already include federated learning integration with Akave Storage for decentralized model updates, as well as new privacy and ZK tooling developed with Ethereum Foundation contributors and the PLDG team. Together, these advancements position py-libp2p as a critical bridge between decentralized AI, agent-driven systems, and crypto-economic networks, enabling Python developers to build applications that speak the protocols powering today’s leading blockchain ecosystems. py-libp2p is uniquely positioned to bridge agent-driven applications and DeFi/crypto-economics, integrating seamlessly with AI tooling while speaking the protocols of most blockchain networks and DeFi systems.

eth-p2p-z / zig-libp2p

The eth-p2p-z project marks the transition of the Zig implementation of libp2p from @marcopolo's experimental proof-of-concept zig-libp2p implementation to a more full-featured and spec-compliant Zig-based implementation of targeting the Ethereum peer-to-peer stack. It is intentionally scoped for high-performance, Ethereum-specific networking rather than general-purpose use. It focuses on a QUIC-only transport (lsquic/MsQuic-backed) and currently ships with a GossipSub v1.0 router, with additional Ethereum networking protocols planned as the stack evolves. By leveraging Zig’s emphasis on safety, explicitness, and low-level control, eth-p2p-z targets modern desktop and server environments where predictable performance and fine-grained resource management are critical. Like c-libp2p, it is used in the Ethereum Foundation’s Lean Consensus project, where it supports experimentation with minimal, high-throughput P2P networking and tight control over transport and protocol behavior for next-generation consensus research.

dotnet-libp2p Adoption

dotnet-libp2p saw its first production integrations, marking a major expansion into enterprise-grade ecosystems. Shutter Network uses libp2p in its privacy-preserving transaction pool for Gnosis [link], and the OP Consensus Client — a lightweight Optimism integration — now runs on libp2p networking [link]. These are the first real-world .NET deployments of the protocol, signaling new reach into mainstream developer communities and extending libp2p beyond crypto-native languages. This adoption increases ecosystem diversity while strengthening privacy, coordination, and modular client design for high-throughput systems.

c-libp2p

Pier-Two joined the libp2p community this year by contributing a new implemenation written in C. The c-libp2p project is a low-level implementation of the libp2p specification designed for environments where performance, memory efficiency, and portability are critical. It provides the core building blocks needed to embed libp2p networking into embedded systems, IoT devices, and other resource-constrained or specialized environments, while also serving as a lean, FFI-friendly networking layer for higher-level languages. Built with CMake and supporting Linux, macOS, and Windows, c-libp2p emphasizes modularity, correctness, and minimal overhead, bundling well-established cryptographic libraries for security. Its adoption in the Ethereum Foundation’s Lean Consensus project demonstrates its suitability for consensus-layer research and highly controlled networking environments. By extending libp2p into embedded and cross-language domains, c-libp2p broadens the ecosystem’s reach beyond traditional server and client runtimes, enabling decentralized networking at the edge and at the protocol core.

litep2p

litep2p reached a major milestone as a production-ready, streamlined libp2p backend, becoming the default networking implementation in the Polkadot 2503 release. Development has deliberately focused on reliability, protocol correctness, and long-running stability, with extensive fixes across connection management, polling, memory leaks, and transport robustness (TCP, WebSocket, QUIC), alongside steady dependency hygiene. Recent releases strengthened interoperability with the wider libp2p ecosystem through upstream Yamux alignment, multistream-select correctness, improved Bitswap compatibility, and deeper Kademlia support—including provider records, partial query results, multi-DHT connectivity, and richer success/failure events. Security and correctness improvements (Noise identity verification, stricter address checks), performance optimizations, and a narrower, well-defined feature surface reinforce litep2p’s design goal: a minimal, maintainable, and dependable networking stack. Its adoption in critical, consensus-driven infrastructure underscores its role as a stable foundation for environments that prioritize predictability and robustness over feature breadth.

jvm-libp2p

jvm-libp2p made concrete progress across transport maturity, interoperability, and pubsub correctness, strengthening its position within JVM-based ecosystems. Significant QUIC work landed over the period, including a full secure transport implementation, Netty transport refactors, OS-specific bindings, QUIC-v1 configuration fixes, and integration of QUIC into interop clients, moving the implementation toward production readiness. Interoperability improved with added support for libp2p interop tests, WebSocket support in the interop client, and new P2P simulation and topology tooling, while GossipSub gained partial message support to better align with the specification. Additional stability and usability improvements—such as conditional traffic and timeout handlers, Redis test configuration fixes, and clearer build documentation—further improved reliability for long-lived JVM services. Collectively, these changes demonstrate steady momentum toward a robust, spec-aligned libp2p implementation tailored for Java and Kotlin environments.

swift-libp2p

swift-libp2p continued to mature as an experimental yet strategically important implementation targeting Apple platforms and mobile-first environments. Recent work focused on strengthening core correctness, modernizing the codebase for current Swift concurrency models, and improving robustness under real-world mobile constraints. Notable changes include the migration to Swift 6 with explicit sendability and async semantics, persistent PeerIDs (a breaking but foundational step for stable identities), and multiaddr updates to stay aligned with evolving libp2p standards. Connection lifecycle reliability improved through cleanup of idle timeout handling, fixes for dropped data during MSS upgrades, and broader soundness and sanitation improvements. While still early-stage, these changes meaningfully improve safety, correctness, and long-term maintainability, reinforcing swift-libp2p as a critical investment toward bringing libp2p to iOS and macOS clients where energy efficiency, reliability, and platform constraints are paramount.

Contributor Growth & Developer Education

The Libp2p Project grew from 7 active implementations (Jan 2025) to 10 active projects + a universal connectivity workshop tool (June 2025) developed by our Community Architect. Ports of the workshop content from rust-libp2p to other implementations and spoken languages contributions by PLDG members.

The universal connectivity app workshop is being presented in global meetups and workshops to onboard new builders onto libp2p, while Libp2p Days hosted at EthCC (June 2025) and DevConnect (November 2025) are creating a venue to present and workshop libp2p R&D breakthroughs across implementer teams.

Academic Adoption & Education

Libp2p saw growing academic adoption in 2025. Universities across South Asia began incorporating libp2p into curricula spanning engineering, management, and design disciplines, reflecting the technology’s relevance beyond purely technical audiences. Institutions such as Netaji Subhas University of Technology (NSUT) integrated libp2p into coursework and projects focused on distributed systems, decentralized applications, platform design, and emerging digital economies. These programs exposed students to real-world peer-to-peer networking primitives, open-source collaboration, and system-level thinking—preparing the next generation of engineers, product leaders, and designers to build resilient, decentralized infrastructure. This academic momentum complements libp2p’s open development model, ensuring that both research and teaching feed directly back into production systems.

Funding and partnerships

The decentralized web represents one of the most significant technological shifts of our time, and libp2p sits at its foundation. By investing in libp2p, funders are supporting not just a networking library, but the infrastructure that will enable a more open, resilient, and equitable systems and societies.

We invite potential supporters to join us in this mission. Whether through direct funding, in-kind contributions, or strategic partnerships, there are numerous ways to support libp2p's continued development and growth. Big thanks to Ethereum Foundation, Protocol Labs, Optimism, Filecoin, and Celestia for helping fuel this growth.

Together, we can build the networking layer that will power the next generation of decentralized applications and create lasting value for the global internet community.

Funder spotlight

Ethereum Foundation

The Ethereum Foundation continues to be one of libp2p’s most important partners, relying heavily on libp2p for Eth2 networking, Gossipsub improvements, and the 2025 P2P upgrades outlined in the Lean Roadmap. Their sustained investment signals deep confidence in libp2p as core infrastructure for Ethereum’s long-term scalability and resilience. In 2025, the project delivered optimizations to Gossipsub, clearer network health instrumentation, improved developer-facing documentation, and privacy and ZK tooling developed collaboratively with Ethereum Foundation contributors and the PLDG team, directly supporting Ethereum client teams.

Filecoin Foundation

Filecoin is one of the largest real-world deployments of libp2p, stress-testing pubsub, the DHT, and resource management at global scale. Its ProbeLab-powered research loop validates Gossipsub tuning, QUIC performance, mesh behavior, and resource strategies—strengthening the broader networking stack. Filecoin relies on libp2p for retrieval, deal flow, provider discovery, and transport reliability, making it a major driver of production-grade performance. It also pushes interop across Go, Rust, and JS, raising multi-implementation maturity across Web2 and Web3. Through long-term funding of libp2p, IPLD, and multiformats, Filecoin reinforces the open infrastructure powering the decentralized web.

Celestia

Celestia’s modular design depends on libp2p as the backbone of its data availability layer and light node networking. Their support highlights libp2p’s role in enabling modular blockchain architectures. This year’s deliverables included performance tuning for large validator sets, expanded testing for light client data retrieval, and cross-team coordination on networking standards to ensure Celestia’s DA network remains robust as adoption accelerates.

Protocol Labs

As original creators of libp2p, Protocol Labs supports ongoing development across the entire ecosystem: go-libp2p, js-libp2p, rust-libp2p, py-libp2p, interop initiatives, multiformats, IPLD, and ProbeLab’s research into Gossipsub, QUIC, and resource management. Deliverables in 2025 included protocol upgrades, language parity improvements, new interoperability test suites, and research findings that shape next-generation networking performance across the ecosystem.

Optimism

Optimism’s growing adoption of libp2p for Superchain components demonstrates the increasing demand for standardized P2P layers across rollups. Their investment underscores libp2p’s value as a cross-rollup networking standard. Work delivered this year included early sequencing-network prototypes using GossipSub, shared networking components co-developed with OP teams, and exploratory work on rollup-friendly resource management.

CORE FUND

Its mission is to enable a more open, resilient, and user-controlled internet by supporting developers and teams building the fundamental networking primitives for peer-to-peer systems.

Some implementations are maintained by in-kind donations from organizations that use – and benefit from – libp2p, such as Ethereum Foundation, Parity, SigmaPrime, Status.im, Nethermind, ChainSafe, PeerGos, and more. In addition to those who fund dedicated or part-time maintainers, libp2p receives financial support from Protocol Labs, Optimism, Filecoin, Ethereum Foundation, & Celestia. This funding is critical to support implementation & improvement proposal devgrants, ecosystem-growth initiatives like Libp2p Days, project-wide security & network monitoring, and community infrastructure like PLDG.

From 2024-2025, we awarded $3,307,800 in grants across these focus areas:

• Protocol Foundations & Security: Robust, well-maintained libraries and protocol that can serve as reliable foundations for Web3 and beyond.
• Network Measurement and Optimization: Analysis & benchmarking to understand and optimize how peer-to-peer networks behave across diverse environments and use cases.
• Protocol Innovation: Pioneering new approaches to connectivity, security, and performance in distributed systems.
• Education and Community: Cultivating a thriving community of developers, researchers, and organizations building on and with libp2p.

Operational Transparency

2024-2025 Grants Awarded by Focus Area

2025 Grant Awarded: Details 2025 Grants Awarded: Summary

Grant Name
Libp2p Software and Network Maintenance (2 mos in 2025)
Libp2p Planning Sprint (Jan-Feb)
ProbeLab Network Measurements and Tooling Maintenance 2025
Libp2p Community Architect 2025
Quic-go Maintenance and Security 2025 (Mar-Dec)
Go/JS Libp2p Maintenance Mar-Jun 2025 (1 of 2)
Go/JS Libp2p Maintenance Jul-Dec 2025 (2 of 2) - terminated early
Implementing QUIC Stream Resets with Partial Delivery
PLDG Payments to Contributors
Sponsored Projects from Partners

1. Libp2p Software and Network Maintenance (2 months in 2025)

Aim: This grant supported the short-term maintenance of the go-libp2p and js-libp2p codebases from December 2024 through February 2025. The focus was on ensuring stability, usability and security of the two main implementations of the libp2p protocol. The grant aimed to push the maintainers to work more openly, particularly by publishing clearer project roadmaps, documenting priorities and sharing updates with the community in transparent and accessible ways. This proposal was deliberately structured as a short, time-boxed grant to enable continued functionality while preparing for a longer and more strategic funding period.

Intended Impact: The expected impact of this work was continuity of service for developers and networks that rely on libp2p, paired with incremental improvement in openness of communication about priorities. As a widely adopted open-source networking library, libp2p forms a critical foundation for decentralized applications. Ensuring its ongoing maintenance keeps the ecosystem secure and usable for all.

Meta-summary: This proposal was aimed at bridging a short-term maintenance need for libp2p while also pushing the project toward greater transparency. Its impact lies in securing the technical backbone of a widely used networking library and in nudging the maintainers toward practices that strengthen the public good dimensions of open-source collaboration.

2. Libp2p Planning Sprint (Jan–Feb 2025)

Aim: This grant funded a strategic planning sprint to create a fundraising roadmap for libp2p’s long-term sustainability. The focus was on developing a comprehensive strategic outreach and fundraising plan designed to diversify and stabilize funding sources for libp2p. The individual drew on their experience in p2p networking protocols and fundraising to design a strategy that included stakeholder interviews as well as structured research and the preparation of a professional fundraising strategy document and pitch materials.

Intended Impact: The expected outcome was a clear and actionable fundraising roadmap that could secure diversified support for libp2p in 2025 and 2026. To reduce dependence on a narrow set of funders and establish reusable frameworks for grantmaking and donor engagement. As a public good the sustainability of libp2p depends not only on technical robustness but also on stable financial backing thus making this sprint a key complement to ongoing technical funding.

Meta-summary: This planning sprint was designed to build a solid financial foundation for the years ahead. The work built a fundraising pipeline to help grow libp2p’s community of supporters amongst those who depend on the protocol.

3. Quic-go Maintenance and Security 2025 (March–December)

Aim: This grant supported the continuous development, maintenance and security of quic-go throughout much of 2025. The scope of work included identifying and patching critical vulnerabilities, responding to user reports, implementing new features to match evolving IETF drafts (such as NAT traversal and WebTransport capabilities) in addition to migrating the project away from outdated testing dependencies. It also supported performance optimizations, security improvements and major refactors to make contributions easier for the wider community. By funding sustained engineering attention over many months, the grant aimed to keep quic-go moving in parallel with QUIC protocol implementations.

Intended Impact: quic-go serves as a central networking component for libp2p and many other projects across the Web3 space and beyond. The impact of this work is measured in improved security, stability, performance and interoperability. By committing new work to open source, including support for community-driven contributions, this grant ensured that quic-go remains both trustworthy and usable at scale.

Meta-summary: This proposal supported continuous, security-focused maintenance of quic-go, aiming to protect and extend a cornerstone dependency of libp2p and broader decentralized systems. It strengthened the resilience of critical networking infrastructure and provided improvements that benefit countless developers in the open-source ecosystem.

4. Go & JS Libp2p Maintenance (March–June)

Aim: This grant funded continued maintenance of go-libp2p and js-libp2p as well as stewardship of protocol specifications and related tooling over the spring of 2025. The proposal sought to attract new contributors, grow the contributor community and carry out critical maintenance and security work. By structuring development around ongoing user requests, the team aimed to maintain high standards of accountability while ensuring that the needs of large stakeholders were considered, even though specific resource allocations (such as for GossipSub optimization) were not directly included.

Intended Impact: The anticipated outcome of this work was to keep the core libp2p libraries dependable while also improving breadth of contributions and strengthening the ecosystem’s community ties. The central impact was to carry forward the ongoing maintenance of core open-source networking protocols essential for Ethereum, IPFS and other decentralized networks.

Meta-summary: This grant maintained critical libp2p infrastructure in early 2025 while laying groundwork for a more diverse contributor base. Its impact lies in keeping widely deployed implementations secure and functional and in strengthening their foundations as public goods, despite risks of misaligned priorities.

5. Go & JS Libp2p Maintenance (July–December - Terminated after 2 months)

Aim: This grant extended the work on maintenance and stewardship of go-libp2p and js-libp2p for the second half of 2025. Alongside ongoing maintenance the aim was to continue pushing for modularity in libp2p such as deepen collaboration with the Ethereum Foundation around scaling work such as GossipSub, and deliberately cultivate high value contributors within the community. The grant also emphasized sustaining the current development team while opening decision making processes more openly such as by publishing user feedback and progress updates in public forums.

Intended Impact: The intended outcome was twofold: to maintain a steady and secure development cadence of core libp2p implementations while also growing the contributor community particularly with non-Shipyard contributors.

Meta-summary: This grant focused on incremental but essential upkeep of libp2p’s core implementations during the latter months of 2025. Its impact was to preserve stability and continuity, maintain institutional knowledge within the team and modestly broaden contributor participation thereby reinforcing libp2p’s role as a foundational open-source project.

Update: Due to misalignments in go-forward maintainership expectations, this grant was terminated after 2 months (July + August).

6. QUIC Stream Resets with Partial Delivery (May-Aug)

Aim: This grant supported the addition of a technical feature which is support for QUIC Stream Resets with Partial Delivery into quic-go. The work aimed to align quic-go with the most recent WebTransport draft thus strengthening feature completeness and compliance with modern standards. The project entailed implementation, integration testing and release of the feature in quic-go’s mainline codebase.

Intended Impact: By implementing this feature quic-go gained compatibility with cutting-edge protocol standards opening the door for applications built on WebTransport to leverage QUIC seamlessly. As a result, the change benefits both developers working directly with quic-go and entire ecosystems that depend on up-to-date open-source protocol implementations.

Meta-summary: This grant targeted a focused but important feature upgrade to quic-go, enabling compatibility with the latest WebTransport standard. Its impact serves the public good by keeping open-source protocol implementations at the frontier of internet standards, ensuring broad accessibility and innovation across Web3 and beyond.

Developer Engagement and Growth

Libp2p continues to grow as one of the strongest open-source networking ecosystems. The project now sustains 300+ monthly contributors, making it one of the most active developer communities in decentralized infrastructure.

Across the ecosystem, 16+ maintainer organizations including the Ethereum Foundation, Parity, ChainSafe, Status, and PLDG support and steward the core implementations. The project has also expanded to 10 active implementations, spanning Go, Rust, JS/TS, Python, .NET, Zig, Nim, C++, and more, demonstrating deep language diversity and broad applicability.

Libp2p also saw growing academic adoption in 2025. Universities across South Asia began incorporating libp2p into curricula spanning engineering, management, and design disciplines, reflecting the technology’s relevance beyond purely technical audiences. Institutions such as Netaji Subhas University of Technology (NSUT) integrated libp2p into coursework and projects focused on distributed systems, decentralized applications, platform design, and emerging digital economies. These programs exposed students to real-world peer-to-peer networking primitives, open-source collaboration, and system-level thinking—preparing the next generation of engineers, product leaders, and designers to build resilient, decentralized infrastructure. This academic momentum complements libp2p’s open development model, ensuring that both research and teaching feed directly back into production systems.