As we close the year, it is clear that 2025 marked a pivotal chapter for the Decentralized Social Networking Protocol (DSNP) with the main objective to build and strengthen our governance community. Through convenings, publications, and strategic stakeholder engagement, Project Liberty Institute (PLI) as a steward of DSNP, advanced its mission of community participation and alignment with global open digital infrastructure efforts.

Building the Community as a Path Towards Progressive Decentralization

In the first half of the year, we set the stage for DSNP’s broader impact. At RightsCon Taiwan, Sarah Nicole, Policy & Research Manager Governance Lead at Project Liberty Institute together with DSNP advisors and global leaders Audrey Tang and Wendy Seltzer convened over 40 participants to kick off a series of global workshops with the community.

Simultaneously, we launched the first DSNP Community Governance Working Group online meeting, open to the public, starting with a dozen participants. This monthly gathering established the foundation of our ongoing multi‑stakeholder governance community, laying the groundwork for recurring governance structures, feedback on our framework, and early ecosystem partnerships that will endure.

Throughout 2025 we have gathered seven DSNP Community Governance Working Group online meetings. This first series of convenings concluded with two leadership sessions, featuring Project Liberty Institute CEO Sheila Warren and DSNP co-creator and Project Liberty CTO Braxton Woodham. The two sessions highlighted the crucial role of governance especially as we move into an agentic web, and outlined PLI and DSNP strategic direction for 2026.

Governance Expansion & Policy Engagement

In the second half of the year, we doubled down on our efforts, strengthening participation in governance, embedding DSNP within influential policy fora, and expanding awareness across the digital governance ecosystem.

Sarah Nicole, together with Wendy Seltzer and Wes Biggs, Vice President and Chief Architect at Project Liberty, organized the second DSNP convening at the Internet Governance Forum, modeled on our RightsCon format. We also co‑facilitated a workshop with the Digital Public Goods Alliance on open protocols, held at the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation.

Additionally, we delivered a DSNP “deep dive” at the Global Digital Collaboration Conference with our partners at Harvard’s Applied Social Media Lab, attracting a full room of participants, at least one of whom traveled internationally specifically because of their involvement in the DSNP Governance Working Group.

Aspiring to have our governance process as transparent as possible, we regularly gave updates to the broader ecosystem through publications such as the Project Liberty newsletter on DSNP’s governance journey. Additionally, with our advocacy efforts across diverse policy fora, we ensured DSNP and data‑agency concepts were embedded in the T7 Summit communiqué through our contribution with a T7 policy brief, thereby placing open protocols like DSNP within G7‑level policy recommendations.

These engagements in 2025 expanded DSNP’s legitimacy across diverse global ecosystems from the UN to civil society, to the DPI and G7-level discussions.

Looking out to 2026

The DSNP Governance Framework has now been reviewed by more than 100 stakeholders across the world between 2024 and 2025. In particular, the DSNP Governance Community Working Group during its monthly meetings has been instrumental in getting us to the finalized version, which will be published in early 2026, when the first DSNP steering committee will be elected.

With a consolidated community and the first ever DSNP governance framework, we are excited to step into 2026, a year that promises more growth for DSNP, with a broadening of its mission to go beyond social data to encompass human data in the age of AI. The DSNP Governance Community Working Group will keep on being central to DSNP development throughout 2026.

If you wish to join the DSNP governance adventure in 2026 please reach out to: dsnpfeedback@projectliberty.io