The emergence of the Agentic Web and its networks of agents generates more anxiety than excitement, and for good reasons. The recent surge in usage of OpenClaw made this viscerally clear: millions of AI agents acting with no governance framework in place — and a few human malicious actors — allegedly created a religion, a language not to be understood by humans, and novel attack-chains. As with most technological inflection points, governance arrived as an afterthought. The harms, however, were not.

The question of how the protocols that will shape the agentic internet will be governed is arguably the most consequential open question right now. And today, we bring a path to one of the solutions.

This is why DSNP is launching its first open, community-led Governance Framework, establishing the foundational rules, roles, and processes for protocol stewardship, and opening meaningful participation beyond the initial contributors. As Project Liberty increasingly examines the role AI plays in society, and its Labs division expands its product and infrastructure technology work to encompass AI, the framework is built to move with it, ensuring that more voices can shape the decisions that matter most.

100 Voices, 12 Months, 3 Continents, 1 Framework.

Since February 2025, Project Liberty Institute (PLI), steward of the Decentralized Social Networking Protocol and its broader societal impact, has led a global, multistakeholder process in collaboration with DSNP Advisor and Governance Working Group chair Wendy Seltzer. Wendy’s multi-decade experience working with groups such as ICANN and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has helped lay a solid foundation, and the effort has gathered input from over 100 participants across in-person convenings in Taiwan with DSNP Advisor and Taiwan’s first Digital Affairs Minister, Audrey Tang, in Geneva with the Harvard Applied Social Media Lab, in Oslo with social web protocols experts, and the United States with Internet pioneer David Clark and MIT researcher Sara Wedeman. Many virtual meetings and discussions are still ongoing.

DSNP Governance Framework V.1 is the result of that work: months of global engagement, open monthly calls with a community spanning four continents, and iterative feedback from a genuinely diverse set of contributors. It is not a document handed down, it is one earned.

More than a Document: a Participatory Tool.

The DSNP Governance Framework is not just a document, it is an invitation.

Anyone interested in engaging with DSNP and future evolutions in the Agentic Web can join the community governance group by registering under one of the Stakeholder Categories. Upon submission, the required documentation will be sent to you via DocuSign for your review and signature. Join us in the bootstrap phase to help test the mechanics of participation and representation.

Built on the Linux Foundation’s governance template, this framework is deliberately designed to be transportable across contexts. Whether you are building a protocol, a platform, or a community, we encourage you to use this framework as a model for your own project.

You can review and download the following:

• DSNP Governance Framework

The Governance Framework document includes the following:

• Collaboration Agreement
• DSNP Charter - Exhibit A
• Working Group Charter (Template) - Exhibit B