Seventeen new projects strenghten NGI Pilots

We are delighted to welcome aboard seventeen free and open source projects to contribute to the three NGI Pilot programmes. These programmes each focus on a specific domain: NGI Taler works on privacy-preserving digital payments, NGI Fediversity builds the hosting stack of the future and NGI Mobifree is liberating the mobile landscape. Each pilot has dedicated part of its budget — kindly provided by the European Commission — for supporting smaller projects that contribute to these goals. Anyone can apply with a proposal to make their own meaningful contribution to the topics the pilots address. Allow us to to introduce the seventeen new projects that will be joining the ranks of these three pilot programmes.

Mobile freedom

SIMcurity will deliver several tools for securing the SIM interface, which will help to protect phones and users against SIM vulnerabilities and hostility. VirtuAndroid is an application-layer virtualization framework for Android, allowing to run Android apps inside isolated, user-space environments without requiring modifications to the operating system. APKpatcher and PyAxml are tools to manipulate Android packages and the AXML and ARSC files used inside these packages to store data and metadata. Bugbane is an app for self-conducting device forensics on Android devices, as a quick means to check for the presence of malware.

A team from Germany will be opening up Apple's Low Latency Wi-Fi protocol and create an open-source interoperable implementation for Linux — which should in the end allow for interoperability with for instance peripherals that only speak this protocol. The Weblate Android SDK will enable easy localisation updates for Android apps without having to rebuild the apps (or make new releases). And Easy Transit 2 and RTranslator 3.0 are apps that help users get around. Easy Transit will help to efficiently find your way in public transport, even when offline, while RTranslator will deliver real-time local translations with open models. These projects are all part of NGI Mobifree, a programme that is creating more ethical and humane mobile software for the Android ecosystem.

Privacy preserving payments with GNU Taler

NGI Taler is working on an electronic payment system that offers privacy for those that make payments, while enforcing transparency on those that sell. The projects selected are all integrations into a variety of software applications, ranging from the web server framework Fastify to ERP applications like ERPnext and Kivitendo to the mobile app ecosystem F-Droid, offering secure, streamlined and integrated payment processing. Another project will integrate GNU Taler into the be-BOP shopping cart/POS software, allowing for privacy preserving payments inside for instance book stores.

Rock solid hosting-in-a-box

NGI Fediversity is a comprehensive effort to bring easy-to-use, hosted cloud services with service portability and personal freedom at their core to everyone. Two projects were selected: the first project will work on runtime verification of NixOS configurations, ensuring whole-system security with verified boot. ANother effort (NixEdgeOpt) aims at adaptive placement and live migration of NixOS services, making sure that hardware resources in a data center are most efficiently used without causing any service downtime.

If you applied for a grant

This is the selection for the August 2025 and October 2025 calls for NGI Taler, NGI Fediversity and Mobifree, and the December 2025 call for Mobifree (which was the final tenth and final call for this programme). We always inform all applicants about the outcome of the review ahead of the public announcement, whether they are selected or not. If you have not heard anything, you probably applied to a later call or a different fund such as NGI Zero Commons Fund. Later calls and the other funds are still under review. You can see which call you applied to by checking the application number assigned to the project when you applied. The second number in the sequence refers to the month of the call, so for instance "12" in the case of the December (2025) call. (It should not happen, but if you did apply to one of these calls and did not hear anything, do contact us)

Meet the new projects!

(you can click or tap on the project name to fold out additional information)

Software engineering, protocols, interoperability, cryptography, algorithms, proofs

Runtime NixOS Closure Verification — Ensure whole-system security with verified boot for NixOS configurations

Verified boot technologies like "Secure Boot" enforce system security by requiring the booted operating system to be trusted by the system administrator or hardware vendor, but existing approaches for NixOS and other general-purpose Linux distributions only validate the kernel and the "stage 1" software used in early boot. This project addresses this large remaining attack surface by extending the validation to cover the entire "stage 2" system configuration, utilizing NixOS's declarative whole-system configuration approach and Linux kernel technologies like overlayfs and fs-verity. This will enable users to greatly enhance the security of all kinds of NixOS systems, including desktops, servers, and special-purpose appliances.

▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/NixOS-verifiedboot
Opening up Apple's Low Latency Wi-Fi Protocol — Open-source interoperable implementation of LLW for Linux

The project summary for this project is not yet available. Please come back soon!

▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/LowLatency-Wi-Fi
Taler plugin for Fastify — Add low-code zero-config Taler plugin for the Fastify web server framework

Fastify is a popular high-performance, lightweight web server for Node.js, designed for speed, low overhead, extensibility and developer experience with a formidable plugin ecosystem. This project contributes a GNU Taler plugin for Donations and Payments to this ecosystem, following that very philosophy. It will not only provide the scalable Open/REST API's one would expect to build production ready webshops but furthermore focus on a low-code, zero-config simplicity for the architecture. This enables even plain vanilla javascript-free HTML form pages to post Taler payments and supply credentials in a web admin interface. All this can be easily explored in a one page vanilla HTML webshop example - and executed at the touch of a single shell command.

▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/TALER-Fastify

Operating Systems, firmware and virtualisation

Runtime NixOS Closure Verification — Ensure whole-system security with verified boot for NixOS configurations

Verified boot technologies like "Secure Boot" enforce system security by requiring the booted operating system to be trusted by the system administrator or hardware vendor, but existing approaches for NixOS and other general-purpose Linux distributions only validate the kernel and the "stage 1" software used in early boot. This project addresses this large remaining attack surface by extending the validation to cover the entire "stage 2" system configuration, utilizing NixOS's declarative whole-system configuration approach and Linux kernel technologies like overlayfs and fs-verity. This will enable users to greatly enhance the security of all kinds of NixOS systems, including desktops, servers, and special-purpose appliances.

▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/NixOS-verifiedboot
SIMcurity: Tools for Securing the SIM interface — Protect phones and users against SIM vulnerabilities and hostility

The project summary for this project is not yet available. Please come back soon!

▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/SIMcurity
VirtuAndroid — Application-layer virtualization for Android apps

The project summary for this project is not yet available. Please come back soon!

▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/VirtuAndroid

Measurement, monitoring, analysis and abuse handling

APKpatcher/PyAxml — Support tool to manipulate APK and AXML file

The Apkpatcher and pyaxml tools suite is used to analyze, unpack and pack APKs (the Android file format for applications) and also AXML and ARSC files used inside these packages to store data and metadata.

The core strategy is to be able to have a simple and modular way to manipulate these three formats for security reasons: to audit parsers, to audit applications (thanks to some features added to sniff the traffic or automatize some test directly by injecting code inside the APK) or to remove some trackers from an APK for privacy reasons. A code sharing website is planned, so users can share patches to remove trackers and keep control over their devices.

▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/APKpatcher-PyAxml
Bugbane — App for self-conducting device forensics on Android devices

Bugbane is a lightweight Android forensics and anomaly-detection tool designed to help users identify signs of compromise, including spyware, stalkerware, and other suspicious behavior, directly on their own devices. Bugbane builds on de-facto standard efforts such as MVT, reusing its indicators-of-compromise (IoC) formats and datasets, and is compatible with AndroidQF exports. It is designed to integrate easily into the existing workflows of civil society organizations, supporting their encryption tools of choice.

Bugbane operates on-device, without requiring additional hardware or rooting and guides users through a structured, user-friendly acquisition and analysis process. By simplifying data collection and consensual sharing of forensic artifacts with partner organizations, Bugbane aims to reach users who are typically outside established support networks, contributing to a broader and more accurate understanding of threats targeting civil society.

▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Bugbane

Middleware and identity

NixEdgeOpt — Adaptive placement and migration of NixOS services

NixEdgeOpt aims to enable resilient, efficient services across many NixOS machines. The project will develop an open source “edge scheduling brain” for Nix, including a scheduler service and NixOS integration that automatically places and moves services between nodes based on load, failures, cost and latency. Users will express high-level intents (e.g. “keep latency low for my users”, or “maintain at least two replicas for reliability while minimising cost”), and NixEdgeOpt will realise them through adaptive, algorithmic placement and migration policies that react to changing conditions instead of relying on static rules. The design will be compatible with existing Nix ecosystem projects, making it easier to deploy and operate decentralised infrastructure.

▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/NixEdgeOpt
Taler Integration into F-Droid Ecosystem — Secure, Streamlined and Integrated Payment Processing for F-Droid

F-Droid is a privacy-respecting app ecosystem and distribution platform for Android. We propose to research how we might integrate GNU Taler into the F-Droid user experience to support adoption of privacy-preserving payments. This will allow Taler to be used for processing donations to F-Droid itself and for FOSS developers whose apps are hosted in our main repository. Our goal is to enhance Taler adoption and provide a frictionless, privacy-preserving donation experience for F-Droid developers and users to help make the FOSS ecosystem more sustainable long term.

▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/TALER-F-Droid
Weblate Android SDK — Live localisation updates for Android apps

Weblate is a free and open-source localisation platform. Thanks to Weblate, thousands of projects including applications, websites or even comic art pieces are easily translated into any language desired. Weblate removes the hurdle of understanding a programming language from the translation process, thus enabling anyone to join the efforts, and building active user communities with truly democratic spirit around the projects involved.

The aim of the Android SDK project is to support streamlining community driven localisation efforts directly into android application without the additional step of releasing a new version. This will further ease the process of translating and will enable developers to allow translations into a wider range of languages, including those with smaller communities.

▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/Weblate-Android-SDK

Vertical use cases, Search, Community

GNU Taler Payment Provider for be-BOP — Integrate Taler payments into be-BOP shopping cart/POS software

The project summary for this project is not yet available. Please come back soon!

▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/TALER-be-BOP
Taler-Kivitendo Integration — Integrate Taler with the Kivitendo ERP platform

Kivitendo is Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software mainly in use in small businesses and organisations. It is often adapted to the specific needs of individual companies in a wide range of use cases. The Taler integration will offer the possibility for merchants creating invoices with Kivitendo for secure online payment processing with Taler respecting the privacy of the customers. The integration will be ERP-centric: information regarding inventory and orders remains in the ERP system, the GNU Taler system only handles payment processing. The project will also produce a Perl module with perldoc documentation ready to be used in other FOSS projects.

▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/TALER-kivitendo
Easy Transit 2 — Public transit navigation app with some offline capabilities

The goal of Easy Transit is to make public transit dependable for a local, and de-mystified for a tourist. After successfully developing an app with a more limited geographic scope (Tallinn, Estonia), within this grant the project is now scaling up for broader international coverage while retaining its strong points - levering existing initiatives like Transitious. Key aspect is that it should work offline whenever possible, saving cost and taking just couple seconds to show you departure times. It also doesn't rely on an interactive map, and hence is accessible to people with limited sight or motor disabilities. It tries to explain the route you need to take in a way you understand, not just throw you into a list-and-map pool and have you do the work.

▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/EasyTransit2
RTranslator 3.0 — Real-time local translation app for spoken word for Android

RTranslator is an open-source, free, and offline real-time translation app for Android, it allows users to translate text and audio with best in class quality. With the Conversation mode, RTranslator can also translate audio virtually in real time and hands free, by connecting to another phone and to a Bluetooth headphone. All the processing is done on device, ensuring total privacy for the user.

Under the NGI Mobifree grant, the 3.0 version of the app will be released, upgrading the NLLB translation model to the Mozilla Bergamot models and Madlad 400. MLKit will be replaced, making RTranslator 100% open source. Various techniques will be added to improve translation quality, including: beam search, multi lingual dictionaries, Tatoeba integration and more. The app will be release on Play Store and F-Droid, and a self hosted web version of the app for text translation using Mozilla models will be made available.

▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/RTranslator
ERPnext TALER payment gateway — Refactor ERPnext payment module and integrate Taler

This project integrates GNU TALER payments into ERPnext, a feature rich, open source enterprise resource planning system built with the open source frappe framework. The work involves finalizing a refactor of ERPnext's payments module to support multiple gateways, followed by developing and testing the full TALER integration, including API handlers for payments, transactions, sales orders and a user interface for configuration. By combining ERPnext's widespread use in the Global South with TALER's focus on privacy and financial inclusion, this project shall deliver a production-ready tool for a low-fee digital cash system with online shop, ledger, stock management and more.

▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/TALER-ERPnext
Taler Integration into F-Droid Ecosystem — Secure, Streamlined and Integrated Payment Processing for F-Droid

F-Droid is a privacy-respecting app ecosystem and distribution platform for Android. We propose to research how we might integrate GNU Taler into the F-Droid user experience to support adoption of privacy-preserving payments. This will allow Taler to be used for processing donations to F-Droid itself and for FOSS developers whose apps are hosted in our main repository. Our goal is to enhance Taler adoption and provide a frictionless, privacy-preserving donation experience for F-Droid developers and users to help make the FOSS ecosystem more sustainable long term.

▸ For more details see: https://nlnet.nl/project/TALER-F-Droid

Inspired? If you are working on a project that contributes to the Next Generation Internet you can submit a proposal. The next deadline is February 1^st.