D Library - Free - No account or wallets needed - Safe for children, adults and the Environment

[lawpond]

Basic Information

Project Name: D-Library
Project Track: consumer-social
Team Name: datapond
Team Members: lawpond, opened to new members.

Interview: Sept 2025

Social Info

Website: https://datapond.earth
Github: D-Code - Open code coming soon
SubStack: https://datapond.substack.com/
Social: Hylo

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Project Overview

D Library: A New Paradigm for Knowledge Access

The Role of Libraries

Historically, libraries have been the heart of learning—serving teachers, students, professionals, and communities alike. Most libraries are found in schools, universities, or are funded by public institutions.
They act as the foundation of knowledge, shaping how children learn, think, and eventually contribute to industries, trade, and society at large.

Audience

• Teachers – who guide and influence tomorrow’s thinkers.
• Parents – who want a say in what their children are taught.
• Self-learners – who seek freedom to tailor their own education.
• Legal departments and judges – who may, give a state grant, use the system for moderation and safe-removal of inappropriate content.

Together, this represents a broad, diverse community—each with different ways of interacting with the platform.

Core Design Principles

Curation Model: Removal-Only

Unlike traditional platforms, no one can add content directly.
Safety and quality are curated through removal only, ensuring: No spam or harmful uploads.

Over time, only the best and safest content survives.

Privacy & Data Model

All actions are visible and analyzable, but never tied to personal identity - because we never ask for some..

This ensures accountability, while keeping every user’s private details secure.

Public Analytics

Every action—downloads, reports, removals becomes open analytics:

It unlocks the free rankings of the most downloaded, most trusted, and most reported content.

As the a result, there are no reliance on private cloud providers; all analytics being natively public and already computed on the blockchain..

Community-driven insights become freely available to all.

Durable Storage Guarantee

The library’s content is uploaded to crypto-backed, prepaid storage guaranteed for 250 years.

Which means: Zero recurring costs + 100% long-term availability.

Governments and schools can share permanent links to books or speeches,
knowing they will remain accessible, free, and unmodified across generations.

This durability makes the library a cost-effective public good.

Social & Political Context

Many rural and low-income communities lack resources for books and quality education.

Often, powerful lobbies determine what children learn—optimizing education for industry needs, not the child’s future.

This project aims to return control of education to families, teachers, and communities, empowering them with:

• Free access to knowledge.
• Freedom to decide what children should learn.
• Protection from political or ideological bias in the core public domain library.

Scenarios of Use

A village elder may curate a “safe library index” for local schools, and share it for just $1. Teachers and parents can then adopt it as their trusted source.

Classrooms can use it as an exercise: e.g., students collaboratively removing unhelpful or misleading books—thus shaping their own knowledge base while learning about curation.

Circular Economy Model

5% of all donations are pooled into a shared wallet to provide free keys for those who cannot pay.

For classrooms or villages, a set number of free keys can be pre-allocated.

level 100 Members can be grouped by interests ad take part into public voice conversations around a book of their choice.

Project Development Preview:

Dev Preview

Official Link

Project Test Instructions:
The Grantor & Governance section of D-Library is currently in active development.

Funding & Business Model

This is not a Business. The Model is a circular public good - which can only be donation based.

Funding Request:

D-Library will have a project funding section included in its member section, where any grantor can anonymously donate funds to sub-projects. I am also in the process of setting up an open-collective account.

Revenue Model:

The D-Licence forbids any financial transactions on the platform.

However, D Library provide a service that allows users to vote for content, and persist their changes. To do so, they need to donate to become a permanent member of the crypto club of their choice (TREE, SUN or WATER clubs)

Interested in TRON Having a Stake?

YES - I like the idea of having Tron funding their ideal public domain technical implementation of a Staking contract, minimizing user’s fee.

Preferred Collaboration Method:

Donation Only, maybe provide a team for a project.

[Prince-Onscolo]

Welcome to TBL Team
wishing you all the best

[lawpond]

NEW VIDEO

[manfred_jr]

Welcome to TBL, this is like the second entry thus far relying on AWS if I’m correct

@lawpond

The D-Licence forbids any financial transactions on the platform.

This is quite very concerning, if the project forbids transactions, how does it ensure self-sufficiency beyond donations?

@lawpond

I need financial help to register a business, and and also some expertise on how to grow and build an online community. (marketing). A designer is also needed. Volunteers are welcome.

You didn’t stipulate how much is needed here, so what figures are we looking at precisely?

[lawpond]

@lawpond

heir fighta against desertification is a model for the world. (google moon ponds & straws)

Good day @manfred_jr !

It is good to hear from you again.

For your first question, I think I wasn’t clear, and I will edit the description

The Library doesn’t use any centralized server (except for the static web server on netlify - because web3 domain names are not ready yet for prime time - yet).

It is a static built with zero api calls to centralized backend.

I noticed that most of projects who qualify or advertising themself as web3 are partially web3. They got 80% of their backend on AWS, and 20% on the blockchain.

The Library does 100% operate on the crypto chain.

By the way, a simple way to see if a web3 website is 100% web3, look at if they ask you for an email… You cannot send an email with web3.

Concerning the financial transactions limitations:

All media content in the Library is free to distribute, copy, and re-distribute under CC , attribution, no modification and non commercial.
Some books may be more open, and allow modification, and commercial usage (meaning that you can download the book, modify it, and sell it for $).

On top of this, the D-Licence make sure that this media content (which are only books for the moment), cannot contain any financial transactions, copyrights (which is a form of financial transaction), advertising, or being a promotional content - which is only financially driven.

This ensure that only educational and practical content can be published on the Library, which removes the corruption that money does to the world of sustainable practices.

For example, if a book is written to promote a business, a financial service, or there is a page inside the book with some financial transaction instruction, then this book will be removed.

The Library provides different services. One of them is to persist your vote and opinion on a book (or topic) .
The Library will take a small % fee of the transaction when using crypto payment.

For the exact figures, I am not sure yet. I need to come back to you.

I expect it to be in the range of 100-200k$/year.

[manfred_jr]

@lawpond

Good day @manfred_jr !

It is good to hear from you again

It dawned on me right here that this project is like a 2-part series, as you where here from the previous Hackathon.
Feels good to hear from you too.

@lawpond

The Library doesn’t use any centralized server (except for the static web server on netlify - because web3 domain names are not ready yet for prime time - yet).

It is a static built with zero api calls to centralized backend.

Since you clearly mentioned here that there’s no centralized moderation, is there a way to prevent abuse? For example, like in the case of illegal uploads.

[lawpond]

@manfred_jr

Since you clearly mentioned here that there’s no centralized moderation, is there a way to prevent abuse? For example, like in the case of illegal uploads.

For the moment, there are no possibilities to add any new content to the Library.

Although, I have something in mind, it is a bit complex:

Uploads will probably be in Stage 4.
Stage3 involves voice group conversation permanently recorded under the D-Voice Licence.
A bit like a classroom - without a teacher. Each book has a conversation circle attached to it.
This enables inter generational communication. For example, I record my voice and give my opinion on a book in 2025. Someone might reply to my comment in 2175, telling me I am wrong, because that, and this, and some other stuff I wasn’t aware 150 years ago for obvious reasons - like i care, I’d be dead by now… But at that time, the community can still vote for a book that has been marked as safe to be removed later on. Sky is the limit when you implement time locks and rethink security models.

When recording your voice, members can vote for your intervention +1/-1. Members with good reputation will have the opportunity to suggest new books.

Selected members of the community by the community - with the help of an algorithm I have in mind - will unlock credentials for them to validate content as DSafe.

This content will then get integrated in the default index and it will be marked as UnSafe by default. (If you go to contributor mode, you can see content marked as unsafe - which you can toggle it as DSafe -which becomes a vote.

After a large period of time that the book is voted as DSafe by the community, that content will permanently be marked as DSafe. I have 10 years in mind, but that might be longer than that.

I am not sure if that makes sense to you @manfred_jr, it is a bit complex, and I am not sure if I explained it well.

[ines_valerie]

Welcome to the tbl, I remember you from the last hackathon s7, is this the same project that you bring last hackathon because it is looking like the same

[manfred_jr]

@lawpond

Members with good reputation will have the opportunity to suggest new books.

Hmm, so reputable members can vote I get it, reputation-based voting is smart, but what happens when for instance a bad actor gains reputation and starts approving biased or misleading books?
Just wondering

[lawpond]

Easy.

The Library is yours. It is your copy. You can share your copy with everyone. Your personal copy of the library always override the original one.

And you can share it.

Right now, you can personalize your copy, and share it:

Which will bring your to this screen:

Now your copy has been cloned on someone else’s computer.

You are a good guy, so you chose to remove that smelly topic/book.

Or you are a bad guy, and you chose to toggle on that smelly topic.

In both case, this copy only exists on a local computer. Levels in that case are meaningless. It is just an indicator on how how many changes have been made to the original index.

Now let’s say your friend decides to do some more modification (remember, he can’t add anything, just hide, edit or move).

If your (s)he decides to sync the changes on the block, all the original changes will be duplicated, if you have made, let’s say 1000 changes, and your friend made 10., he will have to pay for syncing 1010 changes. On the Library side, this is good, because it means more $. (remember, the Library takes a % fee cut).

To be able to actually suggest new content, you’ll have to record your voice - and be elected as competent enough by your peers. And your voice is your ID . So if you decide to upload some really dangerous stuff, it will tracked back to your voice, and your local gvt authority will come knock at your door
(remember, the Library will be directly integrated into the department of Justice - that is the only entity that controls the police - which also removes all risk of being sued).

There are more safeguard designs I have in mind, but that should be enough

This ensure that the original index is always safe.

And as I said earlier, there will be a gvt integration. Datapond recognizes the justice department as the highest authority of the community.

And they will have to pay a grant one time to have a permanent key. So if the department of justice decides to add some really bad content in it, it is on behalf of a whole country, and I respect that.

[Nweke-nature1.com]

Welcome to TBL , wishing all the best, I think you to state how much you needed for the funding request

[lawpond]

I would like to know what is an acceptable range ?
What is too low, and what is too high !

[Nweke-nature1.com]

No specified range, whatever funds you need to get your project at the forefront, as you can see $10M will be shared among selected projects

[manfred_jr]

@lawpond

Now let’s say your friend decides to do some more modification (remember, he can’t add anything, just hide, edit or move).

The whole concept you’re portraying here is a fascinating one I think, from my basic understanding of this particular part of your reply, I coined the fact that users can actually modify their local copies while the original index remains untouchable and that is pretty solid.
Now my worry is; If alot of users like 500k users for example make personalized changes all at once or at a sequence, will this create an overwhelming number of forks?

[lawpond]

Hello @ines_valerie

It is good to hear back from you! I was going to ping you in a comment for you to come back !But you’ve been faster than me

Yes it is the same project as season 6, I totally missed the season 7, otherwise I would have had participated to it - instead I went for a MOVE and a NEAR competition. It is the same project with a different architecture.

Previously , the Library was black themed, now it is white.

Also, the version you were helping me with your feedback last year was much more focused on gamification while forcing user to obtain an apprentice key to be able to download a book.

After several months, I realized that was a terrible idea. That didn’t work as intended, and the user experience was terrible. Nobody wanted to go trough that much time and effort to get a book, and it was faster to just google it.

So I hired the services of a designer with some of the money I won at season 6, to help me.
I organized a small competition on freelancer, and found the man! And as a bonus, he lives near Gizeh pyramids - which is fun, because the old version had a pyramid on the front page.

So now the Library doesn’t have any requirements to download a book. From the home page, 4 clicks is all you need to download your first book for free.

[lawpond]

@manfred_jr

If alot of users like 500k users for example make personalized changes all at once or at a sequence, will this create an overwhelming number of forks?

Nice question.

Yes and No.

Think of a fork as a vote.

There is something I forgot to mention:

Once in a while, depending on the number of votes, let’s say every 4 weeks, all forks get computed and a new score is attached to each book, so books get ranked based on the community feedback. I also want to group that feedback on a language/country basis.

Let’s dream more of a great future of the Library, and let’s say a country starts adopting the library as an educational support in schools. So we might end up with hundred of thousands of votes (forks).

Each user fork has basically three functions:

• a compressed incremental binary backup of the original , stored individually per user key.
• a global book book(or topic) score counter , something similar to: uint64[] numberOfLikes
• A weekly/monthly statistical counter that tracks each books score on a time frame, allowing anyone to track the interest over time (analytics) - without requiring an external analytic platform.

[ines_valerie]

@lawpond

It is good to hear back from you! I was going to ping you in a comment for you to come back !But you’ve been faster than me

It is a good thing to hear from you also again, I did not know I was that fast lol

@lawpond

Yes it is the same project as season 6, I totally missed the season 7, otherwise I would have had participated to it - instead I went for a MOVE and a NEAR competition. It is the same project with a different architecture.

How was your experience in the move and a near competition? Did it motivate you to make any changes? Did you win over there, thank you

[manfred_jr]

@lawpond

Think of a fork as a vote

This is indeed a good way to look at it as it aids my understanding further.

@lawpond

Once in a while, depending on the number of votes, let’s say every 4 weeks, all forks get computed and a new score is attached to each book, so books get ranked based on the community feedback

The last part of your reply here about books getting ranked based on community feedback is exceptional and goes to show you prioritize community. But how will you handle this ranking in a much larger scale?

[lawpond]

@manfred_jr

But how will you handle this ranking in a much larger scale?

I don’t think there can be a much larger scale. The philosophy of the Library is to have a common source of knowledge everyone agrees on, across language, cultures, religions, beliefs… when it comes to sustainable development.

And that is rather a small subset of all the books on the planet.

Removing fiction from the content strips a large chunk of content. This is why it is called datapond, and not dataocean

But let’s imagine the larger scale becomes a possibility: storage wise, arweave handles the persistence of the media, and is designed to scale across size and time.

For solidity (or whatever contract tech that may eventually replace it in the future), it might be a bit tricky - in term of gaz cost. But I believe that technology will keep improving, and cost will keep decreasing.

Is that what you meant by larger scale ?

[lawpond]

@ines_valerie

How was your experience in the move and a near competition? Did it motivate you to make any changes

Oh yes, I did many many changes. I actually rewrote the library 2 times since we last met.
Even if the content seem to be similar, the tech behind has changed and evolved quite a lot. It is the ninth time I rewrote it from scratch.

In my opinion, MOVE is no good for what I needed. Plus their testnet went offline for 2 weeks during the hackathon, and the place where I was staying at the time in Thailand , got flooded, and I had no electricity and water for almost a week.

Then I went to participate to the NEAR hackathon in Bangkok, where Edward Snowden was a public speaker. I created a terrible joke, to provoke them to try to hack me & the Library. The joke was so bad, that even myself couldn’t tell if it was in the realm of reality, or science fiction. I had few international government agencies who came and check if I was real with it (or not) and as a result I went to hide in a monastery for 2 months: Hint, they couldn’t hack, or take the Library offline.
I am not going to to tell the joke here… Although I didn’t won any prize, The D. got a free penetration test.

And I also got to meet many amazing monks, and had the privilege to go travel with one for few weeks - they gave me invaluable feedback.