Merge pull request #713 from darobin/grants-announcement-2025

Spring 2025 utility grantees

src/_blog/2025-05-grants.md

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+---
+title: Spring 2025 IPFS Utility Grantees
+description: "We're delighted to announce the grantees for the Spring 2025 round of IPFS Utility Grants."
+author: Robin Berjon
+date: 2025-05-12
+permalink: '/2025-05-grants/'
+header_image: '/utility-grants.png'
+tags:
+  - grants
+  - funding
+  - ecosystem
+---
+
+The IPFS Implementations Grants program exists to advance the development, growth, and impact of the IPFS project
+through a focus on developer choice and availability. We provide financial support to projects and teams working to
+make IPFS accessible to more developer communities.
+
+We recently ran [the Spring 2025 grant cycle for utilities](https://ipfsgrants.io/utility-grants/), which supports
+developers creating essential utilities, libraries, and tooling for the IPFS ecosystem. It was a tight competition with strong contenders
+and we're delighted with the grantees who came out of this round.
+
+## rsky-satnav CAR Explorer from Rudy Fraser, BlackSky
+
+If you're anywhere near work on the [AT Protocol](https://atproto.com/) then you surely know Rudy Fraser, among other things for his
+work on [BlackSky](https://www.blackskyweb.xyz/) and the [rsky](https://github.com/blacksky-algorithms/rsky)
+(say "risky") projects.
+
+The grant will go to [rsky-satnav](https://github.com/blacksky-algorithms/rsky/tree/main/rsky-satnav) (Structured
+Archive Traversal, Navigation And Verification — we do appreciate a quality acronym), a local-first and user-friendly
+[CAR](https://dasl.ing/car.html) explorer for AT Protocol.
+
+CAR archives are a very convenient part of the IFPS ecosystem, used to package up multiple CID-addressed resources
+in one bundle, and AT Protocol PDSs rely on them for data exports. But end users, even technical ones, have found
+dealing with CAR files challenging due to a lack of tooling. We really look forward to playing with rsky-satnav
+ourselves!
+
+## CAR Indexing from Ben Lau, Basile Simon, and Yurko Jaremko, Starling Lab
+
+Another issue with CAR files is that they are as diverse as the data usecases and ergonomics of the IPFS ecosystem:
+while Filecoin uploading returns a CAR file, it sidesteps the UnixFS and thus most CAR tooling cannot reconstruct or
+navigate its contents. As these big-data archive files are not introspectable with UnixFS tools, the [Starling Lab](https://starlinglab.org/) team is open-sourcing
+some indexing tools they created internally which create a _private index_ of Filecoin uploads, rounding out a historic
+tooling/interop gap in the ecosystem.
+
+Ben, Basile, and Yurko are developing a browser-based tool to help
+locate contents within [Filecoin CAR archives](https://spec.filecoin.io/systems/filecoin_files/piece/), without relying on
+public indexing services. This is a stepping stone to more general solutions for CAR indexing. It's definitely going to
+boost that part of the ecosystem!
+
+## DASL Testing from Cole Anthony Capilongo, Hypha Worker Co-operative
+
+Not all heroes wear capes, many of the cooler ones write tests. Tests are important in development, but they
+are particularly important when you're creating interoperable standards. The difference between a standard and
+a random piece of paper isn't that the standard was blessed by a special standards organization — there are
+plenty of worthlessly blessed pieces of paper out there — but rather that the standard has a comprehensive test
+suite passed by multiple independent production-quality implementations.
+
+With this in mind, we're excited to also support [Cole Anthony Capilongo](https://hypha.coop/people/#Cole%20Anthony%20Capilongo)
+(from the mighty [Hypha](https://hypha.coop/) working on a test suite for [DASL](https://dasl.ing/)'s
+[dCBOR42](https://dasl.ing/dcbor42.html) (an interoperable subset of IPLD for deterministic data encoding) and
+[CIDs](https://dasl.ing/cid.html) (a usable subset of IPFS CIDs). Cole will exercise the tests against
+multiple implementations and help us fix bugs in the specifications too. It's going to be
+fan<em>test</em>ic.
+
+And beyond that, stay tuned: we will have more annoucements coming.