---
tags: dat
---

# Dat History

- possible visualization:
- https://dat.foundation/about/history/
- https://dat-ecosystem.org/history.html

## 2011

- brainstorming the idea
- Max Ogden chats with Rufus Pollock about a changes protocol for data to allow diffing/merging and supports micro-schemas at the Open Government Data Camp
- https://rufuspollock.com/2011/10/17/weekly-update-rufus-pollock-2/

## 2013

**June**

- initial team is defined: Max Ogden, Mathias Buus, Juan Benet

- [initial readme](https://github.com/datproject/dat/commit/464679267049899eafa345125a0f2212f91be456?diff=unified)

**June**
- [Knight Foundation Funding ($50.000)](https://knightfoundation.org/grants/6001/) - from an idea to a pre-alpha stage

**November**
- [Introducing dat - talk by Max Ogden](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX7qSwz3SCk)
- twitter account setup
- https://twitter.com/dat_protocol

## 2014

**March**
- [Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Funding ($260.000) - support for the continued development of Dat. That money was used to pay Max and two additional developers to spend the year growing Dat into a vibrant, healthy, widely used open source project. Sloan’s interest is in seeing Dat used in the sciences.](https://usopendata.org/2014/04/02/dat/)

**April**
- [Dat alpha preview - screencast](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tP_6N7mMKok&t=72s)

**June**

- [Peermaps 1.0 release (peer to peer cartography)](https://github.com/peermaps/peermaps/releases/tag/1.0.0)

**July**

- Juan Benet leaves Dat and starts working on IPFS

**August**

- [Dat Alpha version was released](https://usopendata.org/2014/08/19/dat-alpha/) - Dat is now a set of tools & modules for creating and sharing streaming data pipelines

**October**

- Karissa McKelvey is hired as a software engineer and scientific partnerships manager

## 2015

**April**

- [Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Funding ($640.000)](https://usopendata.org/2015/04/03/sloan/) - support for the continued development of Dat as well as targeted outreach to the natural and social science research community

**July**

- [Dat Beta Release](https://usopendata.org/2015/07/29/dat-beta/) - the version focused on tabular datasets. It turns out to be too complex for typical use cases

- [designing Dat 1.0](https://vimeo.com/147914258)

**December**

- Alpha testing with pilot projects in science, including Sloan Digital Sky Survey (Astronomy), iRNA-Seq (Bioinformatics – RNA), and Bionode (Bioinformatics – DNA)

- [Hypercore initial release](https://github.com/hypercore-protocol/hypercore/releases/tag/v1.0.0)

- [Hyperdrive initial release](https://github.com/hypercore-protocol/hyperdrive/releases/tag/v1.0.1)

## 2016

**February**

- [Dat 1.0. is ready](https://blog.datproject.org/2016/02/01/dat-1-0-is-ready/)

**April**

- [Knight Foundation Grant ($420.000) for Dat dataset registry and desktop application](https://blog.datproject.org/2016/02/01/announcing-publicbits-org/)

**June**

- The team grows from 3 to 8, to include developers & designers on the Desktop application, commandline tool, and dataset registry. New hires during 2016-2017 are Joe Hand, developer; Kristina Schneider, designer; Julian Gruber, developer; Chia-liang Kao, developer

**September**

- [Code for Science and Society is founded](https://codeforscience.org/about/) - to support the Dat Project as a fiscal sponsor bundled with strategic project support

**October**

- The first meetups for ‘Coding for Science & Society’ are held in Berlin, Oakland, and Portland; organized by the Dat team

## 2017

**January**

- [New Dat CLI is released](https://blog.datproject.org/2017/01/09/preview-the-new-dat-cli/)

**February**

- [Beaker browser pre-release](https://www.electronjs.org/blog/beaker-browser)

- [Dat desktop release](https://blog.datproject.org/2017/02/12/dat-desktop-is-here/)

**May**

- A public peer called Dat Base.org announced for short-term backups and previews

**June**

- [Dat application 2.0 release](https://blog.datproject.org/2017/06/01/dat-sleep-release/) - desktop application and dataset registry are announced & released. Funding ends for Knight & Sloan grants. Kristina, Julian, and Chia-liang move on to new projects

**September**

- [Moore Foundation Grant ($110.000)](https://blog.datproject.org/2017/09/15/dat-funding-history/) - support for ‘Dat in the Lab’ project, researching enhancements for containerization of scientific data & code

**December**

- [organizational changes](https://blog.datproject.org/2017/12/20/organization-changes-dat-css/)

## 2018

**March**

- Dat is awarded a [Ford-Mozilla Open Web Fellow.](https://blog.datproject.org/2018/03/21/css-apply-open-web-fellow/) The governance team picks Darius Kazemi
-
**April**

- [Multifeed (multi-writer hypercore) 1.0 release](https://github.com/kappa-db/multifeed/releases/tag/v1.0.0)

**May**

- [Kappa Core 1.0 release (minimal append only DB)](https://github.com/kappa-db/kappa-core/releases/tag/v1.0.0)

- [Cabal core 1.0 release](https://github.com/cabal-club/cabal-core/releases/tag/v1.0.0)

**September**

- [Mozila Open Source Support Grant ($34,000)](https://github.com/datproject/organization/tree/master/grants/2018-MOSS)

**October**

- [Dat Open Collective page is set up for recurring donations](https://opencollective.com/dat)

**December**

- [Handshake Free & Open Source Software Community Grant ($100.000)](https://github.com/datproject/organization#2018)

- New hires: Andrew Osheroff (developer), Georgiy Shibaev (community manager), David Clements (developer), Karissa McKelvey (project director)

## 2019

**January**

- [Samsung NEXT Stack Zero Grant ($63,000 )](https://github.com/datproject/organization/tree/master/grants/2018-SamsungNEXT)

**May**

- [Dat Hack Unconference](https://events.dat.foundation/2019/)

**June**

- [Wireline Donation ($50,000)](https://github.com/datproject/organization#2019)

- [Agregore browser pre-release](https://github.com/AgregoreWeb/agregore-browser/releases/tag/v1.0.1-0)

**December**

- Dat Ecosystem is formed as an informal group of projects building on top of dat technology

- [Ara alpha launch](https://github.com/AraBlocks/ara-file-manager)

## 2020

**May**

- [Hypercore protocol graduates from Dat Ecosystem](https://blog.datproject.org/2020/05/15/dat-protocol-renamed-hypercore-protocol/)

**when?**

- [NLnet Grant for a Rust port](https://github.com/datproject/organization#2020)

**June**

- [Agregore browser pre-release](https://github.com/AgregoreWeb/agregore-browser/releases/tag/v1.0.1-0)

**August**

- [Dat conference](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbLY5Qg3t3OJbxZZUioqMOQ)

**December**

- [Hyperbee 1.0 release](https://github.com/hypercore-protocol/hyperbee/releases/tag/v1.0.0)

## 2021

**January**

- [Dat consortium manifesto](https://hackmd.io/N2dFrSfxQbSP1nD94WC6RA?view) which focuses on open membership, interoperability between projects and common funding efforts

- [Dat Ecosystem](https://dat-ecosystem.github.io/)

**February**

- [CTZN network alpha launch](https://github.com/bluelinklabs/ctzn)

**May**

- [CTZN network experiment ends](https://paulfrazee.medium.com/building-in-the-open-70ac9dccf1aa)

**September**

- [Dat ecosystem transition grant](https://blog.dat-ecosystem.org/dat-ecosystem-relaunch/)

- [Sher alpha launch](https://sher.geutstudio.com/)

**October**

- [Hypercore 10 release](https://github.com/hypercore-protocol/hypercore-next)

- [Autobase Multiwriter relase](https://github.com/hypercore-protocol/autobase)

## 2022

**June**

[Holepunch launched as a collaboration between Hypercore and Bitfinex team](https://twitter.com/keet_io/status/1553674948421599232)