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July 21, 2025

Ecosystem Grants Program Announced by the Subspace Foundation

With the launch of Mainnet Phase-2 and activation of native $AI3 token transfers, Autonomys enters a new phase — one defined not only by technical progress, but by ecosystem empowerment.

From its beginnings as Subspace, Autonomys has been built to deliver decentralized infrastructure that is scalable, permanent, and verifiable. Over the past several years, this has taken shape through the development of a globally distributed storage network (DSN), the introduction of the Auto Drive storage gateway, the Auto SDK, and now, modular execution environments. With these tools live, the focus shifts from core protocol development to ecosystem growth.

To support this next stage, the Subspace Foundation is preparing to launch an Ecosystem Grants Program. This is not a formal program launch, but rather an initial introduction to the initiative and the types of projects the Foundation will prioritize. All grant-related activities, funding decisions, and communications will come directly from the Subspace Foundation.

Program Scope

The Ecosystem Grants Program is designed to provide funding and support to projects that expand Autonomys’ functionality, drive usage, or build upon existing infrastructure. Funding will be considered across five initial categories:

Infrastructure
Including alternate clients, developer tools, encryption layers, test environments, or new interfaces for Auto Drive or DSN nodes.
AI-powered dApps & Agents
Applications that leverage the Autonomys stack to enable verifiable, on-chain intelligent behavior — such as co-pilots, autonomous DeFi agents, or social agents.
Integrations
Projects that connect Autonomys to other systems, including bridges, relayers, oracles, or external SDK/plugin layers.
Research
Proposals related to novel consensus models, DSN optimization, ZK or FHE experimentation, or governance design.
Community & Growth
Developer education, ecosystem onboarding, and content efforts — such as tutorials, hackathons, bootcamps, or documentation.

Example Project Types

A detailed set of example project ideas is available on the example projects page. A few illustrative examples include:

A third-party Auto Drive interface with a custom UI or performance profile.
A governance platform using Auto Drive for encrypted proposal storage and Auto EVM for voting.
An AI data labeling dApp that supports agent-generated training data sets on the DSN.
A cross-chain bridge that connects Autonomys to other networks, such as Solana or Base.

These examples are intended to guide applicants, not constrain them. Proposals that fall outside these categories but demonstrate strong alignment with the network’s goals will also be considered.

What Selected Projects Can Expect

Selected proposals will receive:

Milestone-based funding through grants administered by the Subspace Foundation.
Technical and product support from Autonomys contributors.
Visibility across Autonomys community and communication channels.
Ongoing guidance through key build stages from prototype to deployment.

The program is intended to support long-term, meaningful contributions — not one-off experiments.

Application Process

Ahead of its official launch, the Subspace Foundation is welcoming early Ecosystem Grants Program proposals at subspace.foundation/grants.

Applicants can:

Read the program overview and eligibility criteria
Review detailed FAQs and example projects
Submit their proposals for review

Applications are evaluated on a rolling basis. A working prototype is not required at submission, but proposals must demonstrate technical soundness, clarity of scope, and relevance to the Autonomys mission.

Looking Ahead

Autonomys has entered a new phase. The protocol is live. The tools are in place. The network is growing.

Through the Ecosystem Grants Program, the Subspace Foundation is supporting the next wave of development — initiatives that extend, apply, and scale what has been built.

For questions, visit the forum, reach out on Discord, or contact the Foundation directly through the grants portal.

About Autonomys

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Community

July 14, 2025

Our Evolution from Subspace to Autonomys

Autonomys began with a shared conviction: that the future of the internet needed a decentralized, community-owned foundation — one that preserved data permanently, remained scalable without compromise, and invited global participation without privilege. That vision first took shape as the Subspace Network, a research initiative born from open-source collaboration and sustained by years of deep technical work.

Between 2018 and 2020, founders Jeremiah Wagstaff and Nazar Mokrynskyi met through GitHub and co-founded Subspace Labs. Their mission: to create a decentralized base layer that could support internet-scale dApps where users — not centralized intermediaries — controlled their own data. Backed by research grants from the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Web3 Foundation, their early R&D laid the technical groundwork for what would become a fourth-generation Layer-1 blockchain.

In 2021, Subspace Labs introduced its novel consensus mechanism — Proof-of-Archival-Storage (PoAS) — and launched the Subspace Network. This approach rewarded farmers for storing provably unique pieces of blockchain history using commodity hardware, ensuring accessibility for everyday participants. PoAS ties consensus directly to permanent storage, meaning the more space a farmer contributes, the more history they store, and the greater their chances of block and vote rewards. This model doesn’t just make data availability and integrity cryptographically enforceable; it makes them economically aligned with network security. The network would scale proportionally with user growth, offering what many considered an unsolvable combination: decentralization, scalability, and security.

By 2022, Subspace became the first protocol to offer dynamically available permanent distributed storage, archiving entire ecosystems like Polkadot and its parachains. That year, 30,000+ nodes across 60+ countries participated in the Gemini II incentivized testnet, pledging over 1.3 PiB of storage. Backed by a $33M strategic round led by Pantera Capital and joined by Coinbase Ventures, ConsenSys Mesh, and others, Subspace Labs expanded its infrastructure by introducing domains — decoupled execution environments for modular runtime support. In 2023, the first domain — Nova, our Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) runtime, now called Auto EVM — was launched on the Gemini III testnet.

By 2023, it was clear that the same infrastructure powering permissionless storage and modular execution could serve a broader, emerging use case: decentralized AI. As machine learning and autonomous agents began demanding high-throughput, verifiable, and censorship-resistant infrastructure, the Subspace team recognized an inflection point. In 2024, Subspace Labs and the Subspace Network transitioned into Autonomys Labs and the Autonomys Network — marking a shift in mission toward enabling radical autonomy for humans and bounded autonomy for AI, while continuing to build on the technical foundations originally laid under Subspace.

As Autonomys, we refined our roadmap to focus on providing the foundational infrastructure for AI3.0 — a term we use to describe the next era of decentralized, agent-driven artificial intelligence. In this new paradigm, AI agents interact with data, systems, and users across trustless, verifiable environments — requiring storage, computation, and identity frameworks that cannot be owned or controlled by centralized actors.

Since then, we’ve reached several major milestones:

Successfully launched Mainnet Phase-1, bootstrapping consensus and activating our storage layer on mainnet.
Onboarded 1,000+ globally distributed farmers, who have pledged over 500 petabytes of SSD storage to the network — now available as a permanent, on-chain storage solution for any project that can benefit from it.
Continued expanding our modular AI3.0 stack, including:
Auto Drive — Our gateway to on-chain permanent storage, offering a familiar interface and true Web3 data guarantees
Auto Agents Framework — Our framework for building truly autonomous on-chain AI agents with permanent memory and chain of thought
Auto SDK — Our developer toolkit that simplifies building and integration with TypeScript and RESTful API support
Auto ID — Our upcoming self-sovereign identity primitive, designed to enable secure, verifiable human–agent interactions at scale

Autonomys is now a purpose-built foundation for a world where AI agents, humans, and systems operate on verifiable data — stored, secured, and served by a decentralized network. We’re building toward a future that doesn’t require trust, because its architecture leaves no room for doubt.

As we look ahead to Mainnet Phase-2 — which will introduce $AI3 token transferability, roll out our domain layer, and launch Auto EVM — we remain committed to the same first principles that started this journey: decentralization without compromise, participation without privilege, and permanence without trade-offs.

To our community — thank you. Your support is what made our growth journey from Subspace to Autonomys not just possible, but powerful.

About Autonomys

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Protocol

July 9, 2025

Autonomys Mainnet Phase-2 Transfer Enablement Scheduled for July 16, 2025 (16:00 UTC)

The Subspace Foundation will enable native token transfers on the Autonomys Network at 16:00 UTC on Wednesday, July 16, 2025. This activation marks the formal start of Mainnet Phase-2 and will introduce asset mobility across the protocol.

Why Transfer Enablement Matters

This milestone signals the transition from a bootstrapped core infrastructure to an operational decentralized network with active user-driven value flow.

When transfers go live, the network stack will include:

A globally distributed, high-throughput Decentralized Storage Network (DSN) that is permissionless and permanent
Auto Drive, giving users intuitive access to DSN-stored content
The Auto SDK, providing developers with tools to build, read, and write to the DSN programmatically
The Auto Agents Framework and MCP tooling, enabling AI agents with on-chain verifiability and permanent memory
A network where transfers are possible, unlocking ecosystem utility and bringing the token economy online

Community Livestream — July 16, 2025 (16:00 UTC)

To commemorate the milestone, the Foundation will host a Mainnet Phase-2 Launch Party via livestream featuring:

Enable transfers live
Introduce the Dawn of Autonomy community campaign
Share updates on domains
Discuss exchange listing plans
Unveil the new grants program and ecosystem growth strategy

The event will be broadcast on Autonomys’ YouTube, X (Twitter), and additional channels.

Community questions may be submitted ahead of time at:
https://forms.gle/bENpqWCBiY8kk8Ls8

Next Steps

Transfer enablement marks the start of a broader Phase-2 rollout planned for the coming quarters. This includes:

Auto EVM domain launch and application deployment
Expanded Auto Drive and Auto Agent functionality
Enhanced support for developer tooling and standards
New integrations and ecosystem incentives

Farmers, builders, partners, and all community members are encouraged to join the livestream for information on community initiatives, LIVE transfer activation, next steps for domains and exchanges and opportunities to participate in the next phase of Autonomys.

Announcement issued by the Subspace Foundation.

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Reports

July 8, 2025

Security Milestone: SRLabs Audit Confirms Autonomys Mainnet Phase-2 Readiness

Security Audit Wraps Ahead of Mainnet Phase-2, Clearing Path to Token Transfers

Subspace Foundation is pleased to announce that Autonomys has reached a decisive inflection point: Security Research Labs (SRLabs) has concluded the latest installment of its Continuous Security Assurance of the Autonomys Network. The audit — focused predominantly on domains and supporting architecture including cross-domain messaging (XDM), fraud-proof pipeline, Proof-of-Time, and Proof-of-Archival-Storage — completes a critical hardening step ahead of Mainnet Phase-2.

Audit in Numbers

Takeaway: All critical security items identified by the audit have been addressed and remaining items are lower-priority improvements that are being tracked publicly on our roadmap.

What Changed Under the Hood

Implications for the Autonomys Ecosystem

Investors gain further reassurance that the core business logic — where value moves and data lives — resists the most sophisticated exploits known today.
Builders on Auto EVM and future domains can ship with confidence.
Farmers, agents, and end-users benefit from improved network reliability and security hardening validated through independent assessment.

Closing Outlook

With audit barriers lifted, the network roadmap now advances to Mainnet Phase-2, which will introduce $AI3 token transferability, roll out the production domain layer, and launch Auto EVM for smart-contract deployment. Going forward, critical code will continue to be audited for vulnerabilities, and a public bug-bounty program will launch alongside token transferability.

To view and read the full audit report, visit: https://github.com/subspace/audit-reports/blob/main/Autonomys_continuous-security-audit-domains.pdf

— Announcement issued by the Subspace Foundation

About Autonomys

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Partnerships

July 3, 2025

Autonomys x Fireverse: Permanent On-Chain Storage for Decentralized Music Metadata