An open source and distributed operating system for the internet of impact.

Developed by an international collective of software developers, data scientists, and sustainability experts.

Imagine a world where you know exactly what you are buying. How many hours of child labour? How many tonnes of CO₂? How many rare earth minerals mined in unethical conditions?

To know the exact, real-time social and environmental impacts of our choices, we need a new way to collect, store, and access the data related to the products and services we take for granted.

Instans aims to revolutionise the way we access and use information about our lifestyles. Giving us the ability to not only evaluate the true cost of product choices, but to understand our own “impact budget”.

Breaking free from centralised corporate control (and misaligned intentions) instans utilises next generation distributed data protocols, where everyone contributes and everyone is accountable.

This is the future of the internet - the internet of impact.

About instans

The name instans comes from Latin - it means "standing by", "being near", "present", "urgent", "persistent".

To make more responsible decisions, we need up-to-date information about our impact on society and the planet.

This requires fast and uncomplicated ways to calculate impact across the whole supply chain of a product - or investment portfolio – such as the carbon footprint*, labour conditions, effects on bio-diversity, and so on.
Yet impact data are still laborious and costly to pull together because they are typically fragmented, duplicated, and inconsistent.
We want to enable a paradigm shift, away from the post-hoc aggregation of impact data, towards real-time consumer level support for sustainability based decision-making. Putting the power of live impact data in people's hands at the critical point of choice.
* It can take companies up to 3 years or more to calculate the total carbon footprint across an entire supply chain (Scope 3 CO₂ emissions) as per the reporting requirements of the Green House Gas (GHG) Protocol.

Provide search and computation of real-time impact data that is affordable and trustworthy.

Ensure a generic and resilient technology stack by using next generation web protocols^†.
Empower people to have full ownership, control, access, and possession of their data.
Scale efficiently, organically, and decentralised.
Amplify existing software products without suppressing them, including compatibility with distributed ledger technologies (DLT).
Support existing end-user workflows wherever possible, so that people are free to use the software of their choice.
Governance as an open source / public commons initiative.
^† Linked Data by the W3C and new SOLID data pod protocols developed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee (SOLID stands for SOcially LInked Data).

An distributed operating system for hosting and managing impact data pods^‡.

Simple and intuitive user interface (UI).
Federated search engine for distributed data.
Application programming interface (API).
Software development kit (SDK) and app store.
^‡ Expanding the capabilities of SOLID data pods.

External data connectors allow third party applications to work with distributed data sets as if they are an integrated database.

New business models

Using instans data pods makes it more easy to separate data storage from cloud software. This creates three different and complementary markets by design.

Data hosting

Choose the level of data security and privacy that suits your needs.

Web apps

Easily switch cloud software providers because they only ever connect to your data and therefore cannot lock in your data.

Content

Have more control over whether you share your data for free or charge others to access it.

Development Roadmap

	Proof of concept Technical experiment (Complete)
	SUCCESS - we proved that we can do search queries across multiple distributed data pods in real-time. This is a world first with SOLID data pods.
	Minimum Viable Product (MVP) Working demonstration (Underway)
	First active user group of 1,500 people worldwide (confirmed). Modest scope with content in data pods limited to 25 data fields (name, contact details, Twitter handle, and so on). Show that basic functionality is stable and reliable with real-world usage (data pod hosting, external API, search of distributed data in the public domain).
	Beta Functional in operating environment (Scheduled)
	Continue with first user group and add more user functionality, stronger privacy and security especially when searching private data, more data fields and data types, version control and time-stamping of data. Introduce more data schema for well known impact management regimes, such as the Sustainable Development Goals, B-Corp, IRIS+, GRI, and so on. Integrate more third party apps such as contact management, messaging, calls, meetings, event scheduling, social media wall (similar to functionality of a conference and events app). Demonstrate that instans is ready for enterprise deployment.
	Enterprise early adopters Ready for deployment (Scheduled)
	On-board additional B2B and B2C users (restricted control group). Expand capacity, reliability, scalability, and deeper integration with third party apps and initiatives. Demonstrate that instans is ready for full enterprise deployment at scale and flexible enough to accommodate diverse user types.
	Mature enterprise grade Full scalability and financial sustainability (Scheduled)
	Open up to any new B2B or B2C user and scale globally. Integrate algorithms to calculate impact according to industry norms and regulatory requirements, and obtain relevant approvals so that results can be formally accepted by established impact reporting regimes. Realise full vision and demonstrate commercial sustainability.