2026-07-11 –, Linden Theater
10 years ago, the Internet Archive convened the first Decentralized Web Summit in San Francisco 2016. Now, we've invited five of the original Builders to look back & look forward with us:
What have we learned? How has the early promise of decentralization panned out? Where to go from here?
10 years ago, the Internet Archive convened the first Decentralized Web Summit in San Francisco 2016. Now, we've invited five of the original Builders to look back & look forward with us:
Mathew Hodgson, Founder & CTO, Matrix
Primavera DeFilippi, Distributed Governance; Blockchain & the Law
Markus Sabadello, Decentralized Identity & DID architect
Brewster Kahle, Founder, Internet Archive & Digital Librarian
Paul Frazee, CTO, Bluesky
What have we learned? How has the early promise of decentralization panned out? Where to go from here?
We look at every layer of the decentralized stack from storage to governance, to share insights from some of the foundational members of the DWeb ecosystem.
Wendy Hanamura is an leader with deep experience in nonprofit management of global organizations with outsized impact. Her passion is using storytelling to achieve positive social change. As a content creator, she's had a rich career as a Time Magazine journalist, Tokyo-based foreign correspondent, television reporter and host, moderator and public speaker. She is currently the Board Chair of the Earth Species Project, and contributes her fundraising skills to many organizations she loves.
Paul Frazee is Chief Technology Officer and a founding engineer at Bluesky where he co-designed the AT Protocol. He's enthusiastically participated in the DWeb camps and summits since the beginning, and credits much of his career to the connections he made there.
Founder and Digital Librarian of the Internet Archive
Internet Hall of Fame
National Academy of Engineering
Computer History Museum Fellow
Project Lead & co-founder of Matrix.org, CEO/CTO Element. Stubbornly trying to advance decentralised communication.
Markus Sabadello has been a pioneer and leader in the field of digital identity for many years and has contributed to cutting-edge technologies that have emerged in this space. He is co-editor of the Decentralized Identifiers standard at W3C, and member of the Steering Committee at the Decentralized Identity Foundation. Markus has spoken at many conferences and published papers about both the politics and technologies of digital identity. He participated in DWeb Summits 2016 and 2018. He is founder of Danube Tech, a consulting and development company that works on decentralized identity infrastructure.