piker/ai/claude-code/plans/nlnet_commons_fund_proposal.summary.md

Structured to match NLNet’s form fields:

• Proposal name: “piker: sovereign, structured-concurrent trading infrastructure for the commons”
• Abstract: comprehensive description of what piker is today + 5 concrete deliverables for the grant
• Relevant experience: your background with tractor/trio/structured concurrency ecosystem
• Comparison: positions piker against proprietary platforms, permissively-licensed FOSS libraries, and institutional systems — hits NLNet’s “market failure” framing hard
• Technical challenges: 5 real engineering problems (distributed SC, zero-copy shm, broker heterogeneity, UI perf, reproducible packaging)
• Ecosystem engagement: upstream contributions, Matrix community, pikers.dev self-hosting, open data formats, standards work
• Budget: €50k breakdown across 7 task areas at €75/h

Key arguments aligned with NLNet Commons Fund mission:

1. Financial infrastructure as captured commons — the “market failure” framing NLNet explicitly looks for
2. AGPLv3+ as the license that actually prevents enclosure (not MIT/Apache which they’ve seen fail)
3. “Honest, open, inclusive, robust” — their exact language mapped onto piker’s properties
4. Zero-web / federated / your-hardware-your-data as data sovereignty
5. tractor as a standalone commons contribution beyond just trading

Things you’ll want to customize before submitting: - Your Matrix room URL - Budget amounts / hourly rate to match your actual needs - Contact info on the form itself - Whether to attach a demo screencast or architecture diagram - The AI disclosure section (they require it since we used AI to draft)