As early as 2012, the Internet Archive started accepting donations in that experimental new currency called Bitcoin. Our first donor was Brewster Kahle. (https://blog.archive.org/2012/12/19/i-donated-bitcoins-to-the-internet-archive/)
In 2013, we started paying our staff in Bitcoin,  (https://blog.archive.org/2013/02/21/employees-to-be-paid-in-bitcoin-please-donate/)
created the first Bitcoin ATM, (https://blog.archive.org/2013/03/05/bitcoin-to-cash-converter-box/)
and convinced local businesses to accept it.  https://blog.archive.org/2013/04/03/how-the-internet-archive-is-having-great-time-with-bitcoin/


In 2015, at a SF Bitcoin Meetup in our headquarters, a technologist named Vitalik Buterin explained his new project called Ethereum. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21WcX57TFr8)  Buterin knew the Archive well, because he had written an article about us for Bitcoin Magazine in 2013. (https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/internet-archive-paying-employees-in-bitcoin-asking-for-donations-1361516910)


In 2017, we started to accept automatic micropayments through the Brave Browser (https://blog.archive.org/2017/02/02/micropayments-to-archive-org-by-using-the-brave-browser/) and later from Coil.  From the beginning, the Internet Archive has embraced the dreamers and the builders of Web3, almost alone amongst our peers in the cultural/library non-profit world.


Our leadership in the Web3 ecosystem started in 2015, when our founder, Brewster Kahle, took the stage of the Ford Foundation with a call to “Lock the Web Open” by building a decentralized web. (https://blog.archive.org/2015/02/11/locking-the-web-open-a-call-for-a-distributed-web/)
That led to our convening the first ever Decentralized Web Summit in 2016, bringing together the early protocol builders of Ethereum, IPFS, ZCash, Stacks, HyperCore, WebTorrent, Coil, Matrix, and so many others. (https://2016.decentralizedweb.net/)


In 2018, the Internet Archive built a decentralized prototype of the Archive (https://dweb.archive.org/details/home) utilitizing IPFS, Gun, and WebTorrent. 


Since 2021, we’ve begun storing video collections in Storj (https://www.storj.io/) and Web and film collections in Filecoin (insert appropriate URL) at scale, becoming one of the world’s largest users of decentralized storage. We are currently experimenting with also mining and providing storage in the Filecoin network.


As an institution, our mission is “Universal Access to All Knowledge.” We believe that mantra is attainable through the new technologies of Web 3, where we are not only users of Web3 technologies, but also builders, and above all, dreamers. But publishers wielding copyright laws written before the advent of computers threaten our long-term goal of preserving and providing access to humanity’s greatest treasures. We need your support to defend ourselves and fight back. 
