CommonsDB Feasibility Study part 2: from Design to Deployment

Today, part 2 of the CommonsDB Feasibility Study has been published. Building on the initial analysis presented in part 1, the second part of the study assesses the feasibility of the approach in light of real-world developments.

Since May 2025, the team has moved the prototype into active testing, deployed public APIs, and launched the CommonsDB Explorer. Part 2 of the study evaluates the technical, legal, and operational performance of the system as it handles live data from our project partners. It offers a detailed look at how we are solving the challenge of creating a trustworthy, decentralized registry for Public Domain and openly licensed works.

Key Insights

• The Prototype is Operational: The core workflow—local ISCC generation, rights declaration, and credential-backed submission—is operating reliably. Initial contributions from the Europeana Foundation and Wikimedia Sverige have successfully populated the registry with over 300,000 declarations. This confirms the viability of our decentralized approach, where rights information is managed by participating institutions.
• Trust Architecture Implemented: We have established a trust model that combines eIDAS-qualified trust services with Verifiable Credentials. Every declaration in the registry is cryptographically signed, machine-verifiable, and explicitly linked to the verified identity of a Data Supplier.
• Delegated Conflict Resolution: The study outlines a "delegated resolution" model for handling conflicting rights information. Rather than CommonsDB attempting to arbitrate disputes centrally, the system detects divergences and signals them to the Data Suppliers, who remain the authoritative source for correcting their records. This preserves data provenance and ensures accountability rests with those who possess the necessary contextual knowledge.

What’s next for CommonsDB?

The insights from this study will guide our activities until July 2026, with a primary focus on expanding the registry’s reach. We actively invite additional Data Suppliers to participate in CommonsDB and significantly enrich the diversity of our data. Together with our current partners, we look forward to scaling up to millions of registry declarations.

To support this growth, in April we will publish an online resource that will assist new Data Suppliers with integration by documenting best practices for ISCC generation, rights modeling, and declaration submissions. In parallel, we are exploring institutional options for the long-term stewardship of the registry, potentially within the wider EU data space and copyright ecosystem. This work will culminate in a final strategy paper and public event in mid-2026.

We invite you to read the full study to understand the technical and legal architecture underpinning the next generation of rights infrastructure.