• Digital commons or digital public goods (DPGs) are shared resources that everyone can access in areas like healthcare, finance and education.
• Their development is thriving globally but these initiatives require resources – money, infrastructure and skills – to get up and running.
• Innovative financing solutions are crucial to encourage further development of digital commons and ensure access for all.

In a remote village in Kenya, a child receives a vaccine tracked by an open-source healthcare toolkit. On the roadside in India, a woman from an indigenous community accepts payment for a cup of tea using a QR code powered by India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which provides universal access to digital payments.

Digital commons or digital public goods (DPGs) like these are quietly reshaping lives. Much like the physical shared resources we are all familiar with, such as rivers, libraries or public parks, digital commons are created for the benefit of all and open to everyone.

DPGs can take different forms, including open content, open data and open-source software. Wikipedia is a widely known open-content platform enabling collaborative knowledge creation, for example.

As with any public good or service, however, digital commons face a pressing question: Where do the necessary resources (money, infrastructure, skills, time) to create, develop and maintain them come from?

Have you read?

• The digital commons: how to harness blockchain for better governance
• The case for the digital commons
• 5 early insights for using digital public goods for development

Here are four examples of emerging approaches to financing digital commons:

1. Cryptocurrency

The UNICEF venture fund has been experimenting with cryptocurrency-based investments, using Ether and Bitcoin to support early-stage tech startups. By requiring all supported solutions to be open source, UNICEF ensures these innovations feed into other DPGs rather than remaining proprietary.

Cryptocurrency can be a fast, safe and transparent mechanism for disbursing investments in emerging markets. As of October 2025, UNICEF has used it for over 50 venture investments and it makes information about these investments and any donations to the fund publicly available.

New regulatory clarity such as the recent passage of the US Genius Act and the creation of a USD stablecoin could accelerate the use of cryptocurrency to fund even more innovations for social good.

2. Retrospective funding

Philanthropy has traditionally been the primary source of funding for DPGs, with organizations such as Nilekani Philanthropies and the Gates Foundation playing significant roles in building capacity and partnering with governments in DPG implementation.

More recently, retrospective funding for digital commons has emerged as an alternative model of philanthropic support. Unlike traditional grants, which fund future work, retrospective funding rewards projects that have already demonstrated positive impact. The Hypercerts Foundation, for example, facilitates this type of funding through impact claims that are identifiable, traceable and transferable. By creating a decentralized database for funding impact, Hypercerts also allows external evaluators to validate claims of funding impact and allows for greater interoperability between different sources of funding.

This kind of funding can tap into the core motivations of open-source communities – reputation and pro-social orientation – while also creating a viable financial pathway to sustain and scale digital commons efforts over time.

3. Community finance

Reflecting the commons spirit, multiple DPG efforts have been funded by communities themselves. In Sri Lanka, Good Market began as a physical Saturday market of sustainably sourced products. Revenues later funded the creation a global digital commons-based marketplace that now connects more than 4,500 ventures across over 100 countries.

Similarly, barter-based financing – which uses the exchange of local assets to ease a community’s cash constraints – could offer an innovative, community-driven mechanism for supporting digital commons. Goats for water, for example, is an online marketplace that helps households in off-grid communities to get solar products in exchange for livestock.

Elsewhere, non-profit initiative Open Healthcare Network is exploring the use of impact tokens – digital assets that represent measurable social outcomes such as the delivery of palliative care offered by community health workers. And startup eSamudaay is experimenting with tokenising community investment and ownership using India’s DPI initiative.

Such tokenisation efforts could open new avenues for community financing and external corporate social responsibility funding, effectively linking social impact with innovative financing models.

4. Cross-subsidies

Another emerging way to finance digital commons is by cross-subsidising their development with revenue from other services.

Open Supply Hub, for example, is a global supply chain mapping platform that provides free open-source access to data on over one million production locations, enabling greater transparency and sustainability. The organization funds itself by offering data cleaning and harmonization services to more than 2,500 organizations (as of August 2025).

Cross-subsidy models help digital commons to remain open to all while also ensuring financial viability for the organizations involved in these efforts.

Shaping a collective future

For billions of people, particularly in the Global South, digital commons provide a lifeline for participation in the modern economy. These initiatives help people access healthcare and education, while also boosting financial inclusion. Ensuring the sustainability of DPGs will require innovation in technology, but also in the financing of these initiatives.

Governments, philanthropic organizations, businesses and communities all have a role to play. By aligning incentives, experimenting with new financing models and strengthening governance, the global community can help ensure digital commons remain open, inclusive and resilient.

Digital commons will shape our collective future, but we can all play a role in deciding how to fund, protect and sustain DPGs so they benefit everyone.