2023 to 2024, from local to social

• Open beta went live with Anytype surpassing the 160,000 user mark and earning #1 product of the week on ProductHunt in July.
• Booming community: our app is available in 20 languages, showcases 2,100+ stars on GitHub and is supported by over 20,000 community members on our forum, subreddit and Telegram.
• In 2023, we cemented Anytype as a local first knowledge management app with decentralized spaces.
• In 2024, we will further build on this and bring a first of its kind secure collaboration software setting a new standard for real-time, peer to peer interactions over encrypted data to rival the top tier cloud solutions of today. Achieving this will be challenging but we’re adamant about AnySync’s use of CRDTs and are planning further protocol infrastructure investments.

Let’s unpack each of the above. The biggest milestone of the year for us was opening the beta! It’s been four years in the making and we could not be more excited about it and having to welcome over 160,000 new users.

With the beta, we also opened our code which as of now is starred by more than 2,100 of you  on GitHub. Our website got a facelift and subsequently some love, and 🖤 again. Moreover, the Anytype Community has grown to 20,000 strong across our channels and the amount of posts has surpassed 15,000!

Because of our amazing community, we climbed to #1 product of the week on ProductHunt and made Anytype available in 20 languages on desktop and 11 on mobile after kicking off the localization project 🌐✨.

Huge product milestones

If we were to wrap this year up in a few words, it would be: local first knowledge management is here 🚀.

We’re seeing a significant and consistent retention rate with new users which we attribute to navigation and UI improvements that were designed so that Antype can be relied on for everyday use. It was hard to choose the biggest features of the year but here’s our picks.

With spaces and multi spaces we took one of the most important steps on the way towards becoming a place for secure collaboration. The next milestone here is the ability to share these spaces which underpins seamless and collaborative work.

Initially launched as a self-hosting MVP in the summer, local only mode evolved into an effortless way to choose hosting preferences directly from your client. It now enables a genuine version of local first software, a concept we've envisioned from the very beginning.

With collections we were excited to introduce a feature that allows you to link, modify and sort objects in a hierarchical, interlinked yet flexible structure.

Delivering one of the biggest feature requests of this year, we introduced widgets. These are modular units that can be customized from the homescreen and added and removed from the sidebar to dramatically improve the navigation user experience.

Last but not least for the year, Experience Gallery. Any user can share their own use case or import ones created by others. Our team has provided some which are essentially tailored workflows for a specific purpose, consisting of Sets, Custom Page layouts, Templates, Types, and Relations. Our hope for this is it would be a catalyst for easily getting started with Anytype and help new users easily integrate it into everyday life.

🛫 Local first collaboration and communication, here we come

We’re planning on making 2024 one for history books! 🪐

One of the many things we’re going to launch next year is spaces with multiplayer support. Our ideal is to provide real-time collaboration that’s on par with or supersedes the best cloud apps of today. Achieving this goal, while ensuring real-time collaboration over encrypted data, is one of the biggest challenges in realizing local-first software at scale.

To make this happen, in 2024 we’ll be heavily investing in the AnySync protocol to ensure distributed and conflict-free collaboration based on CRDTs and the seven principles of local first software. 

Bringing this to market will be a first of its kind and will help collaborators leverage all of the benefits of Anytype while working seamlessly together. Imagine the spaces that you have in Anytype right now, but simplified and made intuitive for everyday discussions as well as long term projects. Further simplifying onboarding and providing an intuitive experience in everyday use will make Anytype second nature, whether for a communal library, a family space or a team project.

You’ll be able to create spaces without coding skills but own and control them as you would in any self-hosted application. Moreover, imagine discovering and collaborating in spaces shared by you or others under the same Wi-Fi network and with no gatekeepers. 

Once live, this will mark the true launch of Anytype 🌱. As before, we’d love to humbly ask for your help making this upcoming launch a success - from support on Product Hunt (let’s get that Golden Kitty! 🏆), to social shares and candid reviews. Please stay tuned into our community for updates as launch day approaches.

Important year ahead

While news from the Anytype universe has never been better, the world around us still grapples with its realities. With over 40% of the world’s population facing elections, 2024 is going to be a challenging year for informational integrity and data ownership. 

Relying on each other as well as peer to peer technologies for trusted communication and collaboration purposes will become integral. It’s important for us at Anytype, and even more so within the tech community - specifically in relation to AI. 

At a time when personal data is being fed into centralized and black box systems, local AI agents will offer a technologically ethical alternative, equipping each individual with their own open-source autonomous agents. 

We’re going to further invest in our security as well as educating our community on key topics related to Anytype but also within the wider tech space. We’re planning to launch transparency reports and go even further towards open source.

We couldn’t be happier about how this year turned out and are absolutely looking forward to a fantastic 2024 with you! Our gratitude, first and foremost, goes to you, our dear community and users. As our journey continues, we’d love to celebrate more milestones with you and count on your support for the challenging but also exciting times ahead. 

To figure out the sustainability path for Antype, we’ve been thinking about paid plans which we’re planning on introducing next year. We don’t know yet what shape this will take but we know for sure that there will always remain a free option when choosing to self host 💗. 

You’ve asked us from day one about ways in which you can support Anytype and we can’t be more grateful for the help we received with localization and with spreading the word through the contributor’s program.

From everyone on the team, thank you again for putting your trust in us and providing us with an endless source of inspiration and motivation.

2024 will be even bigger!