Looking Back, Moving Forward: Our Journey and Plans for 2025

News
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This year has been the most exciting in Anytype’s history. We achieved record-breaking metrics and launched the long-awaited collaborative AnySync and Multiplayer v1. These milestones unlock powerful new possibilities for us. We’d like to reflect on how we got here and share our plans for the future.

We started in 2018 with a mission to bring digital freedoms and empower cooperation. These values continue to guide us, making the work both fulfilling and challenging. Building on principle has been our way to do things, and we remain firm in our commitment to this path.

The Prototype

We began with a bold vision: a Unified, Extendable User Interface for the decentralized web, built on a peer-to-peer, content-addressable architecture. In layman’s terms, one place that you can go to collect, capture and share your ideas and work in a variety of formats, that are encrypted and can sync with or without the internet, and that can be used with or without centralized servers. We decided to build on existing networking libraries, so that we could focus on front-end experiences as expanding to collaborative and social use cases has always been our goal.

Our 2019 prototype – a collaborative Notion-like editor in JavaScript on IPFS – worked, but flooded the network at our Berlin office, making it barely usable. Despite its flaws, it upheld our principles: fully local-first and truly decentralized.

We saw block-based editors as the future, not just for productivity but for social interactions. We centered Anytype on unique and extendable primitives: objects, types and relations. Why couldn’t a page be a blog post, a forum thread or some other object? Why not connect everything in a unified graph database, viewable as sets and collections? We were thrilled with the possibilities, though the complexity was immense.

Our early reliance on existing networking libraries was something that we had to revisit when trying to engineer our collaboration feature. The protocol we had used was slow, buggy and unscalable as it supported only one sync node. Then, two years ago that protocol was abandoned by its developers. With no other similar solution available, this meant we needed to put resources toward building AnySync in order to make local-first scalable.

A Huge Thank You to This Community

Today, AnySync beautifully supports truly local first spaces at scale. 20,000 people use AnySync daily. 80,000 use it monthly. It is the foundation on which we have begun the work to build a true alternative to the cloud. Additionally, we also have added Any-Store, a local-first database on which social experiences will be based.

Many projects choose cloud technologies, which are much more mature. But as you know, we are dedicated to creating a true alternative to the cloud. Thank you so much for all the feedback and support you’ve given us. Your belief in our vision inspires us every day, and we’re profoundly grateful to have such a passionate and engaged community with us on this journey.

We also have immense gratitude to our team for their hard work and dedication. Their persistence has allowed us to lay a solid foundation, enabling us to truly accelerate.

Going forward, our focus will be on simplicity, collaboration and quality. Let’s dive deeper.

Simplicity

We’ve heard your feedback: our software has a learning curve, compounded by unique terms in our information architecture and significant complexity. The greatest products are simple but robust, and that’s where we’re placing our bet now.

The first step is our simplified primitives project, introducing the concept of formats like Page, List, Bookmark and others. Each format serves a distinct purpose: a Page works as a block-based editor, a List functions like a database, a Bookmark saves important information for later and so on. This project also reimagines types to address one of our most requested features: applying templates to existing objects. With this, you’ll be able to set up a layout and fields in a type, and all objects will inherit its settings.

Collaboration

We’ve also heard plenty of feedback about multiplayer – the feature that makes Anytype so challenging to develop and is core to our purpose and our mission. Without it, why not just use another tool? Well-known alternatives don’t ask for keychain phrases, store data in markdown, offer a whiteboard and boast countless plugins. Competing with such simplicity is a great challenge when every small feature requires immense effort.

But what those alternatives can’t offer is stable, real-time collaboration over end-to-end encrypted data in a peer-to-peer way. A decentralized, collaborative network has always been our goal and a core part of our mission. This is our second big bet.

We’re bringing a social experience to Anytype by making spaces more interactive. We start with the concept of one space = one group = one chat. Then we’ll expand to include discussions on objects, enabling forum-like use cases. It will significantly improve collaborative use cases. You’ll chat and discuss your pages and files in the same end-to-end encrypted and local-first way.

As part of this project, we’ll soon release notifications and a redesigned vault organization – structured more like traditional messengers, reflecting how our Access Control system works. Our mobile development will be focused more on that.

What does this mean if you’re only interested in a solo experience? You can continue using our software, and its quality will improve over time.

Quality

Another priority is improving the quality and stability of our product. Bugs have piled up, and in our rush to add features, we’ve neglected technical debt. Addressing this will be our third focus.

Here’s what you can definitely expect from our team next year:

  1. Plenty of quality-of-life improvements and bug fixes
  2. Publishing to the web: coming in January
  3. Chats, Discussions & Notifications: starting rollout in February
  4. API & Local AI integration: early access coming in February
  5. Email-based login: while preserving self-custody of your account
  6. Improved collections, sets & lists: better filters, sorts, group and representation

We talked about a lot of these in our recent Town Hall and will be talking about the features we didn’t cover in future events. You can sign up here to be notified when those are happening.

For anyone, anywhere

A heartfelt thank you again to our active community, brilliant team and supportive investors. Together, we’re working to achieve our goals and build software that works for anyone, anywhere, without limits. Let’s bring digital independence to all.

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A genuine thank you for your work, can’t wait to see the future of AnyType.

I think I’m not alone when I say that I love the vision but the current software is hard to use as a daily driver: the plan you detailed here is a plan that might exactly make AnyType that one app always open on my devices (not for debugging :p).

Wish you all a new year of good work.

3

I’m happy to be a part of Anytype’s community, you guys are paving the way for local P2P E2EE note taking app, with more features added every season.

The Anytype team is amazing for what building a product like this, being the first of its kind. I love what you guys stand for, your principles, your values, and your mission.

Cheers to a great 2024, and an even better 2025.

4

I read this message with much interest and enthusiasm.
I am grateful for anton writing it to get in touch with users so we can understand where the anyType team comes from and where they are going. That is really KEY.

anyType is indeed unique. I saw that right away about 2 months ago when I was searching for a new experience, having tried everything from emacs, Zim notes, logseq, obsidian. I always felt those tools had something wrong with them…using them felt like swimming upstream at times. It was definitely not fun nor productive. Of course you can make them productive…I just felt it ought to be much better.

Being very privacy focused, anyType hit the mark on the core values. I mean, I can sync on IPFS locally without cloud, and encrypted along the way? Just amazing.

That video - building on principle - I just watched it and it floored me. As a past environmental/social activist, it really struck home. It made perfect sense. To see anyType embracing this philosophy - it’s a breath of fresh air.

Thank you wholeheartedly for a great product; I am so excited to see what 2025 brings.
You really gained a hard core fan with this message

Happy New Year

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I’m really thankful for the work going into Anytype and I’m excited for many of planned updates for 2025. Shout out to the team and have a great New Year!

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Anton’s gaze is as sharp as an eagle’s.

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Excited about the quality-of-life improvements and bug fixes!

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This is an exciting update! As someone new to Anytype—using it for less than a week on a self-hosted setup—I’m already impressed by the vision and functionality. The progress in 2025, from AnySync and Multiplayer v1 to scaling with 80,000 monthly users, is remarkable.

I love the commitment to decentralization, simplicity, and collaboration, and I’m thrilled to see upcoming features like real-time encrypted collaboration, interactive spaces, and API/AI integrations. I can’t wait to see updates for the self-hosted solution too—looking forward to what’s next!

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Very exciting update. As always, the fact that you’re investing so much time (on December 31st!) to communicate with us, despite our never-ending list of complaints, is a testament to how much Anytype values its community. Thank you for that!

All of the plans you described make a lot of sense and, I believe, is what Anytype needs to reach a point where anyone can start using.

One doubt

I only have one doubt, which I would love to hear a bit more about: the idea of collaboration through “one space = one group = one chat”. The Anytype team has mentioned in the past that you are adopting this model, in part, because ‘classic’ access control (dedicated access management per object rather than per space) is hard to do in a peer-to-peer environment. I understand that, and still, I have a hard time picturing the “one space = one group = one chat” model work at scale.

Here are two concrete examples:

Example 1: access management in team collaboration

I’m looking to use Anytype with my wife, and even though she isn’t willing to use it so far because she doesn’t find it usable enough, I’m optimistic that the focus on quality and simplicity in 2025 will get Anytype where it needs to be for her to join. In this case, one or several shared spaces between me and her will work great–just like we have just one Signal chat, and it does the job.

However, I would like to get my work team on Anytype. This is a team of 11 people, so small by organizational standards. We currently used Google Workspace for collaboration–which sucks from an ethical and privacy point of view, but works great for access management. We have “shared drives”, where each team has their own drive (operations, projects, marketing, etc). If we move to Anytype, I believe a shared drive would be replaced by a space. So far, so good.

But documents stored within each drive get shared with members of other teams all the time. The marketing team may be working on a proposal that is stored in the marketing drive, and wants to get input from the entire organization; without having to move the proposal to a shared drive that is accessible to the entire organization, they simply change access rights for this specific document.

How do you envision this working in the one space = one group = one chat model? In a team of 11, I cannot imagine have enough workspaces to cover all the possible access configuration, and it would be completely unmanageable anyway as objects would be spread in so many spaces. And this is a small team of 11. Imagine a team of 200.

I know that we may need to change how we think about some things when moving to Anytype because its decentralized nature means things cannot work exactly like on the cloud, but still, this seems to me like a critical use case we can’t really move away from.

Example 2: Building usable dashboards

The second issue I see with the one space = one group = one chat model is that one of the big things that Anytype can do differently is dashboards. Despite some missing features and limited mobile support, both of which I’m sure will get fixed eventually, Anytype’s model allows to create incredibly powerful and flexible dashboards.

In the context of a multi-space and collaborative environment, this means that I could theoretically build a dashboard where I see my workload from personal projects (in my private space), from work spaces, and from other collaborative spaces, all in one place, such as my private space. I could also create dashboards with quick access to objects from all these various spaces.

How would that work in the one space = one group = one chat model? Would I be able to bring into my private space objects from other spaces that I have access to, so I can build cross-space dashboards? Or would this powerful (extremely powerful in my opinion) feature essentially only work within a space, not across spaces.

Thank you :folded_hands:

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These are really good questions; I thank you for them.
I think everyone is a bit puzzled at this point how this feature will work.
And the impression I get from anyType is they are keeping this a bit close to the chest…perhaps this so the competitors don’t see it first and beat them to their own game? I could understand that.

One point I recall from watching yesterday the feb 2024 town hall is that anton was mentioning another restriction (due to decentralized complexity): collaboration will only happen when people are online, so the server can do conflict resolution.

Happy New Year!

11

Thanks for sharing your concerns—it’s highlights some key things we’re thinking about. Let me dive in.

Personal Use: Shared Spaces

It’s great to hear you’re optimistic about Anytype and how it could work for you and your wife. We’re aiming for a level of simplicity and quality in 2025 that’ll make it feel natural to use, even for someone who’s not a tech enthusiast. For your setup, a shared space between you two would work perfectly—just like how one Signal chat does the job for communication. But here you would have more - only between both of you.

Team Use: Flexible Access Management

I really like your example with Google Workspace. It’s true—teams need a mix of central collaboration (like shared drives) and flexible sharing (like changing access for one document).

In Anytype, Spaces are the central hubs for groups. For example:

  • A “Marketing” space could hold everything your marketing team works on.
  • If the team needs input from others, you’d use per-object sharing to share a specific proposal without moving it or reorganising spaces - this is already supported on a protocol level and we are going to implement it on clients.

This setup should keep things simple for your team of 11 while still scaling for bigger teams. Down the road, we’re looking at hierarchical spaces, so you could have subspaces and more detailed access controls (like shared drives in Google Workspace). But for now, we’re focusing on getting the basics right before diving into something that complex.

Cross-Space Dashboards

Dashboards are one of the most exciting things about Anytype because they can do so much. You’re right—a unified view of everything (personal projects, team spaces, collaborations) in one place would be nice.

With the current one space = one group = one chat model, we want to make it possible to pull objects from different spaces into your personal dashboard. The objects would stay where they are, but you’d be able to see and interact with them in one place. It’s not ready yet, but this kind of cross-space functionality is something we’re building toward.

Balancing Priorities

Right now, we’re focused on making Spaces as Groups model really solid. For example, turning a Slack channel like Nightly Ops into a structured space has shown how this setup can bring more value. If people love this format, we’ll expand on it. But spending six months or more on something super advanced that might not pay off immediately isn’t the right call for a company that’s still figuring out its footing. When it’s must we’ll make it.

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I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear on a call. For collaboration, you only need to be online when changing Access Control Rights. This is necessary to handle potential edge cases in a distributed system, such as two people with equal rights removing each other while offline. Currently, we address this by running a network of consensus nodes ourselves, but we plan to launch a decentralized consensus network next year.

In all other situations, including creating a space, being online is not required. For 1-1 spaces, since there are no Access Control Rights to manage, being online isn’t needed at all.

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Ohhh!
Like a synced block/object across spaces!
Exciting information!
(well, having links would be the 1st step, but that would open up other possibilities and make the use of spaces less restrictive)

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Exactly! We have no way not to deliver this, as we need to forward messages somehow among spaces. :vulcan_salute:

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For chat feature, would you plan to increase the space member limit for free users? Or as I mentioned before, make this a reward for referral program?

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So,is Anytype going to be developed in a direction similar to Slack and Microsoft Teams,or Lark?I don’t think that’s a very good direction,do I?Given Anytype’s current scale and software foundation,abandoning focus on document-centric applications might mean giving up a lot of things.I’m not sure what exactly it entails,but it does make people feel uneasy.If that’s really the case,I might write a long essay about it.

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Yes, there will be introduced new plans.

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I don’t think so. Everything is converging now: Slack is introducing Pages and Lists, and Notion is going to launch chats.

Reddit launched chats, and Discord launched forums. I’m not sure I understand what you mean when you ask whether it’s moving towards Slack or Teams.

I tried to be clear in my post—there are three directions: simplicity, collaboration, and quality.

There is nothing about abandoning our document editor.

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Hi Anton,

To use everyday at work Slack, notion and some other proprieraty saas platforms, and for being responsible for these tools and for other nocode/lowcode tools,
my comment would be : it looks like it’s great. But in reality is not :slight_smile:

You can do everything with each of these tools, and then it becomes even more complicated to know WHERE is the best place to implement your process.
It also become very hard to track knowlege and the flow of informations between all these tools… (we’re very far of the good old KISS philosophy :wink: ).

Notion is a great example (I use it everyday for years) : you can do everything, but you end you reinventing the wheel, in worst (my personal favorite: the bug tracker).

I understand that Anytype is going in another direction, and as a big Anytype fan, I’m very curious to see what it’ll become in the coming month!
I just hope that it would not divert to much energy on fixing the current bugs and improving the UI :heart_eyes:

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That’s very interesting. Good to hear where this is going. I was wondering what to put in what spaces along the lines of privacy, area of focus, etc. It was hard to figure out, not knowing exactly how collaboration and inter space interaction was going to work. Now it’s much clear. Thanks!