“With open source, better/faster/cheaper by itself is available for the low, low price of zero dollars.As an open source company, we don’t cry about that. Instead, we look at how open source might create a new inflection point that fundamentally changes the economics of existing markets or how it might create entirely new and more valuable markets.”— The (awesome) Economics of Open SourceThe awesome power of Open Source development is embodied in the burgeoning set of projects in the IOTA Ecosystem. New projects build on the ideas and code-bases of old ones, old code bases are continuously made more robust, and the full potential of the Open Source IOTA core protocol is brought closer to fruition. Through the charitable contributions from the IOTA community to the Ecosystem Development Fund we are fortunate to be able to support some of these efforts until the point they can stand on their own two feet.With that, we are proud to announce another cohort of fantastic open-source projects the Ecosystem Development Fund will support for a total of $354,000 USD. As always, you can find the full details of these projects on our EDF Transparency Tracker which stores an immutable record of the full project proposal and budget agreement in the Tangle.Untangle Care ($234,000 USD)The goal of the Untangle Care project is to develop key IOTA-based tools that will allow healthcare data to flow between healthcare institution-based solutions (e.g. Electronic Medical Records) and patient-based solutions (e.g. Personal Health Records) in a secure, seamless and healthcare-interoperable way (using the Fast Healthcare Interoperable Resources — FHIR — healthcare data formats standard).Main project deliverables include an open source MAM FHIR integration code as well as a web interface and a MAM FHIR API. Secondary deliverables will include an open source Xamarin and IOTA based Chat App, IOTA C# Port, and IOTA based logging system.“Our goal with the Untangle Care project is to develop open source IOTA and HL7 FHIR based tools that help sharing health information in a simpler, more secure and faster way. Ultimately, we envision a future where individuals have access and control over all health information needed to improve their own health.IOTA’s collaboration and support, for which we are very grateful, not only is going to be critical for achieving these goals but also will help to make these tools open source and useful for all the IOTA community to build upon.” —Co-Founder and CEO, André Fialho, PhDTo learn more, check out the Untangle Care project page in the IOTA Ecosystem!Bytes.io ($70,000 USD)Bytes envisions a P2P Internet Access system where users/machines with extra bandwidth sell their excess to those who need more of it, and this interaction happens in an automated way.The Bytes application matches buyers and sellers within a certain radius and allows them to automatically exchange IOTA tokens for bandwidth. Typical use cases include the ability to buy/sell Internet access in one’s bus ride from the airport to the city centre; and to share with neighbours a same internet connection.The Bytes.io application, vision, and ethos makes it a perfect fit for the IOTA Ecosystem. Bytes aims at introducing a standard with which competing client applications can interact. Enabling competing development efforts in this way is beneficial in at least two respects.It benefits the market: Enabling competition insofar as the interaction with the protocol is concerned incentivizes developers/entrepreneurs to develop & market more attractive end-user products. This is instrumental to reaching a critical mass.Having a diversified technology stack mitigates risk for the ecosystem we are trying to establish: If one technology / operational structure closes shop, others fill in instantly. This is a way to avoid having a single point of failure and make the system as a whole more resilient.“Bytes.io vision is to enable modular, P2P, Internet access for machines or individuals. We are honored to partner with IOTA. IOTA Foundation’s support comes at a critical time for us and will enable us to boost our development activities. Bytes.io’s goal: be the first mass blockchain-enabled application.” — Bytes Founder Sam MartinetTo learn more, check out the Bytes project page in the IOTA Ecosystem!IOTA Industrial Lab Aachen ($50,000 USD)The IOTA Industrial Lab Aachen (IILA) offers students, lecturers, industry representatives and enthusiasts a laboratory for research in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Economy, Machine-to-Machine communication, Distributed-Ledger-Technologies such as IOTA, and the Industrial Internet of Things.The team behind IILA has been one the IOTA Ecosystem’s most revered contributors (see their blog posts here) and have attracted attention from major industry players interested in the potential of IOTA’s unique DLT architecture for data integrity in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT) supply chain.While the Laboratory is mostly funded already by RWTH Aachen University (consistently ranked as one of the best engineering schools in Germany) and a large portion of the work for this project has already been completed, this grant will supplement some of the funding to allow them to continue to produce high-quality demonstration of the IOTA technology for the Industrial internet of things supply chain industry. Specifically, this grant will be geared towards the open-source proof of concept to 1) extract production data of fineblanked components from the machine control in real time, 2) store them encrypted in the tangle and 3) retrieve them via a web-based frontend.“Here, at the Laboratory for Machine Tools and Production Engineering (WZL) of RWTH Aachen University, our vision is to enable a new level of cross-domain collaboration in production engineering by providing semantically adequate and context-aware data from production, development and usage in real-time on an appropriate level of granularity. This is known as the Internet of Production (IoP). The central approach of the IoP is the introduction of digital twin as purpose-driven, aggregated, multi-perspective and persistent datasets. However, while the IoP focuses on in-network and edge-computing approaches to integrate Artificial Intelligence (AI) into production processes, the Industrial IOTA Lab Aachen‘s (IILA) purpose is to extend IoP‘s vision using IOTA as Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) to enable a production economy.In our first PoC (Proof of Concept) we will show how to acquire data from industrial machines, transform them, store them in the tangle and develop new business models and services. With the support of the IOTA Foundation we can set the first and most important groundwork in this development.” — Dr. Daniel Trauth, Chief Engineer WZL of RWTH Aachen, Founder Industrial IOTA Lab AachenTo learn more, check out the IILA project page in the IOTA Ecosystem!To apply for a grant from the Ecosystem Development Fund, you can make an account in the IOTA Ecosystem and then head over to fund.iota.org where you can apply for the funding of an open source project, academic research grant, or community event. We wish the best of luck to this latest cohort of grantees and are excited to continue to support the amazing contributors in the IOTA Ecosystem!The Second Cohort of Ecosystem Development Fund Grantees was originally published in IOTA on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.