In November, we tend to spend more time indoors, often staring at screens instead of looking out the window. With Black Friday just around the corner, it’s a timely reminder to stay mindful of online privacy. That’s why this month, support from the #SidnetDonations initiative will go to the Panoptykon Foundation, a long‑standing advocate for protecting our data and digital freedoms.
This November, the open‑source and charitable projects we’re supporting were chosen by Michał, our TypeScript specialist, who regularly applies his expertise to innovative projects for our partner, EDGE NPD. It was only natural that the Zod library—a reliable tool for data validation in TypeScript—became the second beneficiary.
Zod
A modern library for data validation in JavaScript and TypeScript, built with application safety and consistency in mind. It enables the creation of precise data schemas that automatically verify whether the provided information matches the expected shape and type. Highly versatile, it can be used on both the backend and frontend. Thanks to its seamless integration with TypeScript, Zod ensures full alignment between code types and actual runtime data. Lightweight and flexible, it is widely adopted in modern web projects, from simple forms to complex APIs, maintaining consistent types across frontend and backend.
Over the past four years, the library’s popularity and recognition have skyrocketed. From nearly 3,000 stars on GitHub and 600,000 weekly downloads, it has grown to 37,000 stars and over 30 million downloads per week. The current, fourth version has resolved 90% of the key issues reported by the community.
“In all the projects I’ve worked on in recent years, TypeScript has been used extensively, and Zod has proven to be an ideal tool for defining object schemas and validating data. Its latest version, Zod 4, significantly improves performance, introduces a smaller, lightweight version as a separate package, and adds many long‑awaited features, including enhanced support for translating error messages, converting schemas to JSON, and defining recursive types,” explains Michał.
Panoptykon Foundation
An independent NGO that has been defending the right to privacy and freedom in the age of digital surveillance since 2009. Its mission is to raise awareness about how technologies, data, and algorithms shape our lives, and to advocate for greater transparency in how institutions, companies, and governments handle citizens’ information. The organization’s name is inspired by the philosophical concept of a prison designed so that inmates constantly feel observed, without ever seeing those who watch over them.
The foundation conducts research, provides education, and lobbies for legal reforms to curb abuses in digital surveillance. Through initiatives such as Digital Education Kit (Cyfrowa Wyprawka), which offers 22 lesson plans on new technologies, or reports on law enforcement access to data, Panoptykon combines expert knowledge with real‑world social impact. In its publication Artificial Intelligence: Non‑Fiction, the foundation examines how algorithms and AI systems affect society, individual rights, and the functioning of the state. Panoptykon has also addressed issues such as the surveillance of refugees and highlighted that Poland is one of the few countries where authorities have near‑unrestricted access to telecommunications data.
“The internet, which we as an industry help develop, largely relies on advertising, which involves collecting and processing user data. Supporting the Panoptykon Foundation, which works to protect privacy in the digital world, is my way of balancing my own contribution to this phenomenon,” explains Michał, justifying his choice of the foundation.
You too can support Panoptykon with an online donation.