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The RFID Ecosystem is a large-scale project with participants from various research groups at the University of Washington's Department of Computer Science and Engineering. The project investigates RFID-based pervasive computing in connection with technology, business, and society. Where past research with RFID in pervasive computing has been limited to short-term technology and user studies in restricted scenarios, the RFID Ecosystem will provide a living laboratory for long-term, in-depth research in applications, databases, privacy, security, and systems. To this end, we have deployed a permanent, building-wide RFID test-bed in the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering that includes hundreds of RFID readers and thousands of tags. The overarching goal of the aforementioned research is to inform the community (including businesses and policy makers) of the benefits and challenges of RFID-based pervasive computing while proposing technological solutions whenever possible.