Solid

Federated Protocols

Decentralized web protocol enabling users to store data in personal online data stores (Pods) with fine-grained access control, based on Linked Data principles and W3C standards. Adds to existing Web standards to realize a space where individuals maintain autonomy, control their data and privacy, and choose applications and services to fulfill their needs. Data storage, entity authentication, access control, and application provider are all loosely coupled

Federated Open Standard Low capture risk
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Details

License MIT
Dev Status Released
Owner Sir Tim Berners-Lee (creator) / W3C Solid Community Group (specification); Open Data Institute (ODI) assumed stewardship October 2024 (Jesse Wright and Louise Burke); Inrupt (primary commercial entity, co-founded by Berners-Lee); W3C Linked Web Storage Working Group (LWS WG, launched 2024 for formal W3C Recommendations)
Country International
Start Year 2016
Stack TypeScript/Node.js, Node.js, JavaScript/TypeScript
Funding VC
Last Investigated Jan 15, 2026

Use Case Domains

Identity & Trust Platform Evolution & Sovereignty

Affordances

Sovereign identity Data portability Self-hostable

Federated Protocol Attributes

Content Addressing No (location-based via HTTP URIs; resources identified by URL on Pod servers; not content-addressed)
E2EE Application-level (not mandated by protocol; Solid Protocol spec encourages privacy-preserving design per W3C Privacy Principles; encryption can be implemented by applications)
Signature WebID-based authentication (Solid-OIDC: WebID + OpenID Connect for decentralized cross-domain authentication; WebID-TLS as legacy method; TLS certificates for transport security)
Federation Model Pod-based federation: Pods as personal data servers storing user data; applications access data from any Pod via standard HTTP/RDF protocols; apps and data are decoupled — any app can access any Pod with appropriate authorization; identity provider and Pod provider are separable
Instance / Server Requirements Low to moderate (Pod server can run on modest hardware; community implementations designed for easy self-hosting)
Account Portability Full portability (can move Pod between providers or self-host; data is in standard RDF/HTTP formats; WebID identity is separate from Pod location; no vendor lock-in by design)
Discovery / Relay Architecture WebFinger + WebID (decentralized discovery; WebID URIs point to WebID Profile documents containing user info, public keys, Pod locations, and preferences)
Server Authority Model User-controlled (Pod owner has full authority over their data; sets access control policies via WAC/ACP; applications request access; users grant/revoke permissions)
Protocol Maturity / Standardization W3C Community Group Reports (Solid CG specifications since 2018); W3C Linked Web Storage Working Group (LWS WG launched 2024) producing formal W3C Recommendations; not yet full W3C Recommendation status for core protocol
Data Sovereignty User-controlled (data in personal Pods; user chooses Pod provider or self-hosts; data independent of applications; German Bundeswehr and healthcare also evaluating Solid for sovereign data)