What is the Solid Project and what could it mean for businesses?

Consumers own very little of the data they generate, and this feeds directly into the business models of many digital enterprises. But this landscape is being reshaped by legislation and independent organizations – with potentially big implications for IT leaders.

The Fediverse, for instance, is a decentralized social media framework that creates a network of independently operated servers, communicating via shared protocols that let users move between social platforms without being locked into a big tech ecosystem.

Even further reaching is the Solid Project. Solid – short for social linked data – is a web-decentralization project spearheaded by World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners Lee. It intends to give consumers private data 'pods' that they own and control. All their data – financial, medical, social, etc – goes into it, and each user decides who gets access to their data, how much, and for how long.

Currently, companies own vast amounts of consumer information, which they trade with countless more through a vast data brokerage industry for advertising. This profitable practice also comes with practical benefits, such as improved risk management, AI development, and enhanced marketing.

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But if Solid gains traction, this will all come to change – so what exactly does Solid mean for businesses?

Familiar systems

Although the Solid Project is philosophically distinct from the way the internet currently operates, a lot of the under the hood systems that would drive it are already in place. Businesses would have to rely on application programming interfaces (APIs) to a greater extent in order to access user data, with a greater emphasis on zero trust security policies to do so safely.

Ahmad Shadid, founder of AI research lab O Foundation adds that data pods or digital wallets are also a great use case for Web3 and blockchain technology. "[It'd be] one login you use everywhere and a simple permission user interface where you can grant 'read transactions for last 90 days' to a budgeting app, or 'share vaccine status only' with a clinic and revoke it at any time," he says.

Together with the privacy and security concerns such systems address, it could also mitigate out of date or duplicated information shared between many companies. Use of a data pod means switching apps without reuploading the same information for the umpteenth time – businesses can simply access the same sensitive information once granted access, which also reduces their compliance risks such as data storage requirements under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Pros and cons of Solid for businesses

There's an essential tension between Solid and functions such as customer-specific advertising and AI training. Right now, there's an economic imperative to hoard all available data – within data privacy and governance requirements – for when it becomes monetizable. Customer data can be used to feed directly into predictive analytics models for future consumer purchases. On an enterprise level, customer data also helps developer organizations to roll out updates based on customer usage data, and to make data-driven decisions on future products and service offerings.

"Corporate resistance is ... economically unlikely," says Pedrotti. "Companies have entire business models based on data ownership and won't voluntarily sign away that value. And regulation enforcement would be difficult across jurisdictions – companies would find ways around laws through terms of service that technically comply but continue to give them practical control over user data."

Arne Möhle, CEO and co-founder at Tuta Mail agrees any such efforts will face extreme opposition from tech corporations. "We've seen this with the lobbying efforts in the EU when the Digital Markets Act was still in the making." In fact, in the leadup to the 2023 EU acts, tech companies spent €113 million a year on lobbying.

On the Solid Project, Wright concedes there's unlikely to be a sudden reversal. "Adoption tends to follow regulatory shifts, market incentives and consumer expectations," he says – a pattern the world's already seen with Open Banking.

He also thinks adoption will shift as new players see benefits. "Startups developing new apps could access years of user history from day one. Imagine launching a health app that already knows three years of fitness patterns, injury history, and seasonal trends based on data already collected from Strava, MyGarminConnect and MyFitnessPal. As more applications support the Solid Project and each user's Pod receives more data [new] apps automatically benefit from the network effect."

All of which means there's actually an argument for big tech to support users owning all their data.

Bannach says behaviour in the corporate sphere tends to shift in response to regulation, risk and revenue – a shift we're seeing now. "GDPR, the DMA and the EU Data Act, cookie deprecation, and rising breach and ransomware defence costs all push firms to reduce hoarded data and operate on permissioned, auditable access," he says. "Early movers gain regulatory compliance benefits and customer loyalty. Resistance will persist, but the commercial and compliance incentives are aligning."

To Shadid, the benefits to business are obvious – and quantifiable. "Less liability means fewer massive centralized data lakes to hack or mismanage. Better quality means first-party, verified streams direct from user-controlled pods rather than stitched-together data from brokers. There's also a clearer legal basis for AI training and analytics – consent is explicit and revocable at the source."

Wright agrees, saying data pods with the Solid Project eliminate costs because companies building consumer-facing apps will no longer need to handle user data storage or identity management.

Whose data is it anyway?

Not all data is the same. "There are very large datasets where we're increasingly less concerned like social media posts and searches being 'in the wild' – convenience outweighs whatever concerns many have," says Victor Cho, Founder/CEO at AI-focused business communication tools provider Emovid. "But we're very concerned about certain datasets like health and financial information."

Wright agrees the landscape for data varies enormously, but he stresses the Solid Project isn't about 'harmonizing' data law, it just wants to enable it at the architecture level:

"[The architecture] makes Solid complementary to varying legal regimes. In jurisdictions with strong protections like the EU, it makes rights like data portability and erasure achievable rather than theoretical. In jurisdictions with weaker protections, it confers de facto control that doesn't depend on regulation."

Meanwhile, there are also moves to classify data as a commercial asset, thus codifying its true value. Joe Hughes, CEO of Manx Technology Group, advocates for the legal standards set by the Isle of Man Data Asset Foundation. He thinks it's definition – not technology – around data that represents the largest barrier to personal data pod ownership systems.

"[The Foundation] addresses this by leveraging the Isle of Man Foundations Act 2011 to give data a legal personality," he says. "By defining data as an asset in law it can be assigned value, listed on a balance sheet, used as collateral on a loan or considered during M&A. Our model doesn't prevent organizations from accessing data, it changes the terms and recognizes sovereignty. Access becomes explicit, trusted, controlled, permissioned, and contractual."

Wright counters that while individuals managing their pods is the cornerstone of Solid, it's not the only model. Another possibility would be group pods for shared data, or pods storing the certified copy of data owned or issued by another entity like a bank or driver's license authority. This would have the same effect for businesses, of reducing organizational data burden and setting out a more standardized architecture for verifying user identities and accessing sensitive data.

There’s also potential for an approach such as Solid to assist businesses with enterprise AI deployment. For example, Wright adds that the Solid Project could serve as the memory and data-sharing layer for agentic AI systems.

"The average person isn't going to self-host a server or manage API permissions for their medical records – that's the gap right now,” explains Scott McIntosh, president of AI business consultancy Digital Treehouse.

“The technology exists, but the user experience isn't there yet. AI is going to be the interface that makes it actually work. Instead of handing over all your data to every app and platform that asks for it, your AI agent shares only what's needed, for as long as it's needed, and revokes access when the interaction is done. You wouldn't need to understand the technical side of it. You'd just tell your AI what you're comfortable sharing and it handles the rest."

The business that can deliver this system could see massive user uptake. The extent to which web-decentralization projects such as Solid could play a role in this deployment is yet to be determined.