Hi! Been following the Solid project on and off for a few years now and am getting back into it.
Has Solid PODs been renamed to Data Wallets, or is this a new concept in addition to PODs?
Thanks!
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This has been discussed in various places, and people have different opinions. But so far, my opinion is that a POD is (or can be) a Data Wallet, but there’s nothing specific to the idea of a “Data Wallet” that can’t be achieved with a POD.
In particular, a “Solid POD” is a server that supports the Solid Protocol. But as far as I know, there isn’t specification or anything else defining what a Data Wallet actually is. So in my opinion, it’s just a buzz word or a marketing term to make “PODs” more appealing. The only technical description I’ve heard is that a wallet is a place that stores signed documents (with things like Verifiable Credentials and such). But you can do that in a POD, and use client-client specs (like Type Indexes) to coordinate among clients.
Then, there is Inrupt’s Data Wallet, but in my opinion that’s not even Solid as I discussed in this thread: Inrupt's Data Wallet.
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To be fair, there have been efforts… Universal Wallet 2020
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So, my thought on this is – a wallet, by definition, is something that manages cryptographic keys for a user, and can service external general purpose cryptographic operation requests. A (verifiable) credential wallet is something that manages keys for a user, and speaks one or more of the VC issuance and presentation protocols (such as VC-API, CHAPI, OpenID4*, etc)
So, for example, Signal manages (encryption) cryptographic keys for a user. But it’s not a wallet, because there’s no way for another app to say “hey, please sign this request with the user’s keys”. The Signal app manages keys for internal usage only.
Up until recently, Apple Wallet and Google Wallet could not be considered VC wallets, because they didn’t service external sign requests, nor spoke VC issuance and presentation protocols. But that’s changing (at least the protocols part) very recently, and there’s press releases.
Google Drive is not a wallet. (Even though you can store arbitrary documents on it, even cryptographic keys).
In terms of a combination of Solid POD + Wallet, the only implementation that I know of is my partial implementation of CHAPI wallet handling in the Life Server project (itself derived from node solid server).
(The Inrupt Wallet is not a wallet under this definition.)
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Yes, I’m sure there are many efforts to define Data Wallets and such, maybe even related with Linked Data as you linked. But I meant there isn’t anything that links a “Solid POD” to a “Data Wallet”, or says at a technical level what a Solid POD needs to implement in order to be called a “Data Wallet”, etc.
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