Pod

A Pod (Personal Online Datastore) is where a Solid user's data actually lives, a personal server for your own information that you, not an app vendor, control. Instead of a social network owning your photos or a bank owning your transaction history in a way only they can query, a Pod holds your data in one place you choose, and any app you authorize can read or write specific parts of it, governed by rules you set. Switch apps, or let a new one in, and nothing has to migrate, the data never left your Pod.

The Pod concept and its mechanics come out of the Solid Protocol (see: Solid Protocol), designed by Tim Berners-Lee's Solid project and specified by the W3C Solid Community Group.

Solidus also runs a product literally called Pod, live at pod.solidus.network.

Where Solidus stands

Solidus's Pod is Solid-compatible and migration-ready. It is not running Solid and is not Solid-conformant. Under the hood, today, it composes Community Solid Server, real Solid software built by the Solid community, not by us, with a did:solidus bridge that ties pod identity to a Solidus decentralized identifier, on top of a JWT+Postgres storage layer with WAC-style access rules. That's a working, live product. It is not the same thing as a conformant Solid pod, and we don't describe it as one. Full protocol conformance is real work we haven't done yet.

If you've used a real Solid pod (from Inrupt or another provider) and then use Solidus's Pod, expect them to interoperate at the compatibility level, not to be indistinguishable.

Proof

Visit pod.solidus.network directly, it's live, not a mockup. To compare it against a Solid-conformant pod, any public Solid pod provider lets you create one for free in a couple of minutes; the difference is checkable by anyone, not just us.