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Comment by dgudkov | Hacker News Reader

I like the idea. It's basically an encapsulated portable personal "wiki" for a user (persona) with an open data model that can be accessed by external apps based on permissions.

What it doesn't solve is the problem how this data is going to be used by those who access it. I wish there was some kind of digital contracts that only allow using personal data in a way permitted by the user.

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Have you heard of the concept of "homomorphic encryption"? It allows someone to perform computations on encrypted pieces of data, without actually ever having access to the raw data itself.

I have no idea how realistic or how "possible" this technology is for in the near future, but this seems to be a great match for technologies like these.

Yup, it is. Though, I'm not sure about homomorphic encryption, but there has been some work on encryption in the academic community that has very clear application to Solid. Here's a paper written by some friends of mine: http://epub.wu.ac.at/5818/1/10.1007_978-3-319-58068-5_37.pdf

I've found https://www.openmined.org use of homomorphic encryption to be really interesting, (+ Unity integration!)

The answer is not at all realistic or possible. Homomorphic crypto is a mathematical curiosity, not something that is any actual use currently.

https://hyperledger-fabric.readthedocs.io/en/release-1.2/acc... there are several emerging approaches to deliver that level of control over identity and artifacts. Each identity you provide to apps will have a root folder where you store the smart contract which maintains your sharing preferences and permissions. It's early days, but progress is being made, and it seems as if there will continue to be strong forces of co-opetition across the web3/indy web, and federated multi-verse. It will be interesting to see what kind of standards ultimately emerge and which community leads that charge.

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