A Case for Connecting SOLiD and Blockchains: Enforcement of Transparent Access Rights in Personal Data Stores

Decentralised Personal Data Store (PDS) systems, such as Social Linked Data (SOLiD), attempt to change the Web, currently dominated by a few large service providers, into a fully open and decentralized data sharing system. The aim is to provide the end-users total self-governance over their own data. While this enables certain degree of user empowerment, the explicit design principles of PDS architecture may prevent service providers’ legitimate grounds for imposing certain restrictions on the data rights (e.g., for government regulations). In this paper, we propose a unique hybrid PDS architecture that extends SOLiD with blockchain and smart contract. The extension provides a neutral access control enforcement platform in which service providers can transparently define and operate application-wide data access policies, overriding the default user access rights in some cases, while still respecting the decentralised nature of Personal Data Store. We implemented an instance of the architecture using a university assignment management as a scenario to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed framework.