At SymfonyLive Paris, I introduced a new PHP library to build Solid applications: Solid Client PHP. In this presentation, I present the Solid protocol and how it could give back the control of their personal data to end-users.
View the recording (slides in English, talk in French).
This presentation is about decentralized web applications, but no, it isn’t about web3.
And for good reasons! There is a more open, more interoperable, simpler, more ecological, and even more… decentralized (!!) way to build decentralized web applications.
Web standards, and in particular those of the latest generation (RDF, JSON-LD, N3, OpenID Connect) provide a framework for building such apps.
It is on this technical basis that two new protocols that could revolutionize the web are established: Solid and ActivityPub.
The Solid project, for Social Linked Data, developed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee – the creator of the Web himself – gives users control of their data. It allows them to store their data wherever they want, and to choose precisely which application can access what.
ActivityPub is a protocol for creating decentralized and federated social networks. It is the protocol used by Mastodon, PeerTube, and Mobilizon, whose instances are tight together in the network known as the Fediverse.
Even better, no need for smart contracts or even blockchain to create decentralized web applications using these technologies, a good old PHP script and a Raspberry Pi are enough. That said, using Symfony and API Platform can greatly facilitate the task, that’s what we will discover together!
If you want to discuss this topic, more in-depth, join our next Twitter Space on Friday (in French):