@dumpsterqueer

I don't really "know anything" about it. I have come across it before while I was doing research on all the different kinds of projects like this. (I was mostly trying to learn about "decentralized cloud" stuff like maidsafe, IPFS, storj, filecoin, etc)

Solid appears to be a sort of "firebase" style of product that's open source and self-host-able? It also appears to be related to the "web-native linked data" RDF (resource description framework) efforts of the past. The idea was you could make a sort of graph database out of URLs & Subject, Predicate, Object "Triples". I think this design pattern was actually intended to be used for public data, in order to make the web searchable not just with google, but with a "native" SQL-like query language. So your web browser could run a query to return "friends of my friends who are not my friends" on its own, no web application required.

However, I don't think that idea ever really got a network effect, so it never took off, probably for both technical and Big Business $$$greed$$$ related reasons.

If I was designing something like Solid today, where it would do a bunch of architechture breaking changes to how web applications work, I would bet big on end-to-end encryption rather than betting big on RDF, linked data type stuff.

I think users actually want end-to-end encryption and there aren't a ton of great ready-to-use components that enable it in a meaningful way. With Safari web browser being shackled w/ limited storage APIs so apple can make more money on the app store, there is a need for web apps to store data thats only readable by the client, but it doesn't all have to be on the clients device.

End-to-end encrypted DB indexes and full-text-search databases spring to mind. That's something the world could really benefit from, but it does not really exist yet. Think searchable DMs in matrix web app, and searchable encrypted emails in ProtonMail web app.