The European Commission’s Fire Study of Next Generation Internet recently concluded that:

1. Internet should ensure citizens' sovereignty over their own data and protect privacy;

2. Internet should ensure diversity, pluralism and a right to choose; and

3. Internet should avoid the concentration of data in a few proprietary platforms.

4. Personal Data Spaces was seen as a very important technology area for all the above top ranked values.

These are the problems the Pillar project aims to address. We want to give people a better, safer dashboard to their digital world, starting with an open-source wallet. We have two main objectives:

(1) Replace accounts with atomic ownership. We all have dozens of accounts. With accounts, you log in and all your valuable data is trapped inside the app or the service. This presents huge concentration risk. By switching from accounts to wallets, each person owns his/her own assets and can switch vendors freely.

(2) Replace apps with services. Apps on our phones are miniature desktop apps. This harkens back to the days of paper-based processes, showing once again that humans always adopt the old ways of working to new technology. Now that we all have superconnected computers in our pockets, we believe the personal data locker will replace iOS and Android to become the operating system for all your devices.