PDPP is a protocol for user-controlled, purpose-bound access to personal data. It defines how an owner authorizes a client to read a bounded, purpose-scoped slice of their data, and how a source — a native provider or a polyfill connector — is collected into a single queryable substrate. It is developed by PDP-Connect, an LF Decentralized Trust Lab started by the Vana Foundation. The core spec is a normative draft; the project site announces that PDPP v0.1.0 locks on 26 October 2026 after an extended review.
Personal Data Portability Protocol
PDPP gives a person a protocol for handing out access to their own data. A client asks for a bounded, purpose-scoped slice; the owner grants it; and the data behind that grant may come from a provider that supports PDPP natively or from a connector that collects it on the owner’s behalf — all of it exposed through one query surface.
- One normative spec -
spec-core.mddefines grants, sources, records and the query surface; Core Section 8 is the authoritative resource-server query interface. Other root specs are informative, illustrative, or superseded, and each states its own status. - Native or polyfill - A source is normatively
{ kind: "provider_native" | "connector", id }, so a connector can stand in until a provider implements the protocol itself. - Reference implementation - An authorization server, resource server, CLI, connector runtime and
conformance-style tests live in the separate
PDP-Connect/data-connectrepository. - Lab governance - PDP-Connect is a Lab of LF Decentralized Trust, started by the Vana Foundation; its governance requires a majority-independent body unaffiliated with Vana Foundation or Open Data Labs.
- Licensing - Specification text CSL-1.0, reference code Apache 2.0, documentation CC BY 4.0.
Where it sits. PDPP is a technical answer to the portability rights in regulation such as GDPR and CCPA, with consent modeled as grants in the spirit of OAuth 2.0. Where the Dataspace Protocol negotiates data sharing between organizations, PDPP puts the individual on the granting side.
