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Introduction and goals

dataLOFT is a privacy-preserving data discovery and sharing platform built on the Gaia-X trust framework and the IDSA Dataspace Protocol. It enables data providers and consumers to exchange data under explicit contractual agreements, with optional support for consent-based access control by individual data owners.

Essential features

  • Federated data discovery via a Gaia-X-compliant catalogue
  • Optional consent-based data access controlled by data owners
  • Dataspace Protocol-compliant contract negotiation and data transfer
  • Pluggable provider backend via gRPC interface
  • Pluggable consumer client via gRPC interface
  • Multi-tenant connector supporting multiple simultaneous participants

Quality goals

Priority Quality goal Motivation
1 Data sovereignty The platform is designed to enable data owner consent and control as a first-class capability. Use cases without data owner involvement, such as institution-to-institution sharing, are equally valid. The architecture supports both.
2 Interoperability The platform implements the Gaia-X Trust Framework and IDSA Dataspace Protocol to participate in federated dataspaces alongside other compliant participants.
3 Scalability A single RUN-DSP deployment serves multiple providers and consumers concurrently without per-user process isolation.
4 Security and compliance All participant identity and access claims are cryptographically verifiable. Gaia-X Trust Framework compliance is required for participation.

Stakeholders

Role Expectation
Data Owner Consent-based access control and transparency over who accesses their data.
Data Provider A simple integration path via the gRPC provider interface.
Data Consumer Standardised discovery and contract negotiation across providers.
Federator A reliable, observable, deployable platform with minimal operational overhead. A participant whose DID is registered as a federator in FC-Service, granting the ability to approve new participants.
Orchestrator Verifiable compliance with regulatory policies.
Developer / Contributor Well-documented interfaces and a reproducible development environment.