Solidus Relay vs Veramo
These are not really competitors, and the honest version of this page says so up front. Veramo is a modular agent framework; Solidus Relay is a hosted mediator. The realistic outcome is that you use Veramo in your agent and connect it to a mediator, possibly ours.
What Veramo does better
- Modularity as the core design. A plugin architecture where you take the pieces you need, DID methods, credential formats, storage, rather than adopting a whole stack. If your requirements are unusual, that is a decisive advantage.
- Breadth in one library. W3C VC and DID support, DIDComm, JWT handling and selective disclosure, in a single JS/TS toolkit. Solidus Relay does one job.
- It is a library, not a service. No third party in your message path, no endpoint to depend on, no beta service's availability to plan around. Ours is beta with no SLA.
- Maturity and adoption in the developer SSI ecosystem that we do not have.
Where the comparison is actually a layering question
| Veramo | Solidus Relay | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | An agent framework you embed | A mediator you connect to |
| Runs where | In your process | As a service |
| Solves | Building an agent | Reaching an agent that is offline |
An agent built with Veramo still needs somewhere to receive messages while it is not running. That is the mediator's job, and it is orthogonal to the framework choice, what a DIDComm mediator is.
Where Solidus is genuinely different, and where it is genuinely behind
Different: credential-gated admission, fail-closed, with an unreachable verdict distinct from
invalid (credential-gated mediation), and chain-anchored
resolution of correspondents' did:solidus routing
(chain-anchored routing resolution).
Behind: Veramo is a general-purpose framework with real adoption. On maturity, breadth and independence from a third party, Veramo wins, and it is not close.
One sourced limitation to weigh on both sides, not just theirs: Veramo is JS/TS only, and its credential support does not include native BBS+ or zero-knowledge proof depth.
Choosing
Veramo if you are building an agent and want a framework, and you may still want a mediator afterwards.
Solidus Relay if what you need is the mediator, and credential-gated admission is worth a beta dependency to you.
Neither, sometimes. If both your agents are always online with stable endpoints, deliver directly and skip the hop, when you do not need a mediator.