IRON SPIDR: A Universal Blockchain Toolkit for the U.S. Federal Government

Breaking down Constellation Network’s recent Department of Defense Update

Constellation’s Chief Strategy Officer, Benjamin Diggles, gave a recent video update on a project he and our partners are spearheading with the U.S. Department of Defense.

Check it out below:

Following is a breakdown and key takeaways…

Government Contract Need and Overview

The US Air Force and 618 AOC have requested an “End-to-end data security solution using Blockchain Encryption and Hosting decentralization.”

Who is the 618 AOC? According to their website: “The 618th Air Operations Center … is the Department of Defense’s largest Air Operations Center… (they) serve as Air Mobility Command’s expert when planning, tasking, executing, and assessing mobility missions.”

The AOC “provides unrivaled command and control across the full-spectrum of mobility operations to include airlift, air refueling, aeromedical evacuation, and the global mobility support system. Commanding a fleet of nearly 1,100 mobility aircraft, the 618 AOC provides warfighters downrange with the mobility support they need to ensure mission success.”

The US Air Force and the 618 AOC have a national defense-related, mission critical need for secure data exchange between their legacy and future command and control (C2) and mission planning systems and their commercial partners.

What this means is that the USAF and 618 AOC need to secure a porous network of communications between the DoD and outside commercial partners — one that is laden with security holes and threat vectors.

The Solution: Iron SPIDR

Solving this need requires laying a foundation for the transition to a big data cloud infrastructure using Constellation’s unique scalable, secure end-to-end multi- smart contracts and big data blockchain solution.

Constellation Network along with Kinnami, a secure decentralized data storage provider, and a few additional partners have created the universal blockchain toolkit project named “Iron SPIDR” (SPIDR = Secure Peer-to-Peer Immutable Data Resilience), and we all are literally in on the ground floor of the monumental effort of creating a Web3-enabled DoD!

Why Constellation?

Following are the key points that Diggles addresses in his presentation:

• 3rd Gen Blockchain: Constellation Network offers capabilities well beyond Bitcoin, Ethereum and Linux — we’re a 3rd generation blockchain that has solved the fundamental problems of existing market leaders.
• Infinitely scalable and energy efficient: With our directed acyclic graph approach there is no need to exchange performance for security and energy use. It’s hard to maintain security at scale — and that’s where Constellation has an edge.
• Energy efficiency grows with the network: We’re finding that energy use is a hot button for the current administration, so energy efficiency is paramount for the DoD. As the Hypergraph scales, it becomes more efficient. In fact, we’ve proven that our network is more efficient than the current network the DoD is using today.
• Collaboration-focused: Our secret sauce is our ability to interact and interoperate with other blockchain solutions, and we’re legacy compatible. We can partner and collaborate with any DLT initiatives in the federal space.
• Legacy compatible: Our microservice framework can securely sort data at scale and make fast decisions across multiple domains including legacy systems. We’re not forcing the government to rip up existing infrastructure — we’re here to augment it.
• Quantum attack ready: Constellation’s decentralized network and Kinnami’s decentralized storage system are capable of orchestrating and securing top secret level data even under quantum computing level attacks

Making Deployment Easy — Our 5 Step Solution

We want to make it easy for the DoD to deploy these private blockchains. We give them 5 steps with no changes to existing IT infrastructure on a cost-effective enterprise scalable level:

1. Install Software Developer Kit (SDK): the DoD owns the SDK and can augment it as they see fit.
2. Configure data types and validation functions: this is done through state channel DApps.
3. Deploy 3 hosted virtual machine nodes: the network only needs 3 nodes to get consensus up and running. We encourage more nodes, but only 3 are needed to get started.
4. Integrate API & connect required systems: these could be smart contracts or legacy systems.
5. Replace existing HTTPS calls with HGTP

What was achieved in the Phase II Effort?

Three major milestones were completed with the recent Phase II effort:

1. Secure Smart Contract deployed with Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF) Partner: Data deployment automated — multi-author mission data was deployed on a secure smart contract
2. Hosting Security of C2 Data in Storage: Data securely stored — integration into Kinnami securing all data “at rest” (i.e., data that has reached its destination and is no longer in transit)
3. Blockchain Security of C2 Data Communication: Data secured in transit — security assured from man-in-the-middle attacks, and data integrity maintained without corruption or missing data

What does this mean? Once data is validated, you have a trustless network. This means the DoD doesn’t have to worry about the data being secured or validated because the network’s taking care of that.

These milestones were successfully completed and validated by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL).

Constellation Network is now seen as mission critical.

According to Diggles, “AFRL tells us that Iron SPIDR is the ‘lead blockchain program’ in Federal. It’s because we’re collaboration focused. We’re not the lead as in best ‘competitor’ but the lead as in a guiding light in what’s possible when it comes to interoperating technologies openly vs. what we’ve experienced in the past, which is largely walled gardens that compete against each other, and it really slows everybody down.”

What’s Next with the Iron SPIDR contract?

We have several contracts in play, but Iron SPIDR is a foundational project upon which many others can be built.

Up next:

• Iron SPIDR Blockchain Secure Data Exchange: This will be focused on the Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF) partner to focus on Secure Commercial Communications (SCC). We now have buy-in to get access to CRAF systems to build interoperability.
• Smart Contract Data Automation // Preparing for Microservices: We will work with other blockchain partners to build out the universal blockchain toolkit to incorporate an agnostic, shared smart contract framework application so we can get a set of universal smart contracts that have been blessed for different use cases.
• L0 // Blockchain Interoperability: We will work on passing data to and from HGTP and other approved chains for supply chain management and digital logistics to prove out our interoperability.

“Once we prove this, then we secure our spot as the blockchain of blockchains. Things roll into the Iron SPIDR program, and if you want to interoperate, you run on HGTP’s Layer 0,” says Diggles.

• DISA/NIST Compliance Approval: All DevSecOps deployments for production environments must be approved by the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). This requires HGTP to be stringently vetted for secure data to pass through it.

According to Diggles, “Once this approval takes place — anyone — DHS, Border Patrol, etc. who wants accountability, or security, or notarized data at scale from a foundational level can go to their DevSecOps and easily rapid test and deploy Iron SPIDR because it’s now been vetted for the entire federal space…so when you think about that mixed with L0 blockchain interoperability, this puts us in a very unique place from an infrastructure standpoint to be the industry leader.”

DISA/NIST Approval = Mission Critical Alignment

Check out https://disa.mil or https://www.nist.gov/blockchain to get more information on how these organizations regulate and vet new technologies like Constellation’s Hypergraph to essentially prepare them to move to production as a technology standard by the federal government.

Federal Themes for 2023:

• On-chain Data exchanges driven by HGTP at Scale
• L0 interoperability — one of our upcoming greatest moments!
• DISA/NIST regulatory compliance
• Space/Satellite Security around our involvement with Space ISAC
• Deepening of strategic/federal partnerships
• Use case expansion through new contracts

This year we’ll be exploring new use cases like how you can put common access cards or clearance cards on a ledger (a digital twin of the hard copy) and use an NFT and a wallet to sign and get access to your clearance card as an extra layer of validation for things like identity access management.

We’re also exploring securing audio and visual data such as streaming and communication services for validation purposes so things like espionage and spoofing of audio can’t take place.

These are applications that are on top of the blockchain. Without Constellation’s work on the fundamentals and improving the base layer, we wouldn’t be exploring these use cases.

Calling all developers:

Constellation Network is actively seeking developers who want to build with us, join our ecosystem, and launch their projects on the Hypergraph.

We look forward to working with you!

For Developers: https://constellationnetwork.io/developer-hub

For Entrepreneurs: https://web3launchkit.lattice.is/

Interested in learning more about Constellation Network and connecting with the community?

Website: https://constellationnetwork.io/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/conste11ation

Telegram: https://t.me/constellationcommunity

Discord: https://discord.gg/gJZRqrJyfz