The Path to Releasing Constellation’s Hypergraph Network

Prioritizing Use Cases and Creating a Protocol Release Framework

2023 is the year we’ve been waiting for at Constellation. This year, we’ll finally see working state channel DApps on Constellation’s infinitely scalable decentralized network, the Hypergraph, with its DAG-based technology and microservices framework.

So what can you expect along the way? In a recent Twitter Spaces interview, Constellation CEO, Ben Jorgensen, discussed our release strategy and how we’re prioritizing use cases. This article covers some key takeaways.

We’re also introducing a new protocol release framework so our community can follow along with our progress.

Ethereum to Hypergraph = Apples to Oranges

“We are not a ‘this vs. that’ technology,” says Ben. “We’re not comparing ourselves to Ethereum. The tech is an evolution of Ethereum but so is the business model.”

“Not only is our architecture different but so are the use cases. We’re not just saying ‘move from Ethereum to Constellation.’ We’re saying, ‘Move to Constellation, and by the way, you’ll have to rethink your entire business model because how you use $DAG cryptocurrency as a utility is much different than how you’d use Ethereum’,” he continued.

A Business Mindset: Prioritizing Use Cases

As Hypergraph technology and developer docs roll out, we need businesses to start building on our network. This requires educating them on our unique business model and what they can do with the Hypergraph that will add value to their business.

“At Constellation, we’re a very business-minded team, and that’s actually a benefit to us. We aren’t just a bunch of developers that release tech and hope that someone builds something really cool with it. We go out with a business mindset, show a framework to build a business on the Hypergraph, and use that as a marquee or prototype that people can take and run with,” says Ben.

The best way we gain network adoption is to provide a complete package to educate businesses on our technology and on our business model. This means Constellation will provide robust technology releases and developer docs along with real world use cases for that technology with working state channel DApps.

The Role of Dor Technologies in the Ecosystem
When Constellation acquired Dor Technologies in 2021, our goal was to acquire a company that would be a perfect use case for the Hypergraph technology — one that already collects valuable data with an existing market for the data, and one that we could incubate in house, like an in-house Layer 1.

According to Ben, “We chose Dor because we knew that getting a powerful source of data collection would give us the flexibility to test our hypothesis and incubate internally a lot faster than just opening up tools and hoping people would get how to use the Hypergraph and understand the business model…

So that became our first intention around working with the Dor Traffic Miner (DTM), because it is a viable business right now — it has its own P&L, its own user base, its own customers, and it collects a unique subset of data that we ultimately can broker out — so we have all the pieces to create a business, and now we can start attaching the Hypergraph to this by creating a state channel.”

HGTP Web2 and Web3 Composability and Alkimi Exchange
There are many business use cases for the Hypergraph, but what is most interesting to us are the use cases that marry Web2 and Web3 infrastructures. Alkimi Exchange is a great example of this.

The Web2 concept of the ad exchange clearly benefits from Web3 decentralized technology by moving millions of ad impressions onto the blockchain to combat advertising fraud and accurately verify campaign results for advertisers. Adding this immense dataset to the Hypergraph is a huge win for us and an excellent use case for the Hypergraph’s unique Web3 offering around big data validation.

Incentivizing Utility with the Data Rewards Pool and DApp Grants
With Constellation’s goal of incentivizing businesses to create use cases, we made the decision to shift a reward mechanism toward on-chain utility. Our new data rewards pool will be a finite pool of rewards used to create initial use cases so other businesses can follow that lead and see the power of using cryptocurrency incentives with real world applications for data and utility.

“It’s one thing to come out of the gate and say, ‘Oh, verifiable data or data validation or verification is very valuable.’ We can say that, but when you put pen to paper, you actually need to show that end use case — the full end-to-end deployment so people can get that in their head and understand how their business can be greatly impacted,” says Ben.

When we roll out the state channel DApp grant program — we will look at things like whether or not the business will create an L0 token with high velocity on the Hypergraph or if they’ll design a system to put data on chain that will have high usage of the Hypergraph. Things like this will help us decide how we’ll allocate rewards for certain use cases that create a playbook for anyone to come into the Constellation ecosystem and see the need to buy $DAG to incentivize node operators and use that to create a verifiable thread of data.

Projects like Alkimi will receive $DAG from the data pool to bring data onto our network so we can see on-chain utilization and grow various use cases for data verification.

Network Utility and Evolving Tokenomics
Constellation will evolve our tokenomics as protocol updates release, and as we start to see on-chain utility and different business use cases come up. We need to align our tokenomics with these use cases to maintain our ability to scale with the Layer 1 applications that come on chain.

According to Ben, “What we did last week (in creating the data pool) was the start of us redoing our entire tokenomics over the course of this year. We’re actually looking at the data types that are going on chain and how we’re going to work with the L-1 applications and make a business around this data. Data collection, verification, and processing are having a huge impact on our tokenomics, so our plan with the tokenomics will be to roll out tokenomics lite papers which correlate to the technical readiness of the protocol at the time we release them.”

Additionally, Constellation is working with application layers and the underlying protocol to understand the cost associated with using the Hypergraph for businesses, and this will greatly impact our tokenomics over time.

“We need a tokenomics model that helps businesses understand how much it will cost to make a state channel DApp so they can determine which data they’re going to verify that actually has value so they have a viable business where they can afford to buy $DAG and push it through the Hypergraph and incentivize nodes,” continues Ben.

Adding Nodes and Opening the Network

Constellation is currently working to open the network to accommodate an unlimited number of node operators.

According to Ben, “Our goal is to open up the network by early next year or even late this year. We want to have a network that is open, and a tokenomics model that works for an open network as well — one that invites more nodes — so we’re considering a lot of different aspects to how we’re going to onboard nodes and open up the network in perpetuity…

We’re also working on migrating soft nodes to testnet nodes. We plan to deprecate the soft node program once the entire network is opened up. We’ll focus on providing true technical scalability, and see the technologists from the community come in and help us.”

A Sneak Peek into Protocol Deployment: introducing “Eras”

Because the Hypergraph’s technology is so different from other Web3 protocols, Constellation development continually broaches new territory as we realize our vision from 2017 and 2018.

“We are a category creator in this space, and that’s extremely valuable. But it also can be painful to watch the updates, right? In reality, Constellation should still be in stealth, but because it has a live token, we’re not in stealth, right? So you as the community really have the privilege of seeing a stealth company build the technologies behind the scenes where otherwise people wouldn’t have access to this type of information… and we’re building this stuff out to scale rather quickly when we release. So, I think it’s pretty exciting,” says Ben.

Constellation will focus on showing progress to the community on development of our protocol and all the associated products and services as we roll them out.

To that end, we’ve designed a framework based on the concept of “Eras” to present protocol upgrades and releases along with the associated tokenomics improvements, developer documentation, and any additional updates across our ecosystem of products and services built to accommodate these releases.

Each Era will be named after a constellation (in the sky) and will unlock various use cases and opportunities across the ecosystem. The tokenomics of the protocol will also change slightly with each Era, and each Era’s release will push the Hypergraph to become a more decentralized and secure network.

The first Era is the “Hercules Era,” which will release by the end of next month with our SDK for our L0 currency framework, Rosetta support, and our next tokenomics lite paper. A more detailed description of each feature to roll out in the Hercules Era and in upcoming Eras will be provided upon the Era’s release.

Upcoming Protocol Release Eras

Era 1: Hercules (March 2023 release)

• L0 currency framework
• Rosetta Support
• Tokenomics Litepaper

Era 2: Gemini

• ACI Registry
• HGTP Data validation on-chain
• Block prioritization

Era 3: Taurus

• PRO Scoring
• Open network
• Node spectrums

HGTP in 2024 and 2025

“Constellation is doing what we’re doing today so that in 2 years from now a business can come to us and see a bunch of use cases that are very big, and they can say, ‘Oh this is how I build my DApp on Constellation, and I know that this can work, and I know this can scale, and this is how I incentivize the network, and this is going to ultimately help my business.’ That’s 2 years from now, so like I said, 2023 is exciting but my head’s already in 2024 and 2025,” concludes Ben.

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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