Hacking the Metagraph: Intrana, Dagnum PI, Constellation Network, and the Future of Blockchain

Panasonic , IBM , and SIMBA Chain have partner with Constellation Network to debut a United States Department of Defense vetted “Blockchain of Blockchains” in a Global Hackathon. This fully virtual event is free to enter and runs from July 15th until September 9th, 2024. A total of $100,000 USD equivalent in $DAG (Constellation Network’s cryptocurrency) will be distributed to winners across several categories encompassing metagraph development and on-chain tooling, with the biggest single prize of $25,000 going to the most successful Metagraph. In this article, "Dagnum PI " and Intrana Corporation CEO, Court Welty discuss blockchain, tokenization, and the Metagraph Hackathon

Dagnum PI

My journey into the world of blockchain and social media began with a deep fascination for how technology could revolutionize finance and data management. This interest led me to dive into the intricacies of blockchain technology, particularly the tokenomics of Constellation Network , known for its innovative approach with $DAG.

I started by engaging with the community on X, sharing insights, and discussing the potential of blockchain. My posts caught the attention of the @stardustco11ect team due to my understanding of Metanomics, Constellation's economic model, which I often broke down into digestible facts for the community.

I took it upon myself to not just inform but to build a community around Constellation. My strategy involved leveraging events like hackathons, where I highlighted the network's growth and the implications of snapshot fees on token deflation, engaging followers in real-time discussions.

Recognizing the need for a clear, engaging social media presence, I proposed a strategy focusing on educational content, community interaction, and showcasing real-world applications of Constellation's technology. This included posts on how enterprises could benefit from the DoD-vetted technology now made public.

My proactive engagement, coupled with a strategic approach to marketing, led to my formal role as the Social Media Manager for The Stardust Collective .

Court Welty

Court "Al" Welty has spent over 10 years working in traditional financial markets as a broker, wealth management advisor at Merrill Lynch, a vice president at a Barron’s best advisor, and emergency senior loan officer working with the SBA and BofA during the initial lockdowns of the pandemic. Court’s in-depth knowledge in the fields of distributed ledger technology and finance spearheads the Intrana team’s strategy and execution.

Kevin L. Jackson: Alright. So why don't we start this off by a quick introduction, so who is Dagnum PI.

?Dagnum PI: Yeah, I'm Dagnum online. That's what everybody knows me as and how I got that name, Dagnum; it's a play-off of Magnum PI.

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Kevin L. Jackson: Oh! Who knew that?

Dagnum PI: Yeah. I found Constellation through somebody at work. actually. I was the kind of go-to guy at work for the latest stock insights, talking about up-and-coming opportunities that a lot of people might not be aware of. Like I was talking about Palantir Technologies , for example, before that became mainstream. I had been following Palantir for a long time because of what they're doing with automation and AI. That's where everything is currently driving. And I think it's important for people to not follow the mainstream narrative, but be aware of all this cool stuff and opportunity that's happening all around. And it was actually me talking about Palantir that this coworker of mine said, “Well, if you really like that stuff, wait until you find out about this company Constellation. They have this thing called the Hypergraph. He just briefly described what they're doing with the military, and it was like a record scratch. I was like, wait a minute. So they have a cryptographically secure internet protocol, essentially. And he said, “Yes!” And the rest is history. I spent an entire weekend reading every white paper. I watched every video that they had, and my mind was blown. So I went online and I saw what people were talking about socially. Because I said, Man, this is crazy. This is revolutionary technology. If even a fraction of what they're talking about comes to fruition like this, is it this? This is a game changer. And I noticed that not a lot of people were talking about it for whatever reason. And so that's where Dagnum was born.

Kevin L. Jackson: When you became a Constellation Guru from that sort of short experience and intense weekend.

Dagnum PI: Yeah. I just wanted people to be aware of this amazing technology and not only be aware of it, but I wanted to explain why because the why was kind of lost on a lot of people, and how this technology is going to translate into adoption. Because a lot of this stuff is super technical, and one of the things that I like to do is kind of dumb it down for everybody, and, simplify things so people have a broader understanding of how things are going to work.

Kevin L. Jackson: So, Court, how did you hear about Constellation? Because you are leveraging this technology in a fairly unique way. Right. Tell us a bit about yourself and Intrana.

Court: Yeah. So I found out 1st about Constellation, funnily enough, through my father. He was like, “Hey, have you heard of some of the more Department of Defense, related cryptocurrency DLT companies,” and I hadn’t at first. I didn't know that the US Government would even consider using something like blockchain. But it's a no-brainer when you really get into the nitty-gritty of it because cryptography is one of the key features of national security as a whole. Without it, we can't really be protected. And so I ran into Constellation through outside conversations and tertiary conversations. I had started this company to be able to create interoperability and apply this technology inside of traditional finance and other parts of enterprises all across the world and inside of America so that we can find efficiencies. I was a financial advisor before this, a broker before that, a day trader before that, and really last straw inside of that traditional finance world for me was when Covid hit.

Court: I was running my practice at 美林证券 and while I was doing best efforts to transfer a couple of 100 million over to Merrill. We immediately had a pandemic. The U.S. Small Business Administration contacted all of the people that were advising at Merrill and asked to help distribute funds for the Paycheck Protection Program, and in such a short period of time. Obviously, these programs aren't going to be perfect, but when I started to use these systems to connect to IRS databases to be able to pull what people had filed, what their history was, if they filed 1065, etc., it was very difficult to understand, because we were using so many pieces. I had access to everything. So many pieces of technology, so many different programs, so many inefficiencies. And I'd been in blockchain since about 2010,2009, and I'd been curious, interested, been building some things, but I hadn't actually applied what I knew in a way that I knew could apply to the masses. When I saw what happened, the way that some of the funds were abused by folks that abused the program there, I knew that there had to be a better way. So we kind of started working, got in touch with Quant Network , and if anybody doesn't know who Quant is, they help make ACH ISO 20022, TC307. They're wonderful people, and they helped me with my architecture, and then I got in touch with Altif Brown . And that's kind of just how we kept going. We stumbled forward into the position that we're in, and we're very lucky to have run into Constellation, because that technology not only is it infinitely horizontally scalable, but it is incredibly powerful, and it's secure, and it's something that can be applied in a scalable way that really will help a lot of people once it's all said and done.

Kevin L. Jackson: Are you actually working in finance in fiat, and you saw this digital stuff as a better, and safer way of dealing with money. That sounds sort of oxymoronic. Huh? Is that true?

Court: At first, one would think and a lot of it has to do with the original way that Bitcoin and Ethereum were expressed and used. There was a lot of illicit activity, a lot of illegitimate activity, and business propositions that left a lot of people damaged. But, that doesn't inherently make the technology unvaluable. And when you start to really look at the way that we currently deal with the financial system. Brokerages are holding all that data in siloed data lakes. Financial advisories are holding data lakes, and communicating with this tertiary advisor broker, and doing trades here and there. There's so many different contact points that when you really start to reflect on why we did it in the 1st place, it was because when we had stock certificates, sometimes they would catch on fire. Sometimes, people would lose them. They could be stolen. That's why the wagon trains would be robbed back in the day in the Wild West because they wanted those stock certificates. So if we can get back to self-custody, which is what everybody wants. But, allow a way for those traditional businesses that exist that provide valuable services to be able to communicate with the folks that are self- custodying it without having to go through the, “I carry myself custody stock certificate a thousand miles to be able to sell to somebody else It ,” it really brings us back to that old tribalistic form of trade. A value transfer, but with controls that can still provide that security and that infrastructure that we're used to, and that we rely upon.

Kevin L. Jackson: That's a kind of a unique way to get in cryptocurrency. But Dagnam, can I call you Dagnum? People are so focused on, how did you get so focused on digital currency? I mean, you were just something you were interested in. Were you trading, or what.

Dagnum PI: I mean, this to me was an easy transition to the stuff that I was already interested. I was already interested in data analytics, AI automation, all of that stuff. But, I wasn't really aware that blockchain was being used for applications like this until somebody pointed out what Constellation was doing. I had kind of followed bitcoin and whatnot, but I wasn't really too deep into the woods with distributed ledger technology. It just it just wasn't really on my radar. And this really opened the door to me, and it was an easy transition. And I mean, if you really think about everything that's going on right now with technology and with the exponential rise in all of this data, the use of blockchain is inevitable, really. How many data breaches have we seen in in the past month…

Kevin L. Jackson: … a day!

Dagnum PI: … and there’s going to be a time where most of these businesses aren't really going to have a choice. And especially now, with the rise of artificial intelligence. So artificial intelligence, trusted verifiable data, is going to be paramount. I mean, how are you going to be able to trust the AI model that you're using.

Kevin L. Jackson: So, this isn't really about Bitcoin. It really isn't about cryptocurrency. You sound like this is about business. So how should a businessperson view crypto, cryptocurrency or crypto securities, or this whole technology space. Why should it be a part of a business strategy?

Dagnum PI: Yeah, I personally think that it should be part of a business strategy, because it can help what they're already doing. They don't even have to change any of their business models. They can literally plug in the same systems that they're already using, and you can do this with Constellations stack, because a lot of these businesses spend tens of millions of dollars, some of these people, on applications that they use and upgrading these systems like companywide is kind of a big deal. So, a lot of people, even the Department of Defense used this as one of the criteria for them to be able to use this is that they didn't want to do anything with the systems that they already had. And a lot of these systems that are being used by the Department of Defense are trusted systems. They've been using them for a long time, and the reason why they use them is because they know that they work. They're not going to upgrade to something new. What blockchain can do is run in parallel with the systems that you're already using by just adding an additional security layer and offloading a lot of that work.

Kevin L. Jackson: So Court, you are a business, and you're leveraging blockchain and this DAG, but you're actually doing it in a sort of a different way: Tokenization. So, what is tokenization, and what is its relationship to this whole crypto thing?

Court: Tokenization has been one of the hot topics of the year: Real World Assets. Before that it was all NFTs and stuff. Now we're getting more into the true application. Tokenization is actually an old practice, even when we go to different sites like Plaid. People are given a token that represents something. In that case it's that they've passed the KYC or AML. Then other programs, every business can go and check if they have that token from them, and it allows them to say, “Yes, we have passed that.” They have been cleared through our money laundering programs and we know who our client is, and we know who their clients are. Now, in the same way, we express and reflect the existence of assets on the Internet, on our apps, in a bunch of different ways. And nobody really knows what those underlying programs or what type of data it is. They just know the numbers are there, they're expressing them. Tokenization is a way to make sure that the numbers that are in your wallet can't be taken away or disappear because the bank that is showing you those numbers goes under. Tokenization is a way for you to take assets and create a digital clone of those assets in a way that represents that ownership, proof of authenticity, or the actual expression of the asset without physical custody online like stocks, or bonds, or different types of real estate certificates. And tokenization is so important because it brings us back to the days where people put money under their mattress because they were afraid of banks going under.

Kevin L. Jackson: Yeah.

Court: As we start to see the metrics really build, we're seeing unemployment rise. We're seeing interest rates across the world have drastic changes. The Bank of Japan is dumping treasury as they just change their interest rates for the first time ever. And we're seeing a lot of turmoil in financial markets, a lot of liquidation events, and a lot of businesses going under, due to insufficient security or older practices that no longer work. And as we grow, tokenization is one way for us to give power back to the people. I think for too long through this boon of technology we've seen multi-billion dollar technocratic, I guess not monopolies but almost, come after large segments of market share for particular services and product use cases, and they've been able to do so because there was no other option. Now there is, and because of that the people can now start to participate or keep some of that service, handling, and money that they were paying for that for themselves. It also increases security for the businesses and the individuals and governments that choose to use this type of tokenization. It doesn't matter what blockchain you're on. It doesn't matter what bank you use. You can go and tokenize your assets, self-custody to them, but still be able to interact with everything the same way it removes that layer of dependency on those 3rd parties, those middlemen, banks, or brokerages holding those assets so that they only touch them when you want to liquidate, or when you want to start to actually trade as opposed to you being exposed to that risk element for the entirety of you holding that asset which is a huge plus in in any of the opinions that of the people I've spoken to so far.

Kevin L. Jackson: What we have in place right now has been around. And this is what we know. This is what we have trusted. But you're saying, this new this new approach to finance is better. How can you convince people that it's actually better? Or why should people believe that it's actually better.

Court: We're seeing the effects of businesses, not adopting this technology through and through. We're seeing the entire economy being affected by hacks, cyber breaches, leaks of information. We're also seeing massive instances of pig butchering, abuses of our citizens for financial gain of, illicit 3rd parties, and most of the time they're working in decentralized command structures. There are people that are trying to destroy the financial infrastructure of America. We have enemies. That's the way it goes. The reason that people shouldn't be so scared of this new tech is that we're not changing the way that we do business. We're not changing the way that we sell stocks. We're not changing banks. We're changing the way that we express our money and the way that we trade it, the way that we send it, the way that we protect it. We’re adding a shield over everything. It doesn't change anything that people are used to. Traditional finance works. Conservative metrics, income funds, mutual funds are time tested ways for us to create value and participate in ownership of companies or diversified ownership of companies that historically have done really well and help protect people, and there's ways to do that that are very responsible. We don't want people to go and completely change everything. We aren't changing math. We're not reinventing the wheel. We're making the wheel bulletproof, so that if somebody comes along the way and tries to shoot it out you can keep driving and that's really why I think blockchain put a bad taste in people's mouth at first because there were so many rug pulls, so many scams. That was because of the application of the technology was incorrect, not because of the technology isn’t valuable. Ideally, and when Intrana is up, when Constellation starts to launch their Metagraphs and we see more companies come, you won't know that you're using this technology. It will just be working in parallel on the background to protect you. And really the responsibility lies upon the businesses to help introduce as well as governments to help introduce this technology to protect people, provide efficiencies for those organizations, but also for the people to adopt it, so that they can protect themselves.

Kevin L. Jackson: Wow, I mean, that's really impressive and Dagnum, coming back to you, with the DOD deciding to use Constellation, and clearly Court thinks that, or sees it as a way of protecting assets while you're expressing them in a more, I guess, transparent way. So, what makes Constellation different? Why is it so special? Why did the DOD select it? Why is Intrana leveraging it to sort of change the entire financial system.

Dagnum PI: One of the beauties of Constellation’s technology, like I was describing earlier, is you can integrate it directly with the tech stack that you already have so you don't have to replace anything. But what you're doing is you're adding an additional layer of security because one of the beauties of distributed ledger technology, or blockchain (I'm just going to call it blockchain for all the non-token adept people) is that Constellations technology is built on a Directed Acyclic Graph, so, it's not a blockchain. This is one of the reasons why the Department of Defense picked this technology because Directed Acyclic graph technology is able to integrate directly with their tech stack. And this, like I was alluding to earlier, was one of the requirements for the Department of Defense, because they don't want to have to upgrade any of their any of their systems. The addition of adding a cryptographic secure network adds that additional layer of security. The advantage with Constellation, though, is they're not technically a blockchain. Their technology is a Directed Acyclic Graph. In doing so, it can scale horizontally. I mean, theoretically, it could go on infinitely. All you have to do is just add more nodes to the network. And in doing that it actually makes it even more secure. And right now one of the big things is being able to be quantum resistant. We have quantum computers hitting next. I mean, they're on the open market right now. And so it's really important not only for the Department of Defense, but for any small to medium sized business, to have quantum resistant technology and Constellation’s technology is actually quantum resistant technology. So in a way, when you're utilizing this technology, you're already future proofing yourself in a sense.

Kevin L. Jackson: So this, this is really, I think, an important aspect of it because this additional layer can protect your business as you move forward against these quantum hackers, so to speak. And speaking about hackers, you guys are actually inviting hackers to test this out right? So is this what you're doing in the hackathon. Aren't you afraid they're going to break through?

Dagnum PI: Yeah, that's right. The other thing that I'm involved with is the Stardust Collective. This is the community run aspect of the network. We have our own treasury and part of what we're doing with that treasury, to hopefully expand and grow the ecosystem, is we're helping fund this hackathon. And what we're hoping to accomplish with this hackathon is the adoption of this technology. The hackathon is actually partnered by IBM , Panasonic , and SIMBA Chain . I mean that those are huge, reputable businesses. Not a lot of people might be aware of Simba Chain. But Simba Chain is another blockchain company, and they work directly with the Department of Defense, which adds even more legitimacy to what Constellation is bringing. But, let's talk about IBM and Panasonic. Those are two huge corporations that I think everybody on the planet recognizes.

Kevin L. Jackson: Yeah.

Dagnum PI: What we're hoping to accomplish with this is giving the developer community awareness of this technology. Not a lot of people are aware that this network is actually open right now for public use. The majority of the people that are aware of Constellation, are aware of the fact of the partnerships and involvement with the Department of Defense. But not a lot of people are aware that this same application, this same technology that's verified and validated, trusted by the Department of Defense, can actually be used for any small to medium sized business or huge corporations like Panasonic.

Kevin L. Jackson: Jeez, this is really coming from left field, a government actually using blockchain with these companies like IBM and Panasonic. Like you said, this is front page news, but I haven't seen it on the front page. So Court, what does this Hackathon mean to you? Are you afraid it's going to break your whole strategy.

Court: No, no, we look forward to that on being over. Being able to show what we've done. There's a lot of really cool things happening in the background. One of the neat things that I'm doing is with a man named Ryan Wallerstein ( Ryan W. ), and he's an old Department of Homeland Security guy. But, after he stopped that he founded a company called a “The Illicit Edge ,” and we have a wonderful partnership with them. They're doing some marketing for us, but also Tobalo T. , who is one of the old architects at 甲骨文 e, he has Yeetum m now. Tabalo and I are working on an immutable news module with Illicit Edge, and we're very excited about that. One of the purposes of it is to be able to take anything that is put out on the Internet and actually create a token so that people can open-mint that, put it in their wallet, and create a collection of the news stories. It also creates a lot of trail of accountability for those that put out the news. We're not going to guarantee that what is out there is accurate, but we are going to guarantee that we know who said it when they said it, and they're not going to be able to delete it. So. Making news permanent for forever, is a very important thing in our opinion. Another cool thing that we're doing at the Hackathon module will be introducing the Professional Grappling Federation . It was founded by Brandon McCaghren and we have a good relationship with them. I do 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu , and he owns 10th Planet Alabama, Decatur. But he started PGF. They're on UFC Fight Pass Invitational 5 and have about 6 seasons under their belt and on the 7th season they will do it with @Rick Gracie, and Eddie Bravo, and Joe Rogan, and so we'll be making a fantasy app to be able to show kind of a more public facing way for us to use the Metagraphs with a business that is already very successful. Tying in technology so sooner rather than later you'll be able to go and see Intrana on the UFC 5 Pass, and be able to use our app, and engage with us that way as well.

Kevin L. Jackson: Wow! A lot of big things coming down. What's the future for Intrana? I understand you have some new products you're launching as well.

Court: Yes, so we have the tokenization engine that we've done with the NDF. That is nonprofit. We don't think the expression of the US dollar should be in the control of somebody that's making money off of that. That's how you make the first trillion. That's not a good idea. But within Intrana we are coming out with our modules, our platform. Anybody that wants to be able to use Metagraphs or DLC blockchain technology, but you don't have money to go and get a $100,000 or $200,000 development team. We're going to have modules ready for you and your enterprise so that you can come, plug in, and in a couple of lines of code be able to use your existing database in a way that's new, fresh, more efficient, saves you money. It saves you time and provides your workers, the tools that they need to do their jobs better. We can provide some advanced analytics for some of the more complex features, like brokerages, banks, advisories. But we can get down to the nitty gritty of just like payroll or time management for employees. So the sky is really the limit. We're looking forward to launching. We're in the middle of testing right now. Got to do a couple of updates because of the changes on Constellation Network. But luckily it's not too much code. We're looking forward to the end of the NDF work groups so that we can kind of bring forward to the powers that be the things that we've made. We think that they're very powerful, very effective. And we're really looking forward to launching the platform, because when we do, we'll start to see people on board be able to tokenize not only their US dollars, but all of their assets, and hopefully, in that way we can cushion a large portion of the population from a potential catastrophe that could happen in the future.

Kevin L. Jackson: That's amazing. And Dagnum, what's new with the Metagraph, what's coming down the pipe.

Dagnum PI: One of the biggest things actually was just announced the other day. They're changing the tokenomics. One of the interesting things that they're doing is they're allowing these things called delegators. What that'll do is open up anybody that's holding DAG to essentially take that and delegate their stake to validators. But not only validators, you can actually do that to a Metagraph. Metagraphs are layer one networks that are built on top of Constellation’s Hypergraph. What you can do is you can actually stake your bandwidth to these layer one networks. That is really going to be a game changer, for a lot of reasons. One of the things that it actually is going to open up is a potential person who wants to build a layer one network. You could essentially crowdfund, in a sense, people's bandwidth, and then it doesn't require any capital from you as a business. Or even, like I was talking about earlier, a huge company like Panasonic. During the announcement from Constellation themselves, talking about this new mechanism, Benjamin Diggles was describing this meeting that he had, with Panasonic. We don't know yet, but, essentially, Panasonic is exploring how to integrate its existing product line to Metagraphs. So Panasonic is one of the world's largest IoT makers, and we can kind of get a get an idea of, essentially, what that would look like by something that's already existing on Constellations network right now with the Dor . So the Dor traffic miner is a little IoT sensor, and it tracks foot traffic, and it's good for businesses, because it gives them valuable insights into who's coming to their store. It takes that data, and it bundles it up into a snapshot and it submits it to the ledger. It's a really simple use case, and right now there's about 3,000 of those miners online. But, when you're talking about a huge enterprise like Panasonic integrating its existing sensors or products like Panasonic makes TV’s. They also make cameras. Cameras could be integrated into a Metagraph. I mean, you're talking about way more than 3,000 sensors. I mean, we're talking, something potentially like tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of sensors coming online.

Kevin L. Jackson: Let me get this straight. Every IoT device you could actually mine the bandwidth and the data associated with that bandwidth on the metagraph and then provide immutable data about what's happening or being tracked with that IoT device. Is that right?

Dagnum PI: Yes, and not only that, but when you have enough people delegating and staking, DAG onto your layer, one network, you not only could have the cost be $0, but you could actually make money. So, if enough people delegated and staked their DAG on the Panasonic network, for example, Panasonic could actually make money from this. And then how that would translate to the end user is, you could have people get discounts on products, special rewards, or even if they were, for example, to do a token, you could even get a token in return. So to go back to the Dor metagraph, Dor does have a token, and if enough people stake their their DAG on the Dor metagraph, you could, potentially get Dor as a reward for staking your bandwidth, which is DAG on their metagraph.

Kevin L. Jackson: This could be huge. So how could someone get in touch with you to learn more about how they could actually leverage this new capability from Constellation Network.

Dagnum PI: The easiest way is to go to Consolation’s website, Constellation Network dot IO. They also have a Telegram which you can find on the website, and a Discord.

Kevin L. Jackson: This is a new world. And Court, with all the things that you're doing and new services and products, it's going to save us all from the future collapse of the global finance system. How could somebody reach out to you to learn more about Intrana and the value of tokenization.

Court: So go to our website in Intrana dot IO. You can also just email me Al at Intrana dot IO. I respond pretty quickly, but we do ask no NFT projects, and that that kind of thing. But, anybody else, we’d love to chat, and I do want to say thank you very much, Kevin. This has been an excellent chat, and I do want to mention the NDF just one more time. If you do want to get in touch with us, but, let's say, you don't have the money to go and pay us. You can join the NDF. I'm not sure if you know joining is still happening now. But please look into what they're doing. There's a lot of good work groups you can join for free, and it's a good way to get your company involved in kind of the leading edge of what we're doing and what blockchain and technology is becoming.

Kevin L. Jackson: No, that's great. And the NDF is an excellent way to learn more about Constellation and metagraphs, and to get involved with the future. So, thank you both for spending the time to speak and provide such insight, and into the future.

Dagnum PI: Thanks again for having us. This is next level stuff. And again. if you want a window into what's happening on the hypergraph, I've said it many times online, go to the National DigiFoundry. That is a perfect window, because it's an incubator, is what it is. And if you want an idea of the future of tokenization and digital assets beyond just cryptocurrencies, because there's a whole world of blockchain beyond cryptocurrencies, look at National DigiFoundry.

Kevin L. Jackson: Yes, thank you very much.

Court: Yes, and thank you, Kevin. I really appreciate it.

Full Interview