Open Developer Grant Request: SteelDomeCyber,

Proposer Rich Van Duysen, github rvanduysen

(Optional) Filecoin ecosystem affiliations: Please disclose any existing work relationships with organizations in the Protocol Labs Network, including Protocol Labs, Filecoin Foundation, Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web, and any others.

Porter Stowell (FileCoin), Mara McMahon (FileCoin), Angelo Schalley (Protocol Labs), Deep Kapur (Protocol Labs), Michael Fair (PiKNiK), Stuart Berman (PiKNiK) Gregg Scharfstein (PiKNiK), John Suykerbuyk (Seagate)

(Optional) Technical Sponsor: If you have previously discussed this project with a member of the IPFS or Filecoin project teams and they have agreed to be a technical sponsor, include their name and/or github handle here

Angelo Schalley (Protocol Labs)

Do you agree to open source all work you do on behalf of this RFP under the MIT/Apache-2 dual-license?: Please respond with "Yes" or "No".

Yes, for just storage data destined for FileCoin/Open-Source community via developed connector(s). SteelDome has no control over storage providers or what they charge their customers for services provided. SteelDome will remain in full ownership of its own intellectual property for all other technology, software, and services.

Project Summary

This project will help advance the connecting, onboarding, and safeguarding of data for Web3 storage providers currently in the ecosystem, enable new ones, and have ability to bridge an entire new data market for any Web2 enterprise or storage providers that chooses to participate and deposit data onto the FileCoin network. Additionally, the building out of an enterprise-grade orchestration layer as part of a management system interface for storage providers and the community leveraging SteelDome technology already available for end-to-end data protection and common access protocol methods via SteelDome technology. Integrating the interface and tooling for storage providers making it easy to enable storage the onboarding of massive amounts of data. Value add can also be achieved by each storage provider to data storage solutions across tiers that are not destined for FileCoin vs just selling FileCoin archival services. This is a tremendous value add empowering Web3 providers with the ability to charge for additional storage solutions than to just depending on FileCoin rewards for archival today. Additionally, the integration and efforts will align with protocol labs projects such as Project Delta, Motion, Saturn, and others with the goal of making it available to the entire ecosystem via an easy transition or interface re-configuration(s).

Impact

Impact What pain points does the project seek to address?

The project will address current operational inefficiencies, frustrations and provide financial opportunities for storage providers to onboard massive amounts of data and be in a better position to scale. This can be done quickly and easily, over common interface protocols leveraging FileCoin for archival storage, with a path to upsell additional FileCoin services as they become available. For example, robust backup and recovery.

What are the benefits of getting this right?

FileCoin Foundation, Protocol Labs, Investors, The Community, Storage Providers and SteelDome to deliver game changing experiences, helping right-size providers and grow the FileCoin Network with decentralized storage services. FileCoin enhances their storage provider tooling immediately, fast tracks the master plan for onboarding and safeguarding data. Investors gain by offering to help struggling storage providers with financial options, restructuring, and new chargeable data sets to store as well as recover. The FileCoin Network and marketplace will achieve faster data ingestion via storage providers. The rest of the community including SteelDome benefits by becoming part of efficient and massive data on ramps, and additional services that enhance experiences, furthering contributing to the ecosystem offering new innovative solutions such as bridging Web2 enterprise customers for archival storage solutions. Position for future services such as data analytics with the ability to upsell services for data retrieval, recovery services and improving compliance for data privacy become feasible.

What are the risks of not getting this right?

Same old story!
It is no surprise that today’s technology crypto market is significantly impacted by the alarming headlines and downturn in the market with token prices. Innovation and momentum for decentralized internet and data storage remains in high demand. The time is now to create a new market structure based on simplicity, scale and security that makes it easy for everyone to consume decentralized storage and for the data owners to have full control over their data, with an interoperable path across storage tiers. We have an opportunity to start within our own Web3 ecosystem and extend Filecoin to Web2 enterprise markets. SteelDome technology today is in alignment with Protocol Labs projects and can be the enabling onramps with interconnections and interoperability for large data sets, between Web2 and Web3 environments. Full capabilities for onboarding and offboarding services based on intelligence, ratings, and categorizations of storage providers supporting and rewarding good stewards and working with data owners to achieve desired outcomes.

The approach creates easy to use system interfaces to grow alliances and play a key role not only helping to grow decentralized storage but increase the value of Fil, support future financial models and be a leading contributor for adoption of blockchain storage crypto technologies. Pioneering the launch of a new market structure inclusive of storage, recovery, and governance drives solution designs that align with adhering to regulatory compliances, improved data privacy with verifiable data auditing.
To do nothing would be a tremendous, missed opportunity.

What impact will this project have in a specific vertical, market, or ecosystem?

The new market for decentralized storage solutions will deliver innovative, unique purpose-built technology that resolves infrastructure complexities for data protection and data storage solutions. The project will drive disruption of traditional data storage and protection markets, across all verticals. The recommendation for the initial go-to-market would be to optimize and bring on new storage providers within the Web3 ecosystem, offering additional services to existing vertical markets such as data science, education, and others. Introduce new enterprise markets starting with Web2 service providers by offering a common systems interface to deposit data on FileCoin and expand to key enterprise verticals such as pharmaceuticals, healthcare, insurance, IoT and other large data set driven focus areas.

What does success look like?

Implementing the “Managed SteelDome” systems interface, gateway platform to enable customers and service providers with the ability to easily onboard massive amounts of data for archival storage on FileCoin, safeguarding and ability to design and offer fast Web2 data recovery services over common access methods. Data owners do not have to change the way they operate today unless they want to. The software-based solution also optimizes data for better performance and prevents cyber security attacks such as ransomware and others. Protecting data through Managed SteelDome provides additional value allowing organizations to easily adhere to compliance regulations and data privacy requirements for backup, storage, and disaster recovery capabilities, where organization can improve their cyber security insurance and better serve inquires for litigations or legal holds. Managed SteelDome is a one stop service providing fully provisioned data protection and encryption of private enterprise data, and works in tandem with storage providers, cyber security partners, insurance, and law firms. Making services readily available via easy-to-use portals, welcome kits for providers and pre-configured installation links is key for adoption. Having the ability to uplift ecosystems with enterprise-grade decentralized data storage solutions is what success looks like. Success of this project will leverage blockchain technology to drive marketing, engage industry analysts and offer solutions bridging Web2 and Web3 markets. Services and solutions will solve the problems and frustrations of the community while introducing world-class capabilities and tools offering solutions for storing and safeguarding humanity’s data. Marketing the FileCoin Master Plan with these enhancements will Impress market analysts and introduce FileCoin data integrity with the best choices to select and grow decentralized storage. Additionally, market and introduce onboarding of solutions at industry events such as ESPA in July and October.

Outcomes

To deliver a common system-interface and data transmission connector on ramps for storage providers based on SteelDome’s software-defined storage technology.

SteelDome’s InfiniVault technology (hereinafter as ‘the vault’) is a stateless software-defined data storage and protection technology which runs as a virtual machine and advertises as a common network storage device (i.e., SAN or NAS). The vault advertises over universal network protocols such as NFS, SMB (with optional Active Directory/LDAP support), iSCSI, NVMeoF (via RDMA), , HTTPS or SFTP. These protocols ensure the highest level of compatibility across all major operating systems used today for enterprises and storage providers. Cloud-backed storage, most commonly buckets, is translated into local block devices within the vault operating system. These local block devices then become members of the vault storage pool(s) to form an aggregate storage device with a capacity value equal to approximately: (# of block devices block device capacity) - (N block device capacity), where N is the parity redundancy factor of 1, 2 or 3.

As data is received by the vault, it is encapsulated with several protection mechanisms (outlined below) and then distributed across the cloud-backed storage provider network. The encapsulation process for all blocks of data and metadata is performed in real-time and undergoes the following process by default and in this order: • Data compression (high performance LZ4) • Data encryption (AES 256-bit) • Checksum error correction (high performance 512-bit cryptographically secure integrity verification) • Data deduplication (if possible) • Parity calculation and redundant distribution of data and metadata across available storage pool members (user definable as N+1, N+2 or N+3 redundancy at pool creation) This project will produce a common user interface for configuring and depositing data to FileCoin storage providers over an interface on backend and aligning with protocol labs projects such as project delta and project motion.

SteelDome has a complete technical guide that outlines all architectural, measurement, metrics, and monitoring components.
In summary, our team will measure project success my managing and defining success through active POCs where data flows through SteelDome technology and deposits information to a Web3 Storage provider, and work with storage providers to enable the capability to verify the data. Additionally, SteelDome will measure the following: • Status Board Operating System and Storage Pools, uptime, memory stats, pools online, provisioned, allocated and used capacity, cluster mode, performance, traffic shaping. • Operating system stats, storage pool performance, Remote monitoring, IPSEC connections, • Vault operation and access modes for SMB, NFS, ISCSI, NVME, Object engines etc. • Status board for network info monitoring • File Monitoring and folders for modifications, if applicable • Capture all operating system support logs for troubleshooting by SteelDome team. • Network speed tests • Shutdown and general storage audits • Storage stats pool performance, capacity, I/O operations rate for read/write, bandwidth rate for read/write, pool compression factor, pool deduplication factor, total reduction factor. • Historical vault performance graphs, pool, and disk utilizations

Adoption, Reach, and Growth Strategies

Adoption, reach and growth will be achieved by leveraging SteelDome’s Web2 Multi-channel strategy, FileCoin Foundation Web3 marketing, Web3 Partner Program, Industry events, ESPA, accelerator programs with incentives and having the ability to onboard and increase storage provider revenues providing high-value managed service bundles for customers and providers.
Digital marketing campaigns have been defined and will be launched as part of outreach campaigns. The multi-channel strategy includes technology solution brokerages, partner relationships, storage providers, referral programs, and outbound awareness and quality inbound leads. Additionally, forming advisory councils and alliances supported by industry influencer by market verticals.

SteelDome and Protocol Labs will offer a partner program, with a welcome kit and sales enablement capability for storage providers. This includes fast-track installations using online pre-installation checklist, discovery, and pre-configuration links. Sales training and collateral to be developed and provided offering service providers superior data protection, storage, and recovery solutions in a managed service model.

Development Roadmap

1) Connector for Web3 Storage Providers - Proof of concept #1 - transmission of data via SteelDome system to Web3 Storage Provider

Summary o Kick-off and technical meetings o Define roles and responsibilities for design and configuration management environment. o Design of workflow, testing and technical assistance o Customize a solution, understanding the goals, identifying stakeholders. o Create a The Workflow Design Blueprint (WDB), is the plan for technology, products, and services and how the vaults configured, operated and supported correctly. o Develop workflows for installations, deployments, and upgrades. o Produce Fleet management, support plan, and MACD. o Agree to implementation process, testing and recommendations. o Implement and test interface for fleet management system (vaults) o Configure and test connections to Web3 Storage provider.

2) System Interface for Web2 and Web3 Storage Providers - Proof of concept #2 - enable ability to onboard Web2 and Web3 Seller Storage Providers in a XaaS with supported Data Flow Maps

o Discovery phase, requirements, project team introductions o Key deliverables: data access and technical configurations o POC testing o Develop and test system storage provider interface for depositing, sealing, and verifying data in XaaS offering. o Map data flows and develop interfaces for storage providers and ability to transmit data via SteelDome technology to FileCoin providers and back for Seller verification. o Test Web2 to Web3 secure gateway with end-to-end data protection o Build system Interfaces and configurations for onramps for Web2 and Web3 providers. o Offer SteelDome Fleet Management Console for FileCoin as-a-Service.

• Develop Partner Program, welcome kit and align with FileCoin Master Plan/ESPA/Marketing Align with FileCoin Master Plan o Partner Program Partner Application, Partner NDA, Partner Referral Agreement Partner Welcome Kit & Program w/ROE, Partner Success Roadmap

o Sales Enablement Develop Business Plan, Phase 1 ESPA July 2023 - Growth plan and Onboarding. Phase 2 ESPA October 2023 - Onboarding and Safeguarding

o Sales Content Price list(s), Sales presentations, Training and Differentiators Product information, Data Sheets, Prospecting Qualifying questions, Partner Account Mapping FileCoin Deal Registration Overview, Ordering Guidelines, Onboard Products and Services Data Protection, Storage and Recovery Services Matrix

o Marketing Press Releases, LinkedIn announcement, Marketing content, Co-Branded Content Brand guidelines, Artwork, logos etc., Email Templates Partner campaigns/MDFs, Partner Summit Email Blast, Direct and Channel Partner Sales Training Channel marketing campaigns, other channel marketing campaigns, Engage local sales/channel, Data Protection and Data Storage Solutions, Targeted Bundled Solution Sets Website - SteelDome/FileCoin badge; website, materials etc.

o Sales Training Technical, Presentations, Videos, Recorded training, Contact and Help

o Event Plan ESPA July - Las Vegas, ESPA October - Las Vegas, Telarus Partner Summit - Grapevine Local and Regional Networking, Crypto Events, Align with FileCoin Events and Marketing

4-6 months

Total Budget Requested

$250,000

| Milestone # | Description | Deliverables | Completion Date | Funding | |===|===|===|===|===|

Proof of concept #1 transmission of data via SteelDome system connector to Web3 Storage Provider, due date is 6/30/23.
Proof of concept #2 is to onboard a Web3 Seller Storage Provider in XaaS, Map Data Flows, and demonstrate a system interface for depositing data onto FileCoin as a FileCoin as-a-Service model, due date 7/10/23 to be available for July ESPA.
Develop Partner Program, welcome kit and align with FileCoin Master Plan/ESPA/Marketing, due date 7/15/23 to be available for July ESPA

Maintenance and Upgrade Plans

Throughout the vault lifecycle, it will be necessary to upgrade modular components of the vault operating system. This is built into SteelDome’s standard upgrade, maintenance, and change management procedures. Since each component is modular, this can be performed very specifically and as necessary. It is generally against best practice to upgrade for the sake of upgrading, but rather upgrade to fix either specific bugs or potentially compromising security vulnerabilities. In either case, upgrades are performed with the engagement of SteelDome support and engineering personnel. Upgrades will require the vault to be placed into maintenance mode for safety reasons. For this reason, upgrades will need to be scheduled and follow standard change control procedures.

Team Members

Team Member LinkedIn Profiles

Rich Van Duysen Rich Van Duysen | LinkedIn Jeffrey Slapp Jeffrey Slapp | LinkedIn Tony Franchi Tony Franchi | LinkedIn

Team Website

Steeldomecyber.com

Relevant Experience

Richard Van Duysen, Chief Strategy Officer Rich is a business technology executive with an extensive 30-year background in technology, transformation, finance, strategic partnerships, and operational excellence. He helps companies achieve exceptional value by becoming an extension of their team when planning, selecting, and managing technology solutions. His unique approach drives profitability by aligning capabilities with desired business outcomes, competitive advantage, and operational excellence. Rich has held leadership positions in Fortune 500 companies and achieved entrepreneurial success as founder and CEO of a successful technology management consulting firm. He continues to be an active strategic advisor with top organizations, partners, and consulting firms focused on integrating IT and business relationships.

Jeffrey Slapp, Chief Technology Officer Jeff is a senior technologist with over 20 years of experience in computing and storage virtualization, enterprise architecture and software development. Early in his career, Jeff managed information systems at Penn State University and led engineering teams Iron Mountain and Citrix Systems. He also founded a successful technology consulting firm focused on the newly emerging x86 virtualization market, which was acquired by Host.net in 2009. Jeff continued as VP of Virtualization Services and then as CTO, designing and deploying one of the most resilient service provider cloud platforms, achieving more than five years of continuous up time for its enterprise engineering teams at DataCore Software and Pure Storage.

Tony Franchi, Chief Executive Officer Tony is the CEO and co-founder of SteelDome. He has more than 21 years of experience, including senior management roles in the telecommunications, IT management/security industry, driving revenue growth and scaling organizations. His entrepreneurial background and ability to commercialize technologies have enabled him to drive innovation to the market and enable enterprises the ability to achieve success.

Team code repositories

Additional Information

SteelDome attended Cohort V and Cohort VI and established a cadence within FileCoin and Protocol Labs. We have contributed to the ecosystem and are now embedded in innovative development discussions across the board. After due diligence, we asked around and learned of the grant program. Additionally, we are co-planning activities with engineering, the community and storage providers within the ecosystem. We have identified a high-value opportunity to bridge web2 and web3 data owners and what that effort would take, hence applying for a grant.

richard.vanduysen@steeldomecyber.com

We are senior professionals that have been driving big business for a long time. We are everyday people that put a high value on relationships, working together and doing the right thing.

### Tasks

filecoin-project / devgrants

Web2 to Web3 Secure Gateway #1563