With all the buzz around Web3 and our soon-to-be officially launched Skylight application, it’s no wonder customers and partners have asked some incredibly thoughtful questions. So, we’re sharing our answers in a multi-part series with the best readership out there: YOU!

Let’s get right to it!

Question: You do a lot of work with the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). That seems at odds with Web3’s decentralized and individual value. What’s the connection between the DoD and Web3?

That’s a fair question. It turns out that a lot of what is happening in the Web3 world is directly related to defense and vice versa.

In short, both consumers and the DoD have increasing data privacy and anonymity concerns. The DoD accepting our technology is great validation for consumers. If you can make the technology work for consumers, you can make it easy to use and scalable for the DoD.

People forget that the “crypto” in “cryptocurrency” is short for cryptography. So instead of thinking of a peer-to-peer financial transaction (e.g., you and me trading bitcoin directly) think of data as the asset using many of the same technologies.

A blockchain can store the record of the transaction. Smart contracts control under what conditions data is exchanged or analyzed. Zero-knowledge proofs verify anonymously that the data is what people say it is.

So, any time you want to keep data private and compartmentalized but also verify that it’s real, Web3 technologies have a huge advantage here.

An example is: you have 30 countries in NATO all of whom, now more than ever, need to share information about a conflict right on their doorstep … but … they don’t have integrated systems and, frankly, don’t even want to share all information with each other.

If you can securely share insights across 30 million users anonymously with Web3 technologies, then 30 intelligence agencies is not an issue at all.

In summary, we’re leveraging Web3 technologies to help consumers and validating the security and privacy elements with our DoD customers.

Appreciate the summary, but need to know more? Check out our Skylight page or better yet, send us a note: info@solvewithvia.com.

John Muddle, Ph.D.

Vice President, Software Engineering

John is focused on implementing best practices for software development at VIA. He co-invented VIA’s core platform and currently develops, integrates, and quality assurance tests the platform for VIA’s applications.

Before VIA, John was a freelance consultant at the Numerical Algorithms Group (NAG), where he focused on updating their Python Library. Prior to this position, he was a technical sales support engineer at NAG in Oxford, where he developed technical marketing material and provided pre-sales assistance. John was awarded the best thesis in gravitation physics in 2016 by the Institute of Physics (IOP). His research focused on developing new numerical methods that capture the physical behavior of fluid interfaces permeated by high magnetic fields while taking into account relativistic effects.

John earned his master’s degree in physics and his Ph.D. in applied mathematics from the University of Southampton.