Guardian

Overview

Guardian is a modular open-source solution that includes best-in-class identity management and decentralized ledger technology (DLT) libraries. At the heart of Guardian solution is a sophisticated Policy Workflow Engine (PWE) that enables applications to offer a digital (or digitized) Measurement, Reporting, and Verification requirements-based tokenization implementation.

HIP-19 · HIP-28 · HIP-29 · Report a Bug · Request a Policy or a Feature

Discovering Digital Environmental Assets assets on Hedera

As identified in Hedera Improvement Proposal 19 (HIP-19), each entity on the Hedera network may contain a specific identifier in the memo field for discoverability. Guardian demonstrates this when every Hedera Consensus Service transaction is logged to a Hedera Consensus Service (HCS) Topic. Observing the Hedera Consensus Service Topic, you can discover newly minted tokens.

In the memo field of each token mint transaction you will find a unique Hedera message timestamp. This message contains the url of the Verifiable Presentation (VP) associated with the token. The VP can serve as a starting point from which you can traverse the entire sequence of documents produced by Guardian policy workflow, which led to the creation of the token. This includes a digital Methodology (Policy) HCS Topic, an associated Registry HCS Topic for that Policy, and a Project HCS Topic.

Please see p.17 in the FAQ for more information. This is further defined in Hedera Improvement Proposal 28 (HIP-28).

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Getting started

To get a local copy up and running quickly, follow the steps below. Please refer to https://docs.hedera.com/guardian for complete documentation.

Note. If you have already installed another version of Guardian, remember to perform a backup operation before upgrading.

Prerequisites

• Hedera Testnet Account
• Web3.Storage Account
• Filebase Account

Note: as of January, 10th 2024 old web3.storage upload API (the main upload API before November 20, 2023) has been sunset. New w3up service accounts/API must be used with Guardian going forward.

When building the reference implementation, you can manually build every component or run a single command with Docker.

Automatic installation

Prerequisites for automatic installation

• Docker

If you build with docker MongoDB V6, NodeJS V20, Yarn and Nats 1.12.2 will be installed and configured automatically.

Installation

The following steps need to be executed in order to start Guardian using docker:

1. Clone the repo
2. Configure project level .env file
3. Update BC access variables
4. Setup IPFS
5. Build and launch with Docker
6. Browse to http://localhost:3000
7. For increased security remove credentials from .env file

Here the steps description follows:

1. Clone the repo

git clone https://github.com/hashgraph/guardian.git

2. Configure project level .env file.

The main configuration file that needs to be provided to the Guardian system is the .env file. Note that these files contain sensitive configuration such as keys and access credentials which are only used at the initial start of Guardian. For increased security it is recommended to disable inbound network access until after the first run of Guardian, when the credentials configuration has been removed from .env file (see p8 below).

For this example purpose let's name the Guardian platform as "develop"

   GUARDIAN_ENV="develop"

NOTE: Every single service is provided in its folder with a .env.template file, this set of files are only needed for the case of Manual installation.

3. Update BC access variables.

Update the following files with your Hedera Testnet account info (see prerequisites) as indicated. Please check complete steps to generate Operator_ID and Operator_Key by looking at the link: How to Create Operator_ID and Operator_Key. The Operator_ID and Operator_Key and HEDERA_NET are all that Guardian needs to access the Hedera Blockchain assuming a role on it. This parameters needs to be configured in a file at the path ./configs, the file should use the following naming convention:

./configs/.env.\<GUARDIAN_ENV\>.guardian.system

There will be other steps in the Demo Usage Guide that will be required for the generation of Operator_ID and Operator_Key. It is important to mention that the Operator_ID and Operator_Key in the ./configs/.env.<GUARDIAN_ENV>.guardian.system will be used to generate demo accounts.

The parameter HEDERA_NET may assume the following values: mainnet, testnet, previewnet, localnode. choose the right value depending on your target Hedera network on which the OPERATOR_ID has been defined.

As examples:

following the previous example, the file to configure should be named: ./configs/.env.develop.guardian.system, this file is already provided in the folder as an example, only update the variables OPERATOR_ID, OPERATOR_KEY and HEDERA_NET.

OPERATOR_ID="..."
OPERATOR_KEY="..."
HEDERA_NET="..."

Starting from Multi-environment release (2.13.0) it has been introduced a new parameter PREUSED_HEDERA_NET. Multienvironemnt is a breaking change and the configuration of this parameter intend to smooth the upgrading. PREUSED_HEDERA_NET configuration depends on the installation context.

• If the installation is a completely new one just remove the parameter and feel free to jump to the next paragraph.
• if you are upgrading from a release after the Multi-environment (>= to 2.13.0) do not change the state of this parameter (so if you removed the parameter in some previous installation do not introduce it).
• if the installation is an upgrading from a release previous of the Multi-environment (<= to 2.13.0) to a following one you need to configure the PREUSED_HEDERA_NET. After that the parameter will last in the configuration unchanged.

3.1. PREUSED_HEDERA_NET configuration

The PREUSED_HEDERA_NET parameter is intended to hold the target Hedera network that the system already started to notarize data to. PREUSED_HEDERA_NET is the reference to the HEDERA_NET that was in use before the upgrade. To let the Multi-environment transition happen in a transparent way the GUARDIAN_ENV parameter in the .env file has to be configured as empty while the PREUSED_HEDERA_NET has to be set with the same value configured in the HEDERA_NET parameter in the previous configuration file.

PREUSED_HEDERA_NET never needs to be changed after the first initialization. On the contrary it will be possible to change HEDERA_NET to dials with all the Hedera different networks.

• as first Example:

in case of the upgrading from a release minor then 2.13.0 to a bigger one and keep using the same HEDERA_NET="Mainnet"(as example)

configure the name the Guardian platform as empty in the .env file

   GUARDIAN_ENV=""

In this case the configuration is stored in the file named: ./configs/.env..guardian.system, and is already provided in the folder as an example, updating the variables OPERATOR_ID and OPERATOR_KEY.

OPERATOR_ID="..."
OPERATOR_KEY="..."

PREUSED_HEDERA_NET is the reference to your previous HEDERA_NET configuration then you should set its value to match your previous HEDERA_NET configuration.

HEDERA_NET="mainnet"
PREUSED_HEDERA_NET="mainnet"

because you are keeping on using HEDERA_NET as it was pointing to the "mainnet" in the previous installation too.

• As a second example: to test the new release change the HEDERA_NET to "testnet". This is the complete configuration:

Set the name of the Guardian platform to whatever description name in the .env file

   GUARDIAN_ENV="testupgrading"

In this case the configuration is stored in the file named: ./configs/.env.testupgrading.guardian.system again update the variables OPERATOR_ID and OPERATOR_KEY using your testnet account.

OPERATOR_ID="..."
OPERATOR_KEY="..."

set the HEDERA_NET="testnet" and set the PREUSED_HEDERA_NET to refer to the mainnet as you wish that Mainet data remains unchanged.

HEDERA_NET="testnet"
PREUSED_HEDERA_NET="mainnet"

This configuration allows you to leave untouched all the data referring to Mainnet in the Database while testing on Testnet. Refer to Guardian documentation for more details.

NOTE: You can use the Schema Topic ID (INITIALIZATION_TOPIC_ID) already present in the configuration files, or you can specify your own.

NOTE: for any other GUARDIAN_ENV name of your choice just copy and paste the file ./configs/.env.template.guardian.system and rename as ./configs/.env.<choosen name>.guardian.system

3.2. Setting up JWT keys in /.env file

To start of auth-service it is necessary to fill in JWT_PRIVATE_KEY and JWT_PUBLIC_KEY, which are RSA key pair. You can generate it in any convenient way, for example, using this service https://travistidwell.com/jsencrypt/demo/.

4. Now, we have two options to setup IPFS node : 1. Local node 2. IPFS Web3Storage node 3. Filebase Bucket.

4.1 Setting up IPFS Local node:

• 4.1.1 We need to install and configure any IPFS node. example

• 4.1.2 For setup IPFS local node you need to set variables in the same file ./configs/.env.develop.guardian.system

IPFS_NODE_ADDRESS="..." # Default IPFS_NODE_ADDRESS="http://localhost:5001"
IPFS_PUBLIC_GATEWAY='...' # Default IPFS_PUBLIC_GATEWAY='https://localhost:8080/ipfs/${cid}'
IPFS_PROVIDER="local"

4.2 Setting up IPFS Web3Storage node:

To select this option ensure that IPFS_PROVIDER="web3storage" setting exists in your ./configs/.env.<environment>.guardian.system file.

To configure access to the w3up IPFS upload API from web3.storage for your Guardian instance you need to set correct values to the following variables in the ./configs/.env.<environment>.guardian.system file:

IPFS_STORAGE_KEY="..."
IPFS_STORAGE_PROOF="..."

NOTE: When Windows OS is used for creating the IPFS values, please use bash shell to prevent issues with base64 encoding.

To obtain the values for these variables please follow the steps below:

• Create an account on https://web3.storage, please specify the email you have access to as the account authentication is based on the email validation. Make sure to follow through the registration process to the end, choose an appropriate billing plan for your needs (e.g. 'starter') and enter your payment details.
• Install w3cli as described in the corresponding section of the web3.storage documentation.
• Create your 'space' as described in the 'Create your first space' section of the documentation.
• Execute the following to set the Space you intend on delegating access to: w3 space use.
• Execute the following command to retrieve your Agent private key and DID: npx ucan-key ed. The private key (starting with Mg...) is the value to be used in the environment variable IPFS_STORAGE_KEY.
• Retrieve the PROOF by executing the following: w3 delegation create <did_from_ucan-key_command_above> | base64. The output of this command is the value to be used in the environment variable IPFS_STORAGE_PROOF.

To summarise, the process of configuring delegated access to the w3up API consists of execution the following command sequence:

1. w3 login
2. w3 space create
3. w3 space use
4. npx ucan-key ed
5. w3 delegation

The complete guide to using the new w3up web3.storage API is available at https://web3.storage/docs/w3up-client.

4.3 Setting up IPFS Filebase Bucket:

To configure the Filebase IPFS provider, set the following variables in the file ./configs/.env.<environment>.guardian.system

IPFS_STORAGE_API_KEY="Generated Firebase Bucket Token"
IPFS_PROVIDER="filebase"

Create a new "bucket" on Filebase since we utilize the IPFS Pinning Service API Endpoint service. The token generated for a bucket corresponds to the IPFS_STORAGE_API_KEY environment variable within the guardian's configuration.

For detailed setup instructions, refer to the official https://docs.filebase.com/api-documentation/ipfs-pinning-service-api.

5. Setting up Chat GPT API KEY to enable AI Search and Guided Search:

For setting up AI and Guided Search, we need to set OPENAI_API_KEY variable in ./configs/.env* files.

OPENAI_API_KEY="..."

6. Build and launch with Docker.

The following list outlines various Docker Compose configurations for different purposes. Choose the one that best suits your needs.

Configuration	Description	Command to Run
Guardian (Demo Mode)	Guardian using pre-built images	docker-compose up -d --build
Guardian Build (Demo Mode)	Builds Guardian from source code	docker-compose -f docker-compose-build.yml up -d --build
Production Guardian	Guardian using pre-built images, no demo mode	docker-compose -f docker-compose-production.yml up -d --build
Production Guardian Build	Builds Guardian from source code, no demo mode	docker-compose -f docker-compose-production-build.yml up -d --build
Indexer	Indexer using pre-built images	docker-compose -f docker-compose-indexer.yml up -d --build
Indexer Build	Builds Indexer from source code	docker-compose -f docker-compose-indexer-build.yml up -d --build
Analytics Service	Analytics Service using pre-built images	docker-compose -f docker-compose-analytics.yml up -d --build
Analytics Service Build	Builds Analytics Service from source code	docker-compose -f docker-compose-analytics-build.yml up -d --build

To proceed:

1. Choose the configuration that matches your requirements.
2. Open a terminal in the project root folder.
3. Run the corresponding command from the "Command to Run" column.

For example, to run the standard Guardian in demo mode:

docker-compose up -d --build

This will start the containers in detached mode (-d) and build them if necessary.

NOTE: Configurations with "Build" in their name compile the application from source code, which may take longer but allows for customization.

NOTE: Production configurations do not include demo features and will not contain any debug information.

NOTE: From the end of June 2023 Compose V1 won’t be supported anymore and will be removed from all Docker Desktop versions. Make sure you use Docker Compose V2 (comes with Docker Desktop > 3.6.0) as at https://docs.docker.com/compose/install/

7. Browse to http://localhost:3000 and complete the setup.

for other examples go to:

• Deploying Guardian using a specific environment( DEVELOP)
• Steps to deploy Guardian using a specific Environment ( QA)
• Steps to deploy Guardian using default Environment

8. For increased security remove credentials from .env file and enable network access

On first state the credentials from .env file are copied into the secure storage as configured (e.g. Vault). After that Guardian does not use any credentials stored in the .env file, thus they should be removed for security reasons.

Manual installation

If you want to manually build every component with debug information, then build and run the services and packages in the following sequence: Interfaces, Logger Helper, Message Broker, Logger Service, Auth Service, IPFS, Guardian Service, UI Service, and lastly, the MRV Sender Service. See below for commands.

Prerequisites for manual installation

• MongoDB V6
• NodeJS V20
• Yarn
• Nats 1.12.2
• Redict 7.3.0
• Seq 2024.3 - optional for logging

Build and start each component

Install, configure and start all the prerequisites, then build and start each component.

Services Configuration:

• for each of the services create the file ./<service_name>/.env to do this copy, paste and rename the file ./<service_name>/.env.template

  For example:

  in ./guardian-service/.env:

      GUARDIAN_ENV="develop"
  

  If need to configure OVERRIDE uncomment the variable in file ./guardian-service/.env:

      OVERRIDE="false"
  

• configure the file ./<service_name>/configs/.env.<service>.<GUARDIAN_ENV> file: to do this copy, paste and rename the file ./<service_name>/.env.<service>.template

  following previous example:

  in ./guardian-service/configs/.env.guardian.develop:

  OPERATOR_ID="..."
  OPERATOR_KEY="..."
  

• Setting up Chat GPT API KEY to enable AI Search and Guided Search: For setting up AI and Guided Search, we need to set OPENAI_API_KEY variable in ./ai-service/configs/.env* files.

   OPENAI_KEY="..."
  

NOTE: Once you start each service, please wait for the initialization process to be completed.**

1. Clone the repo

git clone https://github.com/hashgraph/guardian.git

2. Install dependencies

Yarn:

yarn

Npm:

npm install

3. From the interfaces folder

Yarn:

 yarn workspace @guardian/interfaces run build

Npm:

npm --workspace=@guardian/interfaces run build

4. From the common folder

Yarn:

 yarn workspace @guardian/common run build

Npm:

npm --workspace=@guardian/common run build

5. From the logger-service folder

To build the service:

Yarn:

yarn workspace logger-service run build

Npm:

npm --workspace=logger-service run build

Configure the service as previously described. Do not need special configuration variables.

To start the service:

Yarn:

yarn workspace logger-service start

Npm:

npm --workspace=logger-service start

6. From the auth-service folder

To build the service:

Yarn:

yarn workspace auth-service run build

Npm:

npm --workspace=auth-service run build

Configure the service as previously described. Do not need special configuration variables.

To start the service:

Yarn:

yarn workspace auth-service start

Npm:

npm --workspace=auth-service start

7. From the policy-service folder

To build the service:

Yarn:

yarn workspace policy-service run build

Npm:

npm --workspace=policy-service run build

Configure the service as previously described. Do not need special configuration variables.

To start the service:

Yarn:

yarn workspace policy-service start

Npm:

npm --workspace=policy-service start

8. Build and start worker-service service

Yarn: To build the service:

yarn workspace worker-service run build

Npm:

npm --workspace=worker-service run build

Configure the service as previously described. Update IPFS_STORAGE_API_KEY value in ./worker-service/configs/.env.worker file.

Yarn: To start the service:

yarn workspace worker-service start

Npm:

npm --workspace=worker-service start

9. Build and start notification-service service

To build the service:

Yarn:

yarn workspace notification-service run build

Npm:

npm --workspace=notification-service run build

Configure the service as previously described. Update OPERATOR_ID and OPERATOR_KEY values in ./guardian-service/configs/.env.worker file as in the example above.

To start the service (found on http://localhost:3002):

Yarn:

yarn workspace notification-service start

Npm:

npm --workspace=notification-service start

10. Build and start guardian-service service

To build the service:

Yarn:

yarn workspace guardian-service run build

Npm:

npm --workspace=guardian-service run build

Configure the service as previously described. Update OPERATOR_ID and OPERATOR_KEY values in ./guardian-service/configs/.env.worker file as in the example above.

To start the service (found on http://localhost:3002):

Yarn:

yarn workspace guardian-service start

Npm:

npm --workspace=guardian-service start

11. From the api-gateway folder

To build the service:

Yarn:

yarn workspace api-gateway run build

Npm:

npm --workspace=api-gateway run build

Configure the service as previously described. Do not need special configuration variables.

To start the service (found on http://localhost:3002):

Yarn:

yarn workspace api-gateway start

Npm:

npm --workspace=api-gateway start

12. From the mrv-sender folder

To build the service:

```shell
npm install
npm run build
```

Configure the service as previously described. Do not need special configuration variables.

To start the service (found on http://localhost:3005):

```shell
npm start
```

13. From the ai-service folder

To build the service:

Yarn:

yarn workspace ai-service run build

Npm:

npm --workspace=ai-service run build

Configure the service as previously described. Do not need special configuration variables.

Yarn:

yarn workspace ai-service start

Npm:

npm --workspace=ai-service start

14. From the frontend folder

To build the service:

```shell
npm install
npm run build
```

To start the service (found on http://localhost:4200):

```shell
npm start
```

Configuring a Hedera local network

1. Install a Hedera Local Network following the official documentation

2. Configure Guardian's configuration files /.env/.env.docker accordingly:

OPERATOR_ID=""
OPERATOR_KEY=""
LOCALNODE_ADDRESS="11.11.11.11"
LOCALNODE_PROTOCOL="http"
HEDERA_NET="localnode"

Note:

• Set LOCALNODE_ADDRESS to the IP address of your local node instance. The value above is given as an example.
• Set HEDERA_NET to localnode. If not specified, the default value is testnet.
• Configure OPERATOR_ID and OPERATOR_KEY accordingly with your local node configuration.
• Remove INITIALIZATION_TOPIC_ID as the topic will be created automatically.
• Set LOCALNODE_PROTOCOL to http or https accordingly with your local node configuration (it uses HTTP by default).

Configuring Hashicorp Vault

1. Configure .env/.env.docker files in the auth-service folder

 VAULT_PROVIDER = "hashicorp"

Note: VAULT_PROVIDER can be set to "database" or "hashicorp" to select Database instance or a hashicorp vault instance correspondingly.

If the VAULT_PROVIDER value is set to "hashicorp" the following 3 parameters should be configured in the auth-service folder.

1. HASHICORP_ADDRESS : http://localhost:8200 for using local vault. For remote vault, we need to use the value from the configuration settings of Hashicorp vault service.
2. HASHICORP_TOKEN : the token from the Hashicorp vault.
3. HASHICORP_WORKSPACE : this is only needed when we are using cloud vault for Hashicorp. Default value is "admin".

2. Hashicorp should be configured with the created Key-Value storage, named "secret" by default, with the settingKey= records for the following keys:

1. OPERATOR_ID
2. OPERATOR_KEY
3. IPFS_STORAGE_API_KEY

Note: These records in the vault will be created automatically if there are environment variables with the matching names.

How to import existing user keys from DB into the vault:

During Guardian services initialization, we need to set the following configuration settings in auth-service folder:

  IMPORT_KEYS_FROM_DB = 1
  VAULT_PROVIDER = "hashicorp"

Local development using Docker

1. create .env file at the root level and update all variable requires for docker

cp .env.example .env

2. Start local development using docker compose

docker compose -f docker-compose-dev.yml up --build

3. Access local development using http://localhost:3000 or http://localhost:4200

Troubleshoot

To delete all the containers:

docker builder prune --all

To run by cleaning Docker cache:

docker compose build --no-cache

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Unit tests

To run guardian-service unit tests, following commands needs to be executed:

cd guardian-service
npm run test

It is also an ability to run Hedera network tests only. To do that, the following command needs to be executed:

npm run test:network

To run stability tests (certain transactions will be executed 10 times each), the following command needs to be executed:

npm run test:stability

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Please refer to https://docs.hedera.com/guardian for complete documentation about the following topics:

• Swagger API
• Postman Collection
• Demo Usage guide
• Contribute a New Policy
• Reference Implementation
• Technologies Built on
• Roadmap
• Change Log
• Contributing
• License
• Security

Contact

For any questions, please reach out to the Envision Blockchain Solutions team at:

• Website: <www.envisionblockchain.com>
• Email: [email protected]

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