Newswise — WASHINGTON – The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) has awarded $182,700 to Toronto-based Mavennet Systems, Inc. to adapt its oil and gas industry blockchain security technology for Custom Border Protection (CBP) to track cross-border oil imports.

“Accurately tracking the evidence of oil flow through pipelines and refinement between the U.S. and Canada and attributing oil imports with the accurate composition and country of origin are of great interest to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP),” said Anil John, S&T’s SVIP Technical Director. “Mavennet’s platform could provide this digital auditability while ensuring broad interoperability by supporting emerging World Wide Web Consortium standards such as decentralized identifiers and verifiable credentials.”

Mavennet Systems, Inc. Phase 1 award project “Blockchain-as-a-Service for Cross-Border Oil Exchange” will apply the company’s expertise, gleaned from building a platform enabling real-time auditability of the natural gas trading markets in Canada, to address CBP needs for cross-border oil import tracking. Mavennet’s solution will build a generic end-to-end platform that can be used for any type of commodity that includes automation and integrating application program interface, physical measurement and legacy system capabilities.

The Phase 1 award was made under S&T’s Silicon Valley Innovation Program (SVIP) Other Transaction Solicitation Preventing Forgery & Counterfeiting of Certificates and Licenses seeking blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) solutions to fulfill a common need across DHS missions.

SVIP is one of S&T’s programs and tools to fund innovation and work with private sector partners to advance homeland security solutions. Companies participating in SVIP are eligible for up to $800,000 of non-dilutive funding over four phases to develop and adapt commercial technologies for homeland security use cases.

For more information on current and future SVIP solicitations, visit https://www.dhs.gov/science-and-technology/svip or contact [email protected].

For more information about S&T’s innovation programs and tools, visit https://www.dhs.gov/science-and-technology/business-opportunities.