BLKHAWK NODE
An independent XRP Ledger validator, designed, built, and hardened by Travis Baldwin. Bare metal, wired, locked down, and keys kept offline.
nHBkkQ2u5Gg9qKxDXweRwk51Qa6cKoaCBR8DjcAn5vWR9mHLExSx01 PREFLIGHT // LIVE TELEMETRY
Pulled straight from public XRPL data in your browser. Nothing here is typed in by hand.
00 ABOUT
Travis Baldwin served 21 years in the US Army (May 2004 – June 2025) as a UH-60/UH-60M Black Hawk crew chief and mechanic. He retired as a Sergeant First Class who served in the First Sergeant position.
His career ran through the 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade, including 3-82 General Support Aviation Battalion, and 2-2 Assault Helicopter Battalion, with deployments in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Inherent Resolve. He served as a crew chief, a quality control technical inspector, a senior instructor, a senior aviation advisor in Riyadh, and as First Sergeant. His awards include the Bronze Star Medal, the Air Medal, the Meritorious Service Medal and the Master Aviation Badge.
He runs BLKHAWK NODE the way he kept aircraft flying. As a QC technical inspector, nothing got signed off until it was checked against the standard. Here, every change follows a written checklist, gets a backup first, and passes a preflight check before the validator goes back on the network. The keys get the same care: generated offline and kept offline.
00.5 SERVICE RECORD
// FLIGHT RECORD · TRAVIS R. BALDWIN · US ARMY RETIRED · MAY 2004 – JUNE 2025
US Army Retired (May 2004 – June 2025). 21 years as a UH-60 Black Hawk crew chief and mechanic.
Highlights
Top Awards
After retiring, he went all-in on the XRP Ledger and built this validator from bare metal.
02 THE STACK
Software
xrpld 3.4.1, tracking XRPL mainnet.
Hardware
Dedicated hardware. No VMs, no shared hosting.
Network
Wired Ethernet only, wireless disabled. Peer port 2459/tcp open for XRPL peering; everything else default-deny.
03 TRUST & SECURITY
- Offline keys: validator master keys were generated and are kept offline. The server holds only a revocable token.
- Hardened: dedicated, wired-only hardware behind a default-deny firewall.
- Patching: security updates applied promptly.
- Process: a documented change and preflight process, with a backup before every change.
- Verified identity: the validator key is domain-verified to blkhawknode.com (xrp-ledger.toml).
- Public status: live network data on this page.
- Security contact: found a problem? Please report it privately to [email protected] and give us reasonable time to fix it before disclosing.
04 CONTACT
Hiring, partnering, or running infrastructure? Get in touch.