Blockchains and Iot (Internet of things)
After the article concerning how blockchain technology can help AI, i decided to write about the impact of blockchain and Iot
What is Iot ?
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a system of interrelated computing devices, mechanical and digital machines, objects, animals or people that are provided with unique ID and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction.
A thing, in the Internet of Things, can be a person with a heart monitor implant, a farm animal with a biochip transponder, an automobile that has built-in sensors to alert the driver when tire pressure is low, your phone or any other natural or man-made object that can be assigned an IP address and provided with the ability to transfer data over a network.
Kevin Ashton, cofounder and executive director of the Auto-ID Center at MIT, first mentioned the Internet of Things in a presentation he made to Procter & Gamble in 1999. Here’s how Ashton explains the potential of the Internet of Things:
Today computers -- and, therefore, the internet -- are almost wholly dependent on human beings for information. Nearly all of the roughly 50 petabytes (a petabyte is 1,024 terabytes) of data available on the internet were first captured and created by human beings by typing, pressing a record button, taking a digital picture or scanning a bar code. The problem is, people have limited time, attention and accuracy -- all of which means they are not very good at capturing data about things in the real world. If we had computers that knew everything there was to know about things -- using data they gathered without any help from us -- we would be able to track and count everything and greatly reduce waste, loss and cost. We would know when things needed replacing, repairing or recalling and whether they were fresh or past their best.
Practical applications of IoT technology can be found in many industries today, including agriculture, building management, healthcare, energy and transportation.
Dubbed the 4th industrial revolution, the ‘Internet of Things’ will consist of a vast network of sensor nodes that will generate an unprecedented flow of global data. These devices will quietly execute smart contracts with physical actuators that will manage many aspects of our future lives.
It's sound perfect but why we are not seeing it now ?
IoT suffers from potential systemic failures as it scales with disastrous consequences. Without an openly stress tested baseline protocol standard for trusted IoT interaction, fundamental security risks will become exponentially worse as 50-200 billion cheap connected devices come online by 2020. Conventional wisdom also suggests a standards war will break the industry into a series of proprietary protocol sandboxes, slowing development and pricing out many startups entering the sector.
Specific problems with IoT
- Secure device connectivity
- Corruptible/spoofable individual device identity and reputation
- Possibility to watch or steal information from devices
- Hacking into devices and spoofing output data (Stuxnet)
- Physical tampering and malware manipulation
- Corruption resistant sensor impression history - need for a tamper-resistant distributed 'digital alibi'
- Danger of hub device collecting information from connected devices being hacked
- How does an actuating device prove the instructions it is receives are valid?
picture from postscapes site.
How the blockchain may help
Security - While some trading platforms trading bitcoin have been been hacked, the baseline currency has not been successfully manipulated on a significant scale. Due to this particularly odd show of durability, it is worth investigating further if blockchain has a role to play in securing IoT.
Smart Contracts - The devices will execute smart contracts with physical actuators.
Ledger - Information or checking instructions - device hashes information it wants to send to another device and places the hash into a Blockchain...the receiver of the information hashes the same information...if the hash matches the hash on the Blockchain then the information has not changed in transit.
Device Identity Protocol - Device Identity Protocol. Each device has a Blockchain public key. Devices encrypt messages to each other (challenge/responses) to ensure the device is in control of its own identity.
Managing IOT data - With the enormous amount of IoT sensor data vs. traditional financial transaction data, how will orthodox Blockchain formats adapt to handle the scale of IoT?
Summary
Iot is a system requiring 3 basic parts : an electronic board, sensors able to receive information and a connection to internet to send the information.
It is sure that to implement two revolutionary systems we need to make large protocols improvement but i believe we are in the right way to make our life better.
This essay has described Blockchain technologies and Iot will open up several opportunities and how blockchain technology can help Iot .
adapted from chainofthings research