Since the past couple years, blockchain technology has been receiving higher attention in many areas other than cryptocurrency. Would blockchain be useful in IoT and how?
IoT refers to the billions of physical devices around the world that are now connected to the internet, all collecting and sharing data. Chips, sensors, and many others are embedded into physical items, each transmitting data to the IoT network via a variety of communication protocols.
With this amount of the connected devices, there are two main concerns that need to be addressed; security and scalability of IoT network. Most IoT devices are subject to security vulnerabilities for example Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, causing system disruption/failure and adverse impact on business. Another main concern is scalability of IoT network. As the number of IoT devices grows, the IoT system will need to handle a very large information exchange, potentially causing server down.
Blockchain can play an important role to address these two issues. A blockchain system is a distributed digital ledger shared between users in the system on the Internet. Blockchain will allow transactions or events to be validated and recorded in the ledger, and these cannot subsequently be amended or removed.
As such, blockchain will serve as a tamper-proof tool. This will help remove the need for trust among the involved parties. In addition, blockchain allows a more secured level of encryption that makes it hard for hacker to access the system. Importantly, blockchain will enable quick processing of data from billions of installed IoT devices.
Sitearound is now working on embedding blockchain into our system. If anyone is interested in this, please do not hesitate to contact us.