No one knows for certain when IoT became closely related to blockchain, which tends to be even closer this year. Whenever mentioned, IoT is necessarily followed by blockchain; whenever blockchain is mentioned, the topic also necessarily involves IoT. The public might wonder whether it is IoT that benefits from the popularity of blockchain or it is blockchain that forces IoT to block “bullets”. Now, let’s find out the truth.
The term “Internet of Things (IoT)” was coined by Kevin Ashton, executive director of the Auto-ID Lab at MIT in 1999 when he was speaking at Procter & Gamble. After that, the development and growth of the Internet of Things became “unstoppable”. Data show that, there were approximately 8.4 billion smart devices connected to the Internet in 2017, such as thermostats, cameras, street lights and other electronic products. Besides, according to statistics from McKinsey & Company (outside China), this figure may reach 25 billion by 2025 and the entire economy scale will reach 6 trillion US dollars.
Are these large figures quite flashy to your eyes? Although the IoT technology has been widely used throughout the world, its shortcomings have become increasingly prominent.
In a traditional IoT mode, it is often the equipment manufacturer's data center (server) that collects the information of all connected equipment and devices, which entails that the server must possess powerful operating and storage capabilities. Moreover, as the number of IoT equipment and devices grows geometrically, the maintenance costs of servers will also increase dramatically, and it is difficult for SMEs to maintain.
In addition, in terms of communication compatibility, the global IoT platform lacks a unified language and it is likely to cause communications between multiple IoT devices to be blocked. This is due to the apparent fragmentation of the IoT industry. Whether they are smart homes, smart home appliances, robots, or smart cars, etc., the networks they connect are fragmented and closed. Moreover, the status quo of the IoT industry is still the isolation of different sections, and their respective influences are also relatively limited. It is difficult to reach a unified standard in a short period of time.
What remains most serious is IoT security. Network attacks in the field of IoT have become a reality, and Reaper was the most memorable IoT botnet last year. According to the data released by China National Vulnerability Database (CNVD), 80% of all IoT terminal equipment and devices are subject to the risk of privacy disclosure or abuse; 70% of them have no encryption in their network communications; 60% of them have vulnerabilities in their web interfaces, and 60% of them do not have their software updates encrypted. Once attacked, no user will have any privacy.
For the above reasons, IoT development is obviously facing bottlenecks, and this is also the main reason why it urgently needs to “join hands” with blockchain. How will blockchain transform IoT, or, in another word, what is the value that blockchain can bring to IoT? In short, blockchain technology is expected to bring about an IOT that is without "certification" of any third party.
Everyone knows that, blockchain is a computer database that records transaction data, but such databases are stored in many different places. Additionally, its distributed network architecture provides a mechanism that allows equipment and devices to reach certain consensus, without the need to authenticate with the data center (server). In that manner, even if one or two nodes are attacked, the data of the entire network system are still reliable and secured.
For example, blockchain technology can provide an infrastructure for several devices, helping them to transfer properties such as money or data to each other through a secured and reliable smart contract. In this process, all smart devices operate autonomously without the need of centralized authorization.
At the current stage, the combination of IoT and blockchain technology is still in its early stages, which, however, does not stop the entry of large Internet companies. For instance, IBM Blockchain has allowed (private) blockchain to be extended to cognitive IoT; China Unicom has united many companies and research institutes to establish an IoT blockchain standard project; SAP has released the Leonardo ecosystem for integrating IoT. Undoubtedly, SMEs are even less likely to miss this feast of IoT + blockchain, and some teams have already emerged. It is Ruff Chain.
Ruff Chain is an architecture integrating IoT with blockchains, composed of a distributed operating system and an open main chain. The core issues it is to address are the trusted interoperability and paid interoperability among IoT equipment and devices in different systems,
Based on the Ruff OS IoT operating system, which was developed by Ruff Company two years ago and has been mature and put into commercial operation, Ruff Chain easily solves the problem of fragmentation (closedness) hardware devices and hardware/software interoperability and unifies the programming interface. As to the issue of trust, Ruff Chain proposes to address it through the DPoS consensus algorithm and multi-node ledger, in which Ruff Token is used as the token for stimulation, consumption and transaction within the Ruff public blockchain ecosystem. At present, the Ruff team is exploring more possibilities with the blockchain technology.
In all, it is highly likely that, the blockchain technology is a highly feasible solution to IoT. Nonetheless, there is one thing we must admit: there is still a long way to go for the combination of the two; the promoters need to promote it continuously and in steps in order to live a “good life”.
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