What has IoT to do with Blockchain ?

The number of connected objects in the world is following a really high speed of growth. According to Gartner, in 2017, 8,4 billions of objects are already connected (both B2C and B2B), and the estimation for 2020 is about 20 billions, meaning 2,5 times more ! This is probably conservative, as some other companies estimate this number between 30 billions and 80 billions.

Therefore, the transfer of datas between those connected objects and central (or decentralized) servers will be growing accordingly.

As a consequence, some key issues arise about the property of the data, its privacy and the security of those transfers.

As more and more objects will be connected, it will be essential for customers (be it a private person or a company) to understand where are stored the datas, who can access it, and the level of safety of the storage.

The Blockchain technology, backing the Bitcoin transactions, is a tool that could give the

confidence that the data will be protected, stored in a chronological way and kept unchanged.

As it is a decentralized structure, it is not under the risk of a central server, or a cloud to shut down, with potential lost of information, temporarily or definitively. The transactions are distributed over the whole network, and it is fully robust against attacks or technical failure.

Using the BC as a protocol to store in a safe way the data collected through connected object, would also allow different objects to “communicate” together without the need of an intermediary. It opens a whole range of services to be developed.

For example, a vending machine can order by itself the articles that are being purchased the most, and manage the payment transactions as well.

A logistic equipment could get ready for loading / unloading when a container “steps” in a certain geographical area.

Many trusted business applications can be imagined from this communication between objects.