Blockchain with IoT

Internet of Things (IoT) has the potential to make environments smarter, increasingly connected, and more profitable and efficient. This can be achieved by connecting a large number of distributed and ubiquotously available smart devices and sensors through multi-level communication infrastructures. While this should ideally map to a decentralized hardware and software platform, current solutions are mostly based on centralized infrastructures, which have many disadvantages (e.g., high maintenance costs, low interoperability, single point of failure, etc.).

An additional challenge in supporting decentralization is achieving distributed consensus among autonomous IoT objects. In this view, blockchain represents a promising solution for enabling a decentralized IoT framework. When it comes to IoT, blockchain can store critical machine-to-machine communications sent as blockchain transactions, and ensure accountability and security of the stored data. Blockchain can also provide identity and proof of provenance of IoT devices with its cryptographic functions.

However, due to the massive number of devices and resource constraints, deploying blockchain in IoT requires addressing several additional challenges, including ensuring scalability, interoperability, security, privacy, and efficiency.

This Topical Collection of “Discover Internet-of-Things” aims at reporting fresh results with solutions to various challenges in deploying blockchain with IoT.

The keywords are:

blockchain; IoT; decentralized IoT; scalable IoT; distributed systems; fog computing; edge computing.