TIoTA Event Examines Blockchain Technology and Internet of Things Crossover

On the 26th of January 2018, Deutsche Telekom hosted the second face-to-face meetup for members, collaborators and partners of TIoTA — the Trusted Internet of Things Alliance — in the Kotaghof building in Berlin. In attendance were blockchain companies such as Blockpass, Chronicled, FOAM, modum, Qtum, slock.it, IOTA and Oaken Innovations, in addition to enterprise members including Bosch and Cisco.

The Trusted IoT Alliance looks to apply blockchain solutions to create security and scalability for ecosystems within the Internet of Things. In order to be able to trust the data produced and exchanged in IoT systems, the Internet of Things will need to include a blockchain-based or distributed ledger-based framework. The goal of TIoTA is eventually to see a decentralised trust model for interoperable digitised identities of devices, objects etc.

Over the course of the day, those in attendance heard presentations from various member companies and took part in discussions around the use of blockchain for IoT. Some of the specific topics covered included the use of blockchain protocols for IoT, and a legal smart contracts demo and discussion. Methods of securing hardware for the IoT and blockchain were also reviewed with the challenges of interoperability and levels of security debated.

Another area of interest was the different types of blockchain and their suitability for IoT. Numerous blockchains were mentioned with merits and drawbacks discussed but no consensus could be drawn with the technology in its current state of development. This reinforces the TIoTA stance of being blockchain/DLT agnostic –at least at the moment. In addition, a session was held purely to look at smart contracts and their applications for an IoT ecosystem.

Whilst it is still early days for blockchain technology, it looks to be vital for enabling a secure and trusted IoT ecosystem. There is no doubt that there are challenges to overcome and questions to be answered when it comes to this implementation, but the expertise and enthusiasm of the people and companies working on solving these will ensure that, much as when issues have risen in pervious technological revolutions, solutions will be devised as soon as humanly possible. TIoTA aims to help in this goal.