The Internet of Things (IoT) means the internet-connected devices or objects which are capable of exchanging data and instructions over a wireless network of the internet.
Modern computers, smart speakers, smartwatches, and smartphones can be considered as the basics of IoT. Along with increasing modernization, the use cases of IoT devices are also increasing day by day in every field. There is a wide range of applications of IoT technology to make lives easier.
For example, IoT devices are used in the healthcare system, cryptocurrency mining, machine learning technology, agricultural products' analytics, gaming, manufacturing, trading, and many more.
Despite rapid advancements in IoT technology in this modern world, there are some significant challenges that IoT is currently facing.
Researchers have attempted to find some solutions but most of the challenges are remaining unaddressed. IoT security, privacy, and scalability have always been the most notable challenges which have to be solved to accelerate the large-scale adoption of IoT devices.
Challenges that IoT is facing:
- Security & Privacy
- Regulation
- Cloud attacks
- Consumer Perception
- Bandwidth
- Lack of logging system.
If so many IoT devices with security vulnerabilities are connected to the central servers, hackers can easily exploit the weakest security layers to launch DDoS attacks and users should be compelled to lose their very sensitive data.
Another notorious challenge for the IoT technology in the centralized system is scalability. If so many nodes are connected to the central server, it has to exchange a very large amount of information and data to all connected IoT devices and according to the growing devices, there will be an overload on the central server to cause the failure.
So it is necessary to put huge resources and investments to manage the central servers otherwise once the central server goes offline, entire IoT devices(Which are connected to the central server) get affected.
Based on the computer's foundational technology, another groundbreaking blockchain technology evolved by introducing Bitcoin in this world.
Bitcoin was created to provide financial freedom to everyone by letting users send, hold and receive Bitcoin that is based on the Peer-to-Peer networks without the central servers or the entity.
The Bitcoin blockchain network inspired to evolve another blockchain Ethereum and it was the first blockchain to introduce a smart-contract feature. Following features of blockchain technology was the game-changer even for the IoT technology.
Blockchain as the Distributed Ledger Technology(DLT), information and data are validated before including them into the blocks then broadcasted to all participating nodes which are connected to the P2P network.
Proof-of-Work(PoW) based blockchains have the system to achieve consensus according to more than 50% verifications in favor which is the beauty of the decentralized blockchain network and it can be the best suit feature to secure the IoT devices too as the attackers can not hack all the participating nodes by using the limited resources.
There are five generations of blockchain technology(A systematic study of five generations of blockchain technology can be found in this article) and blockchains from the first three-generation were able to do the following things to solve the most discussed security, trust, and scalability(for some extend) challenges.
- In decentralized internet connectivity, distributed architecture of the blockchain technology can be very effective to track, store, and monitor the sensor data by preventing duplicate data. The immutability feature is the key to prevent malicious users to modify and eliminates the stored data in the blockchain.
- Different sensors of the IoT devices can communicate with the blockchain to exchange the data and information which will eventually eliminate the trust problem like with the centralized system.
- DLT is the best option for IoT devices' authentications, record keeping, and device identification by transferring the data securely and it is transparent in the decentralized system as well.
- No matter how many nodes are connected in the blockchain, there will be no single source of failure like the server down of the centralized system.
- There are the reduced costs for the deployment and operations as there is no intermediary in the blockchain technology.
- Blockchain makes the troubleshooting process easier for the IoT devices like the smart contract features of blockchain can be the best suit option here and immutable history can be seen at any time in the blockchain.
- Work done by the algorithm in a bigger blockchain network is impossible to reverse so attackers can not crack down the encryption to steal so much sensitive data.
These are some applications of blockchains from the first three-generation but actually, they were not enough to solve the major challenges of the IoT technology which are hindering the large scale adoption due to the following limitations of the blockchains of the previous three generations:
- Generally, these blockchains are computationally very expensive and they exhibit high bandwidth overhead and delay which are not the best suit for IoT devices and their applications.
- Arbitrary data sharing across these blockchains is not possible and there is the complexity to integrate so many real-world applications for the IoT devices. There is PoS-based third generation's blockchain Cardano and it is still not enough to address the issue.
- Actually, low latency is expected for so many IoT devices but these blockchain networks are PoW based and they consume time to mine the blocks.
- Low scalability is the notorious problem of these PoW-based blockchain networks so it has also created troubles for IoT networks that contain a cluster of nodes.
- The significant overhead traffic from these blockchain networks is not desirable for the bandwidth limited so many IoT devices which may not help for the significant adoption of IoT.
- Some small PoW-based blockchain can suffer from the 51% majority attack so it would create another worse case to halt the blockchain's adoption in IoT.
The following challenges shown in the figure were not solved by the first three generations of blockchain technology:
Image source:-Sciencedirect.com
Fourth generations of blockchains like Polkadot and EOS helped the adoption of IoT technology due to their following features:
- The blockchain EOS offers the feeless and scalable transaction processing ability. These key features are desirable for IoT too.
- Blockchains are SYBIL, DDoS, and the majority attack resistant.
- It-Easy-to-use for manufacturing and business-related applications.
- The Hasgraph technology was introduced in the fourth generation of blockchain technology and that sort of feature is very helpful for creating fairness in the blockchain networks.
- Polkadot blockchain has multichain features that maximize the use cases of IoT devices.
Despite so many interesting features from the fourth-generation blockchain technology, they are still unable to properly address the major challenges of IoT technology.
They are unable to provide desired scalability and flexibility to integrate the IoT networks with the blockchain. So still they have limitations to assist the mass adoption trend of the IoT.
So fifth generation of blockchain technology is evolved with the birth of the Free TON blockchain network. The Free TON has a lightweight blockchain architecture that can be very useful for IoT to eliminate the overhead of blockchain while maintaining the solutions for security and privacy.
Let's figure out pointwise how Free TON has the potential to accelerate the mass adoption of IoT technology:
- Free TON is the first multi-chain blockchain to introduce game-changing features like dynamic sharding, instant hypercube routing, and self-healing vertical blockchain mechanism to provide massive scalability so it can be highly beneficial for IoT applications in the P2P ecosystem for handling a massive overload of big data and instructions.
- Free TON offers the ultimate computing with smart contracts and if IoT applications are intended to process the payments, it can handle everything quickly without the presence of any third parties.
- Technology is advancing to produce high-quality sensors and smart chips. To preserve their information and prevent data leakage, the Free TON blockchain can be the best option as it allows so many applications to communicate with the blockchain's layer.
- Every new block is formed within 0.2 sec as there is low latency and high throughput efficiency in the Free TON blockchain network. As it is decentralized, it prevents a single point failure problem like the centralized client-server model that is managed and operated by the central entity so this feature is highly desirable to eliminate the privacy issue for IoT.
- Transactions are processed by paying the very lower cost just about a few cents for each transaction so there will not be an extra service charge for exchanging IoT devices-based services.
- There is greater transparency and tamper-proof data are distributed across the ledger. Every IoT-related stored data(Arbitrary data are supported by the Free TON blockchain network) are secured with improved traceability.
So Free TON can meet all of the following objectives of Blockchain network in IoT applications:
Image source:-Sciencedirect.com
Real-world applications of Free TON can be seen in the following diagram which is the key to inspire the IoT adoption trends:
Free TON solved the major challenges of adopting the blockchain in IoT applications but still, a few challenges remain unaddressed due to the fact, IoT covers a wider range of real-world applications which can go beyond our imagination. tamper-proof malicious attackers can analyze the publicly available transactions history in the blockchain to detect the users or the IoT devices so the advanced AI-enabled next-generation blockchain can be the best option to solve any sort of persisting challenges in the adoption of IoT applications.
Conclusion:
The combination of the advanced and the next generation of blockchain technologies with the IoT sector has the incredible potential and applications of creating the global marketplace. Blockchain technology can meet the demands of a wider range of IoT applications like smart cities, healthcare systems, identity management, voting, smart home, and many more. Blockchain technology can assist the mass adoption of IoT by overcoming so many challenges.