Crypto Academy / Season 4 / Week 1 - Homework Post for @yohan2on | Blockchain Technology and the Internet of Things (IoT)

It's with great pleasure I am attending the academy this week after reading a series of lectures from the crypto professors. This time I've attended the lecture presented by professor @yohan2on and it was a great one. I will be using this piece of article to solve the task given by the professor.

Blockchain technology has been of great innovation to different sectors ranging from the financial sector, real estate, and many others. Some of the benefits of blockchain technology are decentralization, transparency, traceability, immutability, enhanced security and privacy, and so on. In this context, we would be discussing the Internet of Things (IoT) and how its future depends on Blockchain. Let's get into it.

The present day has seen a lot of technological advancement which has been of great benefit to humankind to enhance the ease of controlling things within our region. Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the breakthroughs brought by technology, what does this mean?

Internet of Things (IoT) refers to our physical appliances which are connected to the internet and controlled through smart devices with the help of installed sensors, as such keeps the owner in charge of the appliances as it can be controlled remotely and gives the overview of happenings.

This has eased off the stress of existing manual control of our many appliances as owners can now control them remotely through smart applications. Let's see some of the applications of the Internet of Things (IoT).

Agriculture: Farmers can utilize the Internet of Things (IoT) to study a piece of land to detect the soil conditions and check for its suitability for a cultivating purpose. This is one of the powers of the Internet of Things.

Household: House owners can easily interact with certain devices in their houses like the lightening bulb remotely through a smartphone without physical contact with the appliance.

Traffic management: Information about routes can be collected through one's smartphone by installing some Apps and as such helps one to use the best route. And so many other applications.

There are a few shortcomings of IoT like Privacy, Security, Compatibility and so on. In this section, we would see how its future depend on Blockchain by taking advantage of some of the blockchain benefits. Let's see some below.

Scalability is one of the shortcomings to consider when it comes to the Internet of Things, in mere usage of the internet, we often experience slow response in getting information which we sometimes regard as server problem or network traffic. Blockchain is highly scalable and this technology would be a great one for the effective running of the Internet of Things as it would eliminate network traffic issues.

Internet of Things is controlled through a device by the one in possession and if the device is conquered by the hackers then the owner becomes an outsider. With this, Blockchain's immutability features come in to be of help such that data stored remain unaltered and this would enhance the data intactness of IoT.

Internet of Things is vulnerable to attacks online and as such we have seen different cases of hacking which leads to the leaking of vital information. With the blockchain's cryptography encryption, such occurrence of hacking can be hindered by having the security of the Internet of Things operate on cryptographic encryption. With this, privacy and security is enhanced.

The blockchain technology's decentralized structure would enhance the activities of the Internet of Things as distributed nodes can easily interact with one another to share data and as such results in increased processing of transactions on IoT.

The adoption of Blockchain technology in the Internet of Things (IoT) as listed in a few points above would eliminate some of the shortcomings and make the IoT better.

Filament is an Internet of Things (IoT) company that has been around since the year 2012 having the co-founder and CEO to be Allison Clift-Jennings and it is based in Reno, Nevada. The company has been into the Internet of Things (IoT) since then developing sensor packages that allow the interconnection of physical devices to the internet such that activities can be controlled remotely to enhance humankind's living.

What's New? Filament developed what is known as Blocklet chip which incorporates the blockchain technology to improve their products by taking advantage of the benefits of the blockchain. Let's see some of the Filament IOT blockchain use cases.

This is one of the greatest use cases of the Filament IoT whereby vehicles are equipped with the Filament IoT Blocklet targeted at the smart city which enables cars to interact with the blockchain to manage and share data of their surroundings. And such, autonomous cars through the blockchain interact with their surroundings for effective communication and data sharing. This is a great addition to the automobile industry which enhances transactions and storage of data in a secured way. In this way, this project has benefitted from blockchain's benefits like Smart contracts, Security and Privacy and others.

One of the other several innovations of the Filament IoT is hosting their hardware solutions on the blockchain such that the devices are connected to devices, machinery, and so on. With this, the Filament hardware connected to the products operate on the blockchain for effective transactions, enhanced security by generating cryptographic keys for the products.

An example of this breakthrough is the Blocklet USB Enclave which can be connected to any device with USB compatibility such that the owner can have the operation done on the blockchain. One important thing to know about this Filament IoT Blockchain hardware products is that they built on the blockchain such that each can generate unique identities, cryptographic keys, digital signatures for each transaction, and so on.

As highlighted earlier, Filament IoT have the hardware connected to the blockchain such that all devices that use the IoT solutions now have it running on the blockchain and as such, there is increased scalability as compared to the traditional Internet of Things (IoT). Without a doubt, Filament IoT blockchain solutions have brought innovation to the realm of the Internet of Things.

Internet of Things (IoT) has been a great value addition to humankind allowing automated control of physical devices without physical contacts. There are a few shortcomings of it and blockchain technology is an answer to it. We have discussed in this context how the future of IoT depends on the different benefits of the Blockchain. Thanks to professor @yohan2on for this great lecture.