Steemit Crypto Academy Contest / S6W4 - Internet of Things and the Blockchain

Asalam Alikum! Welcome to my post. I hope everyone is fine and are enjoying their life with their family, friends, and dear ones. Today I am here to take participation in the week 4 contest by SteemCryptoAcademy. The topic of the contest is "Internet of Things and the Blockchain" and I will try to explain it well as per my knowledge.

The abbreviation of IoT is 'Internet of Things'. It is the network of things that are connecting people, places, goods, and electronic devices with the help of internet. Today IoT is helping us to transfer, collect and use data from all devices that are connected to the internet.

A thing in the 'Internet of Things' can be a person or a gadget or farm animal or heart monitor implant with biochip transponder that is connected to the internet. With the advancement of technology on regular basis, it is making the life of people on earth easy.

The 'Internet of Things' is not a new term but was coined by "Kevin Ashton" in 1999. He asked to put the radio-frequency identification chip (RFID) on the products to track through supply chain. The technology is now being adopted by almost all countries including my country Pakistan. With the help of IoT, companies and businesses are enhancing the customer service as the devices are connected with each other and if problem arises on one side, the company knows what exactly is the problem.

Let's take few examples to explain 'Internet of Things' in better way. A device "August Doorbell Cam" is the most innovative example that let you answer your door from anywhere even from remote locations. The best thing about this device is it captures the motion changes on your doorstep and share data with you.

Another example is of Security solution by "Bitdefender BOX". As we are connected to the internet where hackers, crackers, scammer are always ready to access your data. The Bitdefender BOX will ensure the protect of all of your home connected devices from malware, virus, trojans, identity theft, and stolen passwords.

There are many examples but the last one is the "Automatic Gates" installed in the malls, offices, homes, industries, and other business companies. What IoT do is automatically open and close the doors when a person, animals, and vehicles enter or leave the place. This technology is now available in almost all countries.

With the growing of 'Internet of Things' on larger scale, security and trust become an important issue. With billions of IoT devices connected with each other and are continuously creating new data, there is always a need to critical security and trust. This trust can be developed with the Blockchain. You can say IoT is the technology that generates data and the Blockchain is the technology that provides security and trust in that data.

No matter you are a business owner who needs to track his assets or consumer using wearable for healthy lifestyle tracking, IoT is playing an important role. Since it's origin, we have not invested much in its security which is now the main issue. There is always the possibility of hacking and misusing of data in IoT devices and to make them secure, blockchain is the only way.

The collaboration of IoT with Blockchain will result in the improved devices with trust and security. The blockchain will act as a 'factory of trust' for security and authentication of access. The blockchain involves in complete lifecycle of IoT including:

As we all know, Blockchain is not possible to change or manipulate which makes it almost impossible for the hackers to access and have control over the data. The Decentralization nature of the Blockchain is a wonderful feature that completely remove the risk of data breach because the data is owner by you and no other third party is involved.

Another feature of Blockchain that will impact on the IoT is the 'High Scalability'. Due to the large amount of data being transferred and stored everyday, IoT is suffering which is increasing the latency and processing speeds. But with the blockchain, it becomes easy, fast, and efficient to share data with each other.

Let's just take example of "August Doorbell Cam". If we apply blockchain technology, the doorbell cam can store the unusual shadows and appearances for future use. It will only give access to the house people and will let you know if thief or some unusual person appears. This will make the device more efficient and fast.

The Blockchain Technology is making our life much more easy, fast, and secure. It not only positively affect on all applications but also on the IoT technology. Below are some of the benefits blockchain offer to the 'Internet of Things'.

Because of IoT devices large data, it was becoming hardly to control processing speed and latency. With the combination of Blockchain and Internet of Things, first benefit is accelerated data changes. However, current integrated Blockchain is limited to the number of transactions per second. To cope up with this, we need a more advanced and business-grade approach which will enhance the transactions per second. It is important to integrate the blockchain with IoT that will reduce the time of transaction validation by using trusted nodes so it can easily handle the IoT data exchange.

As we all know, Decentralization is the main feature of the blockchain and it is very important in terms of IoT. As the data between multiple IoT devices needs to be shared, there is always a need of a server (a third party). The third party is always a risk of hacking and losing of data. For this, Blockchain can play an important role. Because there is no third party involved in the blockchain technology due to decentralization, so there are no chances of hacking and losing of data. So yes, Decentralization is another benefit for the IoT.

The second main advantage of blockchain is it's security and it is the third benefit for IoT. The reason is there is always data exchange going on between multiple IoT devices but the security between them is very low. The combination of blockchain with IoT will surely enhance the security and will strengthen privacy agreements. This blockchain security in IoT will not only for devices to devices but also in between devices to human and human to human. So this is another benefit of Blockchain with IoT.

It's always the first priority of the businesses to make supply chain more and more effective. But there are many issues involved to do so. By introducing Blockchain in IoT, it can improve the efficiency of supply chains and faster transactions. Thus it will lower the cost involved.

We all know a business either a big one or a small one, their main goal is to cut down the costs and maximize the profits. This is where Blockchain can give another benefit to the IoT devices. As there is no centralization involved because Blockchain is decentralized, the transmission is peer-to-peer basis which will greatly reduce the costs.

Above we have discussed the impacts and benefits of Blockchain on Internet of Things. Now it's time to discuss two IoT applications where Blockchain is used. The blockchain is not limited to only two applications but as per the article length, I have to discuss only two applications.

Since 90s, medicines have become part of our lives and after 2010, without medicines most of us can't do our work properly. The Blockchain and IoT plays a very important role in this industry. The reason is the pharmaceutical sector is continuously facing the issue of counterfeit medicines but with the integration of blockchain the Pharmacy industries are now capable to counter the problem easily.

What Blockchain is doing in Pharmacy industry is to ensure that stakeholders will be responsible to update the blockchain network with the right information in real-time so the tracking of thousands of medicines is easy and possible. The transparent nature of the blockchain makes it easy to know whether the shipment of medicines reached it's supply chain destination or not.

With the growing economy and the technology, it is becoming need of sharing economy. Blockchain tends to play an important role in this application also. With the help of Blockchain, a decentralized shared economy application can be created which will let sharing of goods seamlessly and fast. Let's have an example of Airbnb apartments. You know that Slock.it is doing the leasing work of Airbnb apartments. They are using the Blockchain technology for sharing of IoT devices.

Slock.it is now making a Universal Sharing Network or USN that let any object to be sold, rented, or shared efficiently and securely without any third party. All of this will be done through Blockchain Technology. This will open a new world in sharing economy and will positively result in the near future.

With regular integration of Blockchain with IoT projects, the number of such projects are increasing. The main goal of these projects is only to connect wireless devices and remove any third party involvement. This is the reason why they need to integrate blockchain because it is decentralized in nature. For this contest, I will choose IoTeX as a Blockchain Project related to IoT

IoTeX is an open-source platform with motto of "Internet of Trusted Things". It is an IoT project based on the Blockchain where humans and machines can interact with each other under proper security and trust. The project is all about to give control of business and people devices to themselves but with Blockchain Technology.

The main goal of the IoTeX is to give self-sovereign users to have complete access and control over their devices and the data generated. With the integration of IoT and Blockchain, the process is super fast, reliable, trustworthy, and secure.

The IoTeX blockchain is based on Roll-DPoS consensus which is the advance form of Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS). It is used for high scalability that is required for IoT devices. The traditional DPoS limits the use of Delegates but in Roll-DPos, it selects 24 out of top 36 community-voted Delegates which gives fast and high scale results. You can say this Delegates as the nodes that will mine every hour to improve the security and decentralization of the IoTeX network.

Both concepts Internet of Things (IoT) and Blockchain are distinct technologies but they are heavily impacting on our lives. Internet of Things collect data by connected different devices over the internet which share information with each other. While the Blockchain technology provides decentralization, security, high scalability, and reliability.

With integration of both, it can positively affect our daily life routines and work. With decentralization and high security of blockchain and connecting multiple devices through the internet to share data of IoT, we can surely bring new innovation in this world that can ease and solve the impossible problems.

This is all from me for the "Steemit Crypto Academy Contest / S6W4 - Internet of Things and the Blockchain". I invite @ranartblog, @samminator, @hunzlakhan, and @reeta0119 to participate in this contest.