How will the blockchain “save” the Internet of Things

This article will introduce how the blockchain "saves" the Internet of Things!

The fragmentation and large-scale nature of the Internet of Things makes it difficult for its system to be uniformly deployed and vulnerable to threats. With the growth of the "viral" of IoT enterprises and solutions, IoT data has piled up, and network transmission congestion, waste of storage resources, and slow calculation speed are emerging.

More serious is the problem of data privacy and business model.

First of all, because the IoT industry chain is intricate, the data information of the perception, network, platform, and application levels cannot be effectively linked. Due to the problem of commercial settlement, most of the data cannot be reused, resulting in repeated collection, repeated analysis, and repeated modeling. ... and a series of non-efficient, high-cost processing methods, contrary to the original intention of the development of the Internet of Things!

Secondly, the lack of security protection in important links such as IoT terminal equipment, network communication, and cloud platform makes it vulnerable to attacks. It can be said that the larger the system, the more serious the security risks. This is evident from the privacy data leakage incidents in recent years.

In addition, the most stringent data regulation in the history of the European Union, the GDPR (General Data ProtecTIon RegulaTIon), has recently come into effect. IoT companies are no longer ethical in protecting user data privacy. .

Milestones in GDPR legislation (Source: Accenture)

First, born "mental", what to save you?

Ma Yun said in a speech, "The Internet of Things era has not yet arrived. Today's Internet of Things is just a lot of people who sell hardware or sell software, find a reason to sell better."

After the emergence of the Internet of Things, we will find that it always comes with other emerging concepts, such as cloud computing + Internet of Things, big data + Internet of Things, artificial intelligence + Internet of Things, edge computing + Internet of Things and so on. The reason is that the Internet of Things is actually a very large torso. It needs to be equipped with various functional modules to truly empower the industry and contribute value to the enterprise and to the digital transformation of society.

1. Cloud computing: service model innovation

Both the Internet of Things and cloud computing are based on the Internet, and the Internet is the link between them.

The Internet of Things is the extension of the Internet to the physical world through the sensor network. Its ultimate goal is to intelligently manage the physical world, and this mission necessarily requires a large-scale computing platform as a support.

As a flexible computing platform with flexible data metering and customizable data processing, cloud computing has subverted the traditional hardware architecture server model, bringing convenience to the initial construction of the Internet of Things, meeting the massive data processing and business growth of the Internet of Things. demand.

If you compare the Internet of Things to a host, cloud computing is its CPU. In essence, cloud computing is a service. The IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS models open the door to business and introduce it into the world of the Internet of Things!

2. Big Data: Data Science Analysis

There is no uniform definition of big data. The more representative one is the 3V definition, which means that big data needs to satisfy three characteristics: volume, variety (Variety) and high speed (Velocity). In addition, IDC believes that big data should also have a value, and the value of big data tends to be sparse. And IBM believes that big data should be veracity.

Combined with the Internet of Things, big data is the content of cloud computing. On the one hand, the massive data collected by the Internet of Things is the data source of big data; on the other hand, big data provides data analysis services for the Internet of Things, storing data knowledge and reflecting the value of the Internet of Things.

3. Artificial Intelligence: Information Processing Advanced Mediation

Artificial intelligence is to absorb a large amount of human knowledge, continuous self-learning, and evolve into a "high man." Artificial intelligence is inseparable from big data, and it is based on cloud computing platform to complete learning evolution.

Artificial intelligence speech recognition, image recognition, natural language processing and expert systems will help the Internet of Things to collect data information, analyze massive amounts of data, and provide intelligent decision making.

4. Edge calculation: edge-side intelligent processing of data

Edge computing is an open platform that integrates network, computing, storage, and application core capabilities on the edge of the network near the source or data source. The core of edge computing is to migrate computing tasks from the cloud computing center to the edge devices that generate the source data.

Edge computing IoT solution reduces multi-dimensional optimization of sensing control layer, network layer, agile controller and application layer to reduce IoT data transmission and provide valuable data for the system; encrypt information to reduce security risks Wait.

In summary, the Internet of Things combines the cloud computing model, combined with big data analysis, and has been assisted by artificial intelligence, ushered in the improvement of edge computing. Despite this, the development of the Internet of Things is still slow, because it has no practical value, can not bring us convenience, or because its technology is not mature enough to meet the needs of large-scale applications?

Second, the blockchain or the soul of the next phase of the development of the Internet of Things

In the old Internet era, people quickly passed information, shared data resources, and acquired the resources and benefits they wanted. In the era of the Internet of Things, terminal device data cannot be effectively shared, and it is difficult for the sharer to exchange resources or benefits. Therefore, no one or enterprise really builds the Internet of Things business without cost, and its development faces many difficulties.

Due to the inherent fragmentation and large-scale nature of the Internet of Things, it has encountered the development bottleneck of “three lows” and “three highs”:

1. Three low: low efficiency, low utilization, low security

The underlying protocols are not unified, and the scenario linkage efficiency is low;

The Internet of Things data is complex and the data reuse rate is low;

IoT equipment is simple and has low security protection performance;

2. Three high: high cost, high industry barriers, high operational difficulty

Large-scale application is difficult to form, and the implementation cost is high;

The scene covers all walks of life, and the barriers are difficult to break through;

The industrial chain is widely fragmented and difficult to operate;

3. Can the blockchain help the Internet of Things break away from this dilemma?

First, blockchain technology can help the Internet of Things establish the correspondence between the real physical world and the virtual world, reduce the human manipulation factors of the data source, and ensure the authenticity of the input data. Blockchain, a technology that provides trust services, ensures that data running on a blockchain network is authentic and efficient;

Second, the Internet of Things, combined with blockchain technology, enables data sharing between devices and devices. At the same time, digital assets act as value transmission carriers, enabling transactions between devices to operate independently and supporting future new value circulation scenarios;

Third, the design of a reasonable pass incentive mechanism can encourage IoT participants, whether it is equipment manufacturers, industry platform service providers, network operators and consumers, etc., distributed self-organized construction of the entire Internet of Things. Contribute to the operation of the ecology and automatically gain "revenue" for the future.

At present, the “blockchain+Internet of Things” model has been piloted in the fields of agricultural products/food traceability, community networks, smart towns, and urban management. The decoupling trust and high security protection mechanism of the blockchain will inject new power into the next phase of the development of the Internet of Things, or will detonate the new shared economy.