Blockchain: Enabling Trust on the Internet of Things
Giampaolo Fiorentino, Carmelita Occhipinti, Antonello Corsi, Evandro Pioli Moro, John W. Davies, Alistair Duke · The Internet of Things · 2020
This chapter describes the basic concepts of Blockchain technology and discusses some challenges around technology adoption. It focuses on how the internet of things (IoT) can leverage this technology and how it has been already applied to sectors such as insurance, the pharmaceutical industry, and the energy vertical. Distributed Ledger Technology is the technology underpinning Blockchain. The distributed ledger database is shared between multiple nodes on a peer-to-peer network, where each replicates and saves a copy of the ledger. In order to achieve consensus validation, DLTs have to execute an algorithm whereby all the nodes of the network can trust the transaction. Blockchain deployments can be viewed as a kind of "Internet of Transactions." Four key features make the Blockchain a potential candidate to reshape several industries: decentralization, immutability, auditability, and fault tolerance and resilience. The chapter concludes by looking at some emerging challenges and opportunities for Blockchain technology in the IoT context.