A number of companies have joined together to form a consortium that will look to secure IoT apps and infrastructure using Blockchain technology.
A meeting of the firms took place at the New Horizons: Blockchain x IoT Summit, in San Francisco and marks the first step towards a collaborative effort to explore and build a shared Blockchain-based Internet of Things protocol.
Among the companies leading the consortium are Bosch, Cisco, Gemalto, and Foxconn. Other consortium members include Ambisafe, BitSE, Chronicled, ConsenSys, Distributed, Filament, Hashed Health, Ledger, Skuchain, and Slock.it,
The group agreed that security, trust, identity, and registration and verification would be the cornerstones of any common protocol. It also acknowledged the need for integration and interoperability across multiple chip types, communication protocols, proprietary platforms, cloud service providers, and Blockchain systems.
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Defining Blockchain scope
The consortium would now move forward in defining the scope and implementation of a smart contracts protocol layer across several major Blockchain systems with an elective steer from the attending Fortune 500 companies.
The functioning of the group is voluntary at this stage with intent to emphasize nimble and fast-moving open source collaboration with any formal membership or governance structures emerging when necessary.
Dirk Slama, Chief Alliance Officer at Bosch Software Innovations, said there was tremendous potential for the application in industrial use cases.
“Being able to create a tamper-proof history of how products are manufactured, moved and maintained in complex value networks with many stakeholders is a critical capability, e.g. for quality assurance and prevention of counterfeits. This must be supported by a shared Blockchain infrastructure and an integrated Internet of Things protocol,” he said.
Joe Pindar, in the CTO’s office at Gemalto, said: “Securing identity for physical property and packaging is going to be a big business opportunity over the next decade, high-value parts of logistics supply chains and regulated industries like energy, pharmaceuticals, and cold chain could all see a Blockchain component over the next decade.”
Alex Batlin, Head of Blockchain at BNY Mellon said that the technology has the power to improve resiliency and efficiency in a fully connected world.
“What’s missing today is a solution that provides trusted, tamper-proof guarantees for any title deed, public record, compliance event, or transaction, building on the way paper documents are used currently,” he said.
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