Are the Internet of Things and blockchain ready to embark on the road to success?

"Impact", when you talk about business or technology, this vocabulary will inevitably enter your conversation. I think this has become an unwritten rule. It's like no one will take your words seriously unless you mention operational shocks or how to use breakthrough technologies to drive business growth and provide a competitive advantage.

In terms of Big Data and the Internet of Things (IoT), the top breakthrough technologies, like most technologies, have huge synergies between them, and finally they can be built. To the road to real business value.

Are the Internet of Things and blockchain ready to embark on the road to success?

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Blockchain enters the topic of "shock"

But recently, the addition of a new topic of blockchain technology has made the discussion of “shocks” even more interesting. What followed was a series of questions: What exactly is the blockchain? How does it (whether it can) create business value? How will it affect my current initiatives? Can it work with my existing technology – or is it possible to mess everything up?

What is a blockchain – what does it have to do with Bitcoin?

If you look at the blockchain in Google, you'll find that many of the results unanimously put the "blockchain" and "bitcoin" together. This is because blockchain technology is the basis for the operation of electronic money such as Bitcoin. As you may have noticed, Bitcoin has no physical entity and is neither controlled by a single entity nor supported by any government or agency.

(I'm not going to try to talk about the benefits and disadvantages of Bitcoin here. This kind of discussion can be almost as emotional as talking about politics, and its content can be up to a book to be loaded.)

An eternal digital trading database. . .

In a nutshell, a blockchain is a digital transaction ledger similar to a spreadsheet. However, it consists of a growing list of transaction records, which we call "blocks", which are connected to each other in sequence. Each block has a link to the previous block in the list. Once a block appears in the chain, it cannot be removed, so it becomes part of an eternal database that records all transactions that have occurred since it was inserted.

Also the ultimate distributed database

But perhaps the most interesting thing about the blockchain is that it is a database without a central authority and without a single data source. This means that it exists in every system connected to it. Yes, each system node has an independent complete copy of the entire blockchain. As soon as new blocks are generated, they are received by all nodes – for the final distributed database. So if you lose your data, it doesn't matter, just re-join the blockchain network and you get a brand new full blockchain copy.

But how is transaction security guaranteed?

Now you may be thinking, “What does this have to do with a secure digital trading method?” Simply put, this is done through some very complicated cryptography, math problems and crowdsourcing consensus. There is a very good video on YouTube that explains this problem to some extent. The video is about 20 minutes long, but it is the best explanation I have seen for this complex solution.

The end result is called an "untrusted system." This is not to say that the system is not credible, but simply means that the parties to the transaction no longer need a third party (such as a bank or credit card company) that they trust to maintain the books and prove the validity of the transaction. This is because each transaction will always be verified by a distributed ledger and a copy of the ledger will be kept in all system nodes.

Please note: It is very important that the operation of Bitcoin itself is inseparable from blockchain technology, and the use of blockchain technology does not necessarily require the participation of Bitcoin, which makes the next thing interesting. It is.

Blockchain and big data

When talking about blockchain in the context of Bitcoin, it seems to have nothing to do with big data. But, if not bitcoin, use blockchain technology as a ledger for other financial transactions? Or is it used as a business contract? Or stock trading?

The financial services industry is beginning to take a serious look at blockchain technology. Citigroup, Nasdaq and Visa have recently become Bitcoin blockchain service providers. And Oliver Bussmann, chief information officer (CIO) at UBS, says blockchain technology can “reduce transaction processing time from days to minutes.”

The financial services industry's commercial demand for blockchain is extremely urgent. Imagine a blockchain of this magnitude, whose huge block data pool will contain a complete record of all financial transactions, all of which can be used for analysis. The blockchain guarantees the integrity of the ledger, but it does not have the analytical capabilities of its own, and this is where big data and related analytical tools come into play.

Blockchain and internet of things

There is no doubt that the Internet of Things is a booming industry. Gartner predicts that the total number of “networked” “things” will exceed 25 billion over the next four years. These "things" can be anything from small sensors to large devices. The two key challenges in this are how to ensure the security of these devices and the privacy of the data exchanged between them.

Traditional centralized authorization and message brokers may be able to handle these issues, but they cannot grow as much as the estimated number of devices, and there is no way to handle the billions of transactions generated by those devices.

Several industry leaders have suggested that blockchain technology is a possible solution to these challenges. The industry's vision is to go to a centralized Internet of Things, where the blockchain acts as a framework for accelerating transaction processing and coordinating interactive devices. Each device will manage its own responsibilities, behaviors, and interaction rules.

Embark on the road to success

The blockchain builds a block at a time, constantly growing and moving forward, but it also records its development. Although the original purpose of the blockchain was for the digital currency of Bitcoin, like most breakthrough technologies, its value is evolving in unexpected ways and directions.

As a technician, I am fascinated by blockchain technology. Having said that, technology is just a tool. Our responsibility is to ensure that these tools work to their full potential to create real business value. Whether it reduces transaction processing time, analyzes trading trends, or provides a mechanism for securely extending IoT messaging, the synergy between blockchain technology and big data and the Internet of Things is able to lead us to real business value. Kangzhuang Avenue.

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