World’s First Blockchain+Chips Platform Put Into Practice
On May 27, 2020, the progress of UNSOC 8910DM, the world’s first Cat.1bis IoT chip platform powered by blockchain was released by Wanxiang Blockchain, UNISOC, AITOS and Fibocom, signifying a giant leap in blockchain+IoT.
In her speech “Blockchain+Chips, Building Reliable Cornerstone for Smart Society”, Wenhui Tu, Senior Director of ‘Blockchain+’ Technology Department in Wanxiang Blockchain elaborated on how blockchain and IoT can be gradually connected, integrated and coupled through sensors chips and communication chips and eventually build the cornerstone for a safe and efficient smart society.
Security Concerns: The Major Challenges for IoT
5G is accelerating the connection between almost everything, making IoT, the infrastructure for smart cities and smart homes, an indispensable part of our daily life. As estimated by GSMA, IoT will have connected 25.2 billion nodes by 2025, which almost equals to connect the whole world together. However, this exciting revolution also comes along with concerns like How to guarantee data security and privacy on terminals in IoT? How can all players in this ecosystem collaborate smoothly and keep innovating IoT models?
2020 Unit 42 IoT Threats Report indicates that the traffic on 98% of IoT devices has yet to be encrypted and 57% of IoT devices are vulnerable to attacks at middle or high levels. Besides, the exponential growth of IoT devices is enhancing the difficulty and cost of data management and operation in the traditionally centralized IoT systems. Moreover, workable business models to capitalize on the numerous IoT data are still in the making.
Blockchain+IoT: An Innovation Solution to These Challenges
Sophisticated solutions are in great need to deal with the challenges facing IoT and we are fortunately inspired by the development of blockchain.
For one thing, transactions on blockchain are all encrypted, making all data unalterable and traceable. For the other, the decentralized structure of blockchain can reduce the computing burden and the risk of being attacked in traditionally centralized IoT.
Therefore we see a light in Blockchain+ IoT. In this combination, IoT is responsible for collecting innumerable data at a low cost while blockchain plays the role of making the data trustable, stable and safe in an efficient and cheap way. In other words, “We can take IoT as a sense organ like our eyes or ears which helps us to feel the world and take back data and information. Meanwhile, blockchain is a chain connecting all data blocks and facilitating data transactions”, said Wenhui Tu, Senior Director of ‘Blockchain+’ Technology Department in Wanxiang Blockchain.
This combination will certainly give birth to a new business model having the following features:
·Every terminal will be assigned a unique and unalterable ID.
·The asymmetric encryption of the blockchain helps to enhance data security and identify the ownership of the data on all terminals.
·The decentralized IoT structure not only makes it easier to trust data but also helps to convert them into profitable assets.
·Data transactions operated by the smart contract on blockchain will create business value.
In a nutshell, by providing a single and unalterable ID to all terminals and guaranteeing all terminals ’ownership of the data, blockchain creates a healthy environment for data transactions, which helps to unleash the value of the data in IoT and bring more business opportunities to this industry.
Upload Data to Blockchain Through Both Hardware and Software: Ensure Data Security From the Beginning
More and more IoT enterprises are resorting to the blockchain technology as they see the emerging power of combining IoT and blockchain. A survey from Gartner shows that 75% of American IoT companies will have employed blockchain by the end of 2020.
Blockchain+IoT is currently happens on clouds. That is to say, data collected by IoT devices are uploaded to blockchain through certain software. However, if the IoT terminals themselves, which composes the basic structure of IoT, are not able to directly upload data to blockchain in a reliable way, the original data on the terminals are still likely to be changed, threatening the security of the whole system. Therefore, uploading data to blockchain only through software is definitely not the best answer.
What we need are reliable terminals in IoT, which can work with the consensus models on blockchain to enhance data security. Given the development trends of IoT, the direct communication between terminals will also become a common thing in the future. In this connection, terminals in IoT must be enabled to upload reliable data to blockchain as an effort to secure the data in the whole system from the very beginning.
World’s First Blockchain+Chip Platform, Powered by Wanxiang Blockchain Put Into Practice
Wanxiang Blockchain has integrated chips with blockchain to build a reliable cornerstone for the smart society in the future in cooperation with UNISOC, AITOS and Fibocom.
Boasting rich experience in researches and applications of the blockchain technology, Wanxiang Blockchain has enhanced data reliability on IoT by allowing data to be shared between different parties without leaking privacy and converted data into profitable assets with advanced blockchain technologies.
UNISCO has contributed communication technologies and solutions in all scenarios to collect data and ensure stable communication, building a reliable environment for the blockchain+IoT platform.
AITOS has enabled terminals in IoT to upload reliable data to blockchain with BoAT (Blockchain of AI Things), a blockchain application framework developed by AITOS that runs on the cellular wireless module.
Fruits of this cooperation has been applied to UNSOC 8910DM, the world’s first Cat.1bis IoT chip platform powered by blockchain. In this platform, BoAT enalbes IoT devices to visit the blockchain and activate its smart contract, making sure the data will be uploaded to the blockchain the same time they are uploaded to the cloud so that the data on the blockchain and the data on the cloud will be identical.
Based on UNISOC 8910DM and BoAT, Fibocom launched L610, the first Cat.1 blockchain module, exploring new value in smart agriculture and Internet of Vehicles.
Wanxiang Blockchain is committed to deepening cooperation with UNISOC, AITOS and Fibocom and leveraging blockchain’s strength in data verification and security to further support BoAT, the IoT chip solution powered by blockchain. Integrating with UNISOC’s security capability like TEE, a reliable execution environment for IOT chip platform and trusted roots, Wanxiang Blockchain will also try to combine the blockchain application framework that meets the certification requirements of PSA (Platform Security Architecture) with chips in a way to provide more reliable solutions to IoT industry.
About Wanxiang Blockchain
Wanxiang Blockchain has been acting as the blockchain arm of China Wanxiang Holdings since 2015, and founded Wanxiang Blockchain Labs the same year, where Vitalik Buterin, founder of Ethereum took up the role as the chief scientist. After integrating the resources and optimizing the functions of the Labs, Shanghai Wanxiang Blockchain Inc (Wanxiang Blockchain) was established in 2017.
Wanxiang Blockchain has invested more than 1 billion RMB (about 140 million USD) in blockchain industry and developed PlatONE, an innovative consortium platform featuring private computing with our partners in the blockchain ecosystem. In terms of blockchain application, we are dedicated to making the best of our technical strengths and resources to provide blockchain solutions and products to major industries like finance, automobile, smart manufacturing, petro-chemistry and agriculture as a way to boost the development of the real economy with technologies.
