I'm not sold on why Internet of Things technologies need a distributed ledger system. Devices already upload data streams to predesignated servers, but why would it need a distributed ledger system? Distributed ledger systems are good for certain things, but not everything. This is something we've been seeing quite often - blockchain technology "companies" trying to blockchain everything. Don't be surprised when these "blockchain" companies that promise to be the solution to X problem in Y industry screw investors over and fail to provide viable products as promised.
In the article 3 main points are listed:
-Blockchain needs good IoT for industrial and logistic applications, such as proof of provenance.
-IoT has centralized infrastructure now, but in the future it could be decentralized becoming more safe and resilient. The servers are single points of failure right now.
-Security in IoT
I understand your point, but the question I'm wondering about is - does IoT NEED blockchain technology? With exponential rise in the number of IoT devices in various industries and sectors in the coming years, what purpose does the public availability of all transactions recorded onto some distributed ledger serve? I'd love to hear out some specific examples, but I'm really not an IoT engineer to elaborate anymore on my points. (I only know a bit about smart metering technologies haha)
Wait, blockchain doesn't mean public. There are implementation like HyperLedger in which privacy and even some degree of control over nodes can be maintained. It's really up to the specific IoT application to decide which application is better. For instance some applications can include the presence of currencies (think about a peer-to-peer marketplace of solar panels that sell and buy electricity) or without currency (for instance supply chain applications, in which you want to track a shipment between different means of transportation and log an audit trail of the whole shipment, together with enviromental measurements of temperature, humidity, etc.).
Some IoT use cases, I would say the majority, really needs the blockchain for security reasons. For instance one of the main concerns with self driving cars are hackers able to crash the car just by altering some sensor communications. I cite from https://blogs.cisco.com/innovation/blockchain-and-a-safer-self-driving-future:
Quote
Currently, roadside sensors use short-range wireless technology to transmit information about traffic and weather to vehicles. This data is disappointingly easy to interfere with, and tampering with real-time traffic information could have disastrous effects on autonomous vehicles, which will rely on these roadside processors to navigate the real world. If a bad actor hacked the system to show a nonexistent object in the road or disseminate bad information about weather conditions, it could have lethal effects on passengers. The roadside sensors need to exchange information with vehicles in a way that is secure, and this can be achieved with blockchain technology. As protocols for vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication are perfected, we believe encrypted blockchain solutions should play a big role in this adaptation.
A very nice reference on different use cases is the following:
http://www.kaleidoinsights.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/KI_Report_IoTBlockchain_FINAL.pdf