The Blockchain IOT market & industry in all its constituents like Hardware, Software, Services, Data Security, Sharing and Asset Management stands at an expected 32 million USD in the year 2018 ref Zion Market Research. This covers several industries in its fray like the retail, energy & utilities, consumer electronics, manufacturing, transportation, construction and healthcare. The value of the IoT in blockchain is expected to be around 3033 USD in the year 2025. This would be a staggering CAGR of 91.4% between 2018 in 2025.
The adoption of blockchain has been significantly high in the segment of payment processing in the retail sector. In the retail segment, there are several key players who are harnessing the massive potential of the blockchain industry to secure transactions. The power of IoT in blockchain is amazing since it helps the supply chains in managing and tracking the movement of their shipments with pinpoint accuracy. Previous technological platforms have not been so successful of offering the requisite push and pull required to fully cater to the logistics industry. IoT in blockchain has been a major transformational experience for the freight and forwarding, road and rail transportation services. With the implementation of IoT in blockchain, complications like lengthy paper work, manual errors and quick product identification. Without blockchain, it would be simply impossible and practically non feasible to conduct these tasks with meticulous perfection. With constant improvements in the value chain of logistics companies, the popularity of blockchain is increasing rapidly over a period of time.
Another sector which is witnessing a steady adoption and shift towards blockchain is the construction industry. The technology of blockchain helps in overcoming several challenges which would otherwise lead to several complications like monetary disputes, compliance issues and identity theft.
Smart contracts have been one of the biggest contributions from the blockchain industry. Smart contracts are algorithm driven platforms which refuse transactions if the algo identifies any discrepancy with the system. This ensures that all transactions conducted over this particular platform are secure and safe. With minimal transactional disputes, given industries can always drive better customer satisfaction and ROI optimization.
In terms of classifying the verticals of the blockchain IoT industry in terms of its central command structures, one can clearly distinguish among the following:
- Hardware Services
- Software Services
- Support Services
The software part of Blockchain is expected to hold a lion’s share in the entire blockchain market owing to the large volume of investments which are being pumped into the software segment. While talking about the application segment of the blockchain company, it is a mandate to understand that it comprises asset tracking, data security and management.
The data security and data sharing are key components which would be in high demand in the near future. Today, businesses are driven on data and some of the most critical business decisions are based on the architecture drawn using the most mined data. Data sciences and other analytical sciences have been instrumental in making data the most trustworthy parameter when it comes to taking important business decisions.
With the start of any discussion regarding data security and sharing, one cannot ignore the amazing immutability of blockchain networks. When users are distributed over blockchain and connected through IoT, the network is simply impenetrable. The basic structure of this network prevents outsiders from accessing the data blocks and changing the information already stored there. One cannot change any previously stored information over a blockchain network.
Cyber attacks on corporate networks like that of banks and financial organizations have lead to several complications like data theft, identity theft, network failures and large financial scams. Today, the very concept of blockchain networks attracts attention owing to the amazing protection offered by immutable blockchains.
Technologies come and go but this one is expected to stay! With a host of benefits in place along with a very decentralized structure, IoT on blockchain does offer a comprehensive solution to many managerial problems.
Some of the major benefits of using IoT in blockchain would be
- Reduction in infrastructural cost of maintaining IoT
- Building trust among the devices and persons connected over IoT
- Speeding up of transactions especially cross border remittances which are settled real time with the help of blockchain
In simple terms, a blockchain is a chain of validated information storage units. Each new block is authorized from the previous one; thereby generating a chain of trust and authority making it pure and immutable.
To summarize, we can always say that there are several advantages of Blockchain on IoT:
- Building of Trust: IoT Blockchain helps devices participate in exchanges and communications as agreed upon by the parties. There might not be a mutually recognizable trust between two devices but blockchain helps in establishing trust in IoT connected devices over a network.
- Reduction of Cost: The IoT over blockchain helps in minimization of several overheads cost since data exchanges and device data happen over a peer to peer protocol. This process eliminates any additional cost.
- Increase Speed of Data Transfer and security: The speed of data transfer is increased through distributed device based records and agreements. Blockchain offers remarkable capacity as a framework which deals with data storage and recovery from a large network of interconnected.
Both are revolutionary concepts which will redefine the way in which connected devices will behave and consent each other when it comes to data exchange.
