The Internet of Things

11Blockchain: Enabling Trust on the Internet of Things

Giampaolo Fiorentino¹, Carmelita Occhipinti², Antonello Corsi¹, Evandro Moro³, John Davies³, and Alistair Duke³

¹Engineering Ingegneria Informatica Spa, Roma, RM, Italy

²Cyberethics Lab, Cardito NA, Italy

³British Telecommunications plc, Ipswich, Suffolk, UK

11.1 Introduction

As discussed in Chapter 1, the number of devices connected to the Internet is growing quickly, with some studies predicting that the number of connected devices is expected to reach 34 billion by the end of 2020 [1].

According to The Economist [2], the world's most valuable resource is no longer oil but digital data. The Internet of Things (IoT) plays a big part in this shift, with data sharing and interoperability at its core, as set out in Chapter 4. Accordingly, the key requirement to share the data implies the need to build up trust amongst the network components. Today, the way the information is shared in IoT is often still relatively centralized. The traditional IoT architecture comprises a central information exchange platform, which works as a central server or broker, providing services such as data storage, processing, and direction; device management and patching; and accounting and authorization. This approach requires high specification servers because in a centralized model, central servers authorize objects to communicate with them and with other devices, increasing the number of requests over time, hence increasing the resource requirements ...