As 2018 nears Q4, it is evident that the crypto industry’s growing attention to the intersection of blockchain technology and the Internet of Things (IoT) is expediting. Within the past few months, new IoT-focused protocols, DApps, and service providers have emerged, tackling various challenges, such as hardware, connectivity, data, privacy, security, and more. Amongst the fervor, one thing that is increasingly clear is that success cannot be achieved independently. Projects ought to align themselves with like-minded partners that have complementary strengths in order to achieve working, real-world solutions. A shift from individual to ecosystem is imperative and this is why we are happy to announce the partnership between IoTeX and Weeve, both projects at the forefront of blockchain and IoT technology.
Our partnership stemmed from a mutual appreciation of the technical focus of our projects, and we look forward to investigating synergies in our technologies.
- IoTeX , based in Silicon Valley, is building blockchain infrastructure tailor-fit for IoT applications. With a focus on privacy, scalability, and interoperability, IoTeX is building a blockchain protocol that is robust enough to handle rapid IoT data exchange, versatile enough to support heterogeneous IoT devices, and lightweight enough to run on low-power IoT devices. Their core team consists of 10+ Ph. Ds, top tier engineers from Silicon Valley giants, and experienced ecosystem builders.
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Weeve , based in Berlin, is building a decentralized platform to transform IoT data into tradeable digital assets. Weeve uses patented cryptographic technologies to attest data (i.e., certify the originating source, harvest, process, transport, etc. of ‘digital asset’ to the blockchain for trading) and curates a platform for entities to deploy novel data monetization services based on this certified data. Cryptoeconomics are used to incentivize users to supply high-quality data. Essentially, these autonomous machine-to-machine trades form the Economy of Things. Their core team includes IoT industry veterans/incubators, professors, and top tier engineers.
By 2020, Cisco estimates that IoT devices will generate more than 500 zettabytes (21 zeros) of data per year. Much of today’s IoT data is stored by centralized third parties, introducing a number of privacy and data ownership concerns. IoTeX’s privacy-centric blockchain and Weeve’s decentralized IoT data platform offer a promising alternative to securely store and trade IoT data as a digital asset while pushing data ownership to the end-user.
One native benefit of distributed ledger technology is once data is stored on a blockchain, it is immutable and traceable. However, the original source of the data cannot be verified unless the data is attested (i.e., proven to come from a specific source/device). Today, there is an abundance of IoT data that is not attested and therefore cannot be fully trusted, rendering it unusable for formal research, sale to third parties, and other uses outside of the data owner’s domain. The combination of data attestation and blockchain’s immutability provides a “pure” data source, which allows anyone to trace data to its original source (e.g., a unique IoT device) and verify that the data has not been manipulated. This is beneficial for a wide range of vertical IoT use cases (e.g., vehicles, supply chain, wearables), and effectively allows any device used to be a “trusted data oracle” and participate in new open markets for attested IoT data.
Machine Economy Innovation is driven by Strong Ecosystem Partnerships, outlining IoTeX and Weeve collaboration.
Weeve’s technical architecture, as shown above, includes multiple layers (e.g., attestation, the marketplace, identity, service exchange, blockchain, AI). The primary goal of our partnership is to implement IoTeX as the “blockchain layer” and optimize the performance of data transaction and storage-related tasks in the Weeve Network:
- In the near-term, as both of our projects are currently focused on technical development, our goals will be to better understand our respective technologies and develop a standalone integration between IoTeX and Weeve.
- In the medium-term, Weeve,its partners, and IoTeX will integrate the various layers of Weeve’s tech stack, create a minimum viable product, and rigorously test this product.
- Finally, in the long-term, we aim to bring on real data suppliers/buyers, IoT device manufacturers, and others to run holistic proof of concepts prior to launch.
Much of the planning and solution design will be completed in 2018, while development and integration will likely be completed throughout 2019. We foresee an initial launch of the Weeve
Platform in mid-2019, with incremental features (e.g., new data/device support) being added during the second half of 2019. In addition, IoTeX and Weeve will also collaborate on research on various topics, such as data attestation and cryptography, which are core components of both projects. We are excited and committed to achieving these goals and look forward to updating our communities on our progress.
Originally published at medium.com on August 15, 2018.