Unit VI : Blockchain & Allied Technologies

Blockchain with IoT

The Internet of Things or IoT is a network of connected devices over the Internet. Sensors, modules, and
actuators are included in the IoT based module.

The large amount of data is getting transmitted and processed, there is always a risk of hacking.

Here, blockchain technology can make a world of difference. Storing the IoT data in the blockchain would
add another layer of security that hackers would need to bypass for accessing data-sensitive networks.

Using blockchain for enhancing IoT data security

Blockchain refers to a system where records of transactions made in Bitcoin or other IoT devices are
maintained across several nodes.

The information stored is difficult or nearly impossible to hack, change, or cheat the system.

IoT empowers devices across the internet to transmit data to private blockchain networks for creating
tamper-resistant records of shared transactions. This allows to share and access IoT data without central
control or management.

How does the combination of IoT and blockchain work?

Every transaction in the blockchain is verified by multiple sources and entered into a common ledger
distributed across every node before preventing disputes and building trust among all permissioned network
members.

The combination of IoT and blockchain allows a smart device to function autonomously and to track device
communication with each other.

Even though the decentralized nature of the blockchain benefits from an architectural standpoint, it poses a
problem for IoT as IoT relies on client-server. That means an IoT platform has to be decentralized to ensure
compatibility with a blockchain network.

Top use cases of IoT-enabled blockchain technology

IoT enhances security and transparency in IoT ecosystems. Here are a few famous IoT blockchain use cases
that have a significant impact across multiple industries:

1. Operational maintenance

IoT devices track the state of machines for safety and maintenance. From elevators to engines, blockchain
offers a tamper-free ledger of operational data.

That enables third-party repair partners to monitor the blockchain for precautions and record their work
back on the blockchain. Additionally, operational records can be shared with government entities to verify
compliance.
2. Freight (Goods/Material) transportation

Moving freight from one place to another is complicated and involves the support of different parties. With
the help of an IoT-enabled blockchain, it is possible to store temperatures, arrival times, and the status of
shipping containers in transit. Everyone involved in the process can trust the data and take action to move
the freight promptly and efficiently.

3. Pharmacy

As the pharma companies are held accountable for developing, manufacturing, and distributing drugs, it is
essential specific measures are taken to ensure that only original medicines are issued to the general
public.Blockchain’s transparent and traceable nature can help monitor the safe and quick supply of drug
shipments from one destination to another.

4. Smart Homes

IoT also plays a vital role in our daily lives. In a smart home, the devices are connected and can be accessed
through the central point - a gaming console, smartphone, tablet, or laptop. One can control items such as
thermostats, door locks, cameras, home monitors, and kitchen appliances through a single home automation
system. Blockchain takes the concept of a smart home to another level by solving security issues and
removing centralized infrastructure. For instance, you can deploy security procedures such as biometrics
and facial/voice recognition to stall the data captured from smart devices from falling into the wrong hands.

5. Supply chain management

The ability to track components used in aircraft, automobiles and other products is essential for enabling
regulatory compliance and safety. The IoT data stored in shared digital ledgers allows all parties to see
component provenance throughout the product life cycle. Sharing info with shippers, regulatory agencies,
and manufacturers becomes a breeze.

6. Insurance

The process of managing claims, fraud, and property and casualty insurance has improved in many ways
thanks to smart contracts combined with IoT data fetched from location-based sensors (home alarms,
factories, warehouses, shipping containers and vehicles).

Benefits of blockchain in IoT

1. Lower costs

Blockchain allows data to be submitted on a peer-to-peer basis without centralizing control.

Decentralization enables cost-effectiveness to eliminate single points of failure while addressing the scale of
IoT.

2. Improved security

With blockchain, you can select the data to be managed, analyzed, personalized, and shared among
authorized vendors. Blockchain legitimizes(legalizes) data and ensures it comes from a trusted source. This
enhances secure communications by strengthening privacy agreements.

A trusted digital ledger shows who has access to the IoT data and is conducting transactions. There have to
be various security layers deployed to prevent unauthorized access. Blockchain enables that and keeps the
data safe and access control in limited hands.
3. Quick data change

Blockchain minimizes the time taken to validate transactions by utilizing trusted nodes and handling the
performance requirements of IoT. This fastens the speed of IoT data exchange.

4. Streamlined finances

For any business, its finance department is of utmost importance. After all, it deals with sensitive data and
transparency provided by IoT and blockchain. It is, therefore, essential to have a set process for sharing or
sending money or data across a linear, time-stamped chain. Blockchain not only solidifies the information
added to the ledger but ensures no one can access or touch it without permission.

5. Efficient supply chain

By eliminating the intermediaries, however, blockchain and IoT can significantly improve the supply chain
efficiency, the speed of transactions, and lower costs.

Challenges of IoT solved by blockchain

Challenges encountered while implementing blockchain in IoT

Blockchain addresses the problem by decentralizing the decision-making process to a consensus-based

shared network of IoT devices.

1. Scalability

One of the common issues faced in IoT development is scalability. How can one handle the enormous
volumes of data collected by an extensive network of sensors and potentially lower transactional processing
latencies? Well, that is a million-dollar question. Defining a transparent data model beforehand prevents
difficulties when making the product live.
2. Security risks

To extend the capabilities of an IoT-powered blockchain system, you need to use smart contracts, which
can offer efficiency by automating contract administration. However, this results in security risks, which can
hamper blockchain adoption in IoT.

While decentralized public blockchain networks are hard to hack, smart contracts used for running them
could be buggy. The worst part is that cyber hackers look for common smart contract vulnerabilities.

3. Sensor reliability

How reliable are the sensors used? They could interfere with correctly measuring the criteria required to
execute a transaction. It is essential to take measures to ensure external interventions do not alter sensors
and you can create a safe and secure environment for data recording and transactions.

4. Network privacy and transaction confidentiality

The transaction history in the shared digital ledger for a network of IoT-connected devices cannot be
granted on the public blockchain. This happens because the transaction pattern analysis is applied to make
inferences about the user or device identities behind public keys.

Enterprises must investigate their privacy requirements to check whether private or hybrid blockchains
might suit their needs better, and take action accordingly.

5. Computing power and time required

IoT wants the best possible security from blockchain, which requires the “Proof of Work” (POW) consensus
algorithm. The process is not complicated. However, it requires plenty of number-crunching at a fast rapid
pace for more extended periods. As a result, computing-intensive operations and associated expenses are
disincentives for cyber hackers.

6. Complex IoT and blockchain projects

Since blockchain is a relatively new technology, its integration with IoT solutions may not be as convenient
as one would hope for. That is because both technologies need experts with enough knowledge and
experience to handle anything that may come their way. Unfortunately, you may not get quality talent in this
domain easily, which will invariably affect the projects.
Blockchain with Robotics & Automation
What is Blockchain Technology?

Ans:….

What is RPA or Robotic Process Automation?

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is the automation process that automates repetitive and manual tasks
using robots. It is done with the help of the software bot.

It can interact with any modern system, just like a human would do.

This makes automating a wide range of tasks easy for industries. It is a revolution in business process
automation and one of the emerging technologies.

In technical terms, RPA can be defined as the technology that works around structured inputs and business
logic. RPA results in business process automation. In RPA, a robot or software is configured to interpret and
capture the data related to an application and then use that data to handle all the different tasks related to it,
including data manipulation, responses, and communication.

There are many benefits of RPA. Let’s list them below.

 Improved Process & Cost Savings

 Improved productivity & Higher quality , customer service
Components of RPA
They are as below.

1. Bots: At the core, there is a bot that is coded to perform the desired result. They have macros to have
the best efficiency.
2. Orchestrator: Orchestrator ensure that the software is deployed and scheduled bots
3. IDE: IDE stands for an integrated development environment that developers can use to develop and
maintain bots

With technologies working together more seamlessly than ever, it is now easy for businesses to adopt them
and create a system that works best for them as well as the end-user. Also, the data collected by companies
are massive enough for them to try out new combinations. All of these are possible with the combination of
RPA and blockchain.

RPA is all about playing a central role in automating the different aspects of the business. You can think of
RPA as a consensus entity that can interact with both systems and end-users. It is made in such a way that it
can interact and react with real-time data and make sense of it. Here, the workforce is all designated to find
out the processes that can be automated. They should also take care of training co-workers.
So, where does blockchain fits in all of these?

Blockchain can provide a distributed, shared ledger to process all the data and information. It provides a
smart, trustworthy, and smooth exchange platform for all the involved parties.
Benefits of Using RPA with Blockchain
There are many benefits of RPA and blockchain —

1. Regulatory and Compliance Management

Compliance is a big concern for businesses out there. They need to ensure that their process is compliant
with the regulatory guidelines assigned by the governance that they are currently operating. Things get more
complicated if they operate globally. RPA and blockchain can work together to automate repetitive
compliance tasks.

In creating regulatory and compliance management, blockchain plays a key role by offering immutability to
the recorded events. All the events can also be accessed through the network, enabling external audits as
well. This can be applied to currently available regulatory such as GDPR.

 Automated Trusted Data Processing

Another obvious use-case of Blockchain and RPA is to create automated trusted data processing. This has
wide-range use-cases where blockchain acts as a core network to manage the data transmitted by another
process.
The decentralized ledger does wonder here as it offers a way to record processes data and business
transactions for the automated decisions made by RPA. The best use-case for automated trusted data
processing is the KYC process, insurance claim payments, HR recruitments, and so on!

 Customer Satisfaction
RPA and blockchain can also work together to create better customer satisfaction with fast, automated
transactions that are secure and reliable.

 RPA And Blockchain Co-Worker

Both RPA and blockchain can create a more sustainable co-worker for human companions.
Machine Learning for Blockchain

ML model for crypto price prediction

A blockchain can affect and alter the traditional approach to machine learning and
facilitate it. However, this collaboration works both ways.
ML can also be useful for blockchain technology. Considering that blockchain
systems produce large volumes of data from various sources, these distributed
systems are harder to track and control than centralized.

How can ML help to deal with this issue?

Machine learning is known for its great forecasting capabilities of system behaviors
(e.g., trading forecasting) and efficient data analysis methods, which are essential
for optimizing the blockchain mechanisms.

ML models can be used to enhance data verification procedures, as well as to detect

malicious attacks or fraudulent transactions in the blockchain.

So it’s important to examine how both technologies interconnect and can potentially
transform the way we interact and rely on data.

The analytical capacity of machine learning and the decentralized power of

blockchain can be a real breakthrough in AI.

That said, a distributed, decentralized, and unchangeable ledger that records data is
combined with the decision-making process of the machine, a centralized process at
its core.
 As a result, we have trustworthy data-driven decisions at our disposal and a more
coherent, clear, and manageable process of handling data.

ML Model can be used for Bitcoin Price prediction.

Benefits of the Machine Learning Integration in Blockchain-Based Applications

 User authentication of any authorized user is easy when they are trying to make changes in the
blockchain.
 Using ML we can make BCT provide a high range of security and trust.
 Integration of ML models can help ensure the sustainability of terms and conditions which were
agreed before.
 ML model can be updated according to the chain environment of BT.
 Models can help extract good data from the user end for rewards to the user
 We can implement a real-time trustworthy payment process in the blockchain environment.

Applications:
1. Enhanced Customer service: AutoML framework on a Blockchain-based application we can make
the service more efficient and automated.
2. Data trading: Companies using blockchain for data trading across the world can make the service
faster using the ML models in the blockchain.
3. Product manufacturing: Integration of ML can help in making the Product testing and quality
control automated.
4. Smart cities: Nowadays smart cities are helping in improving the living standards of the people
where machine learning and blockchain technologies play a crucial role in making smart cities for
example smart homes can be monitored by machine learning algorithms and device personalization
which is based on the blockchain can improve the quality of livelihood.
5. Surveillance system: ML and BT can be used for surveillance where BT can be used for managing
the continuous data and ML can be used for analyzing the data.