Chain of Things is a consortium that is exploring the role blockchain may have in providing security for the Internet of Things.

Understanding and fully mastering IoT security is critical to the industry’s development as connected device volumes grow into the 10s and 100s of billions.

The purpose of this initial conference is to examine Chain of Things (CoT)’s first full stack industrial blockchain+IoT case study, discuss findings, and focus on better ways of coordinating partners.

Problem

IoT is outpacing security. Hacks are very common and increasing. As the world becomes more connected this risk is compounded and can become systemic.

Solution?

Bitcoin is money open on the internet and still hasn’t been hacked, so what properties does blockchain have that enhance the trustless nature and security of IoT? What can IoT learn from bitcoin and blockchain technology to make it bulletproof?

Exploration with Solar Energy Case Study

We are having a brief hackathon on the morning of the event to show a blockchain IoT construction. In this case we are looking at solar energy and how to create a direct settlement mechanism for the production of renewable energy and immutable record keeping of its existence. At present, incentive structures for renewables are bureaucratic and time consuming, as often you need to manually authenticate that the energy was actually genuinely produced via renewable means.

With a blockchain interface the identity of the solar panel and the renewable energy data can be logged directly onto a blockchain. Thereby, the delivery of the incentive (whether that be a government grant, Carbon Credit, private credit or otherwise) can be paid out directly.

If you look at the recent COP21 Climate Change agreement, which is a legally-binding multilateral treaty, it sends “a clear signal to all stakeholders, investors, businesses, civil society and policy-makers that the global transition to clean energy is here to stay and resources have to shift away from fossil fuels.” Using blockchain to provide reliable and verifiable renewable data, can speed up incentive settlements and reduce fraud. That is our first Case Study.

Our particular interest in looking at this Case Study is to ensure that the system architecture is more secure and more reliable than a standard IoT set-up.

The demonstration of the Solar Case Study will take place in the morning with guidance from Francois Sonnet of ElectriCChain.

Ideation

After that, we will spend 2 hours in an open hackathon to look at different implementations. Key partners such as Grid Singularity will look to connect their devices to the solar stack to assess interoperability of the system.

We will then reflect briefly on the Case Study and the different implementations.

CONFERENCE AGENDA

In the afternoon the event will be as follows:

2pm – The Need for Security in IoT – Presented by RWE

2:30pm – The power of the blockchain to address security risks in IoT – David Sønstebø

3:00pm – The landscape of blockchain IoT and a review of the current use-cases – Hans Lombardo

4pm – Security through transparency – a shift from proprietary to open source models

4:30pm – Smart contracts – secure uses and applications in IoT – Max Kordek

5pm – Physical device security and blockchain hashing – Mihai Cimpoesu

6pm – Q&A

7pm – Networking

Eventbrite: Chain of things