Blockchain Technologies for IoT

The exponential increase in connected devices with built-in sensing, processing, and communication capabilities has fuelled the development of IoT applications, which creates new ecosystems for device-to-device interactions, supports smart environments, and leads to new business models. Empowered by these capabilities, IoT devices interact with each other and their environments to collect, process, and share data. Security, privacy, and reliability of data are major concerns that need to be addressed for the development of IoT applications. Recently, blockchain technology has attracted significant interest from researchers and industry leaders due to its potential for enhancing security, privacy, and reliability of the data. Blockchain offers distributed and immutable ledgers for IoT communications in the form of tamper-proof records, built-in cryptocurrency support for transactions between devices and other entities, and smart contracts to execute automated programs when certain conditions are met. Although there are potential benefits of the integration of blockchain technology to IoT, the integration introduces new challenges, such as scalability, in the design of blockchains suited for IoT applications. In this chapter, we explore key benefits and design challenges for blockchain technologies, and potential applications of blockchain technologies for IoT.