Newly Launched ‘Trusted IoT Alliance’ Unites the Industry to Further a Blockchain-based Internet of Things

Today, Bosch, BNY Mellon, Cisco, Gemalto, U.S. Bank along with Bitse, Chronicled, ConsenSys, Ledger, Skuchain, Slock.it, HCM International of Foxconn Group, IOTA, Oaken Innovations, Qtum, Chain of Things, Big Chain DB announced the official launch of the Trusted IoT Alliance, a group of companies united to catalyze the development of a blockchain-enabled, trusted Internet of Things (IoT). The mission of the Trusted IoT Alliance is to bring companies together to develop and set the standard for an open source blockchain protocol to support IoT technology in major industries worldwide.

The Alliance offers an inclusive membership model and annual events to connect Fortune 5000 enterprises, software developers, and blockchain technology companies. Its membership is focused on ‘working together to advance IoT and blockchain’ by leading pilots, publishing open source code, and coordinating standards and reference architecture. Members of the group have already published a common API to register ‘things’ to both Hyperledger and Enterprise Ethereum blockchain networks. The Alliance plans to fund small grants to support open source development and is reviewing proposals from IoT and blockchain technologists.

Key Facts:

Founding members of the Trusted IoT Alliance have been cooperating informally since December 2016.

For more than a decade, enterprise technology companies have worked to develop standards for IoT security, interoperability, scalability, and identity. Proprietary technology and competing interests made a truly open network difficult to develop. Open source is widely recognized as the solution to the development of robust IoT standards. However, organizing consortia between major industry players is complex. The Trusted IoT Alliance is a solution to both technological standards and the problem of collaboration between Fortune 5000 and startup companies.

The Alliance will house intellectual property and open-source tools and standards that support trusted digital identities for IoT-connected products. These tools and standards will allow enterprises to represent physical world “things” and “event logs” on a decentralized blockchain system.

The goal of the Alliance is the creation of a trusted IoT ecosystem that links cryptographic and registrant identities, along with metadata, to give objects the equivalent of digital, transferable “birth certificates,” that can be inventoried and managed across blockchain networks.

An object or “thing” could be an internet-connected machine or product, ranging from a car to a drone, package, sneaker, lithium-ion battery, or energy meter. On top of this trusted IoT platform, the group sees potential to automate business logic through smart contracts and building a thriving Machine-2-Machine economy.

The Alliance is blockchain agnostic and will support integration across any open source enterprise blockchain or distributed ledger technology platform that has potential to become a backend for widespread commercial and industrial adoption. The Alliance aims to foster interoperability and interworking across blockchain platforms, applications, and in doing so remove barriers to broad scale adoption of blockchain technology.

The Trusted IoT Alliance has named Zaki Manian, a Co-Founder of Skuchain, as the organization’s executive director with current operating board member roles held by representatives of the other founding member companies: Bosch, Chronicled, Cisco, and Gemalto.

Executive quotes from the executive director and operating board member companies on the vision and mission of the Trusted IoT Alliance:

“A big part of realizing the potential of blockchain and distributed ledger technologies will be linking these secure virtual systems to secure physical IoT systems. The Alliance’s vision is to support the creation of a secure, scalable, interoperable, and trusted IoT ecosystem and to become a key forum for enabling rapid development of mature IoT enabled blockchain use cases and specifications.” Zaki Manian, Executive Director, Trusted IoT Alliance

“For us, technologies such as blockchain are strategically very important. They allow consumers to securely share data online without involving a third party. Consumers can conclude agreements and contracts online and transact payments securely, and the technologies ensure the data is anonymized. A blockchain is based on a kind of decentralized database, which distributes information entered into it across a network of computers. This gives protection against falsification of data, and consumers are less dependent on one single computing center. Together with our partners in the Trusted IoT Alliance, we will make new blockchain solutions ready for the market, and in this way help the IoT become more successful.” Dr. Rainer Kallenbach, CEO, Bosch Software Innovations

“The world is beginning to recognize the potential of blockchain technology to fundamentally reshape the way business is done globally — and we’re still just scratching the surface. At this early stage we think it’s vitally important to establish an inclusive framework that ensures openness, trust, and interoperability among the many parties, in both the public and private sectors, that we believe will begin to adopt blockchain technology over the next several years. Chronicled is proud to be a founding member of the Trusted IoT Alliance and we look forward to working with existing members, and welcoming new partners, in continuing to build on this foundation.” Ryan Orr, CEO, Chronicled, Inc

“We are proud to be a founding member of the Trusted IoT Alliance and partnering with other leading companies to drive and support enterprise standards at the intersection of blockchain and IoT. Blockchain and IoT together create a “sweet spot” that form an Internet of Value which allows secure value flow across a range of industry segments. The Alliance is promoting interoperability which is a key factor that drives broad-scale technology adoption. This consortium will assist innovators across industries to develop transformative applications.” Hilton Romanski, Senior Vice President, Cisco

“We see blockchain as a powerful technology to simplify transactions between devices and individuals for supply chain operations, government services, IoT, banking and payments and healthcare. Alleviating the dependence on a central third party removes the ongoing issue of a “single point of failure.” As governments and businesses move more activities online, blockchain provides a truthful understanding of transactions where many people and departments are involved. However, for blockchain-based systems and projects to be successful, security needs to be at its core to protect data, devices and users. The Trusted IoT Alliance is a collaborative setting for companies to address these challenges and opportunities and work towards the common goal of a secure and convenient connected world.” Todd Moore, Senior Vice President of Encryption Products, Gemalto

“The Trusted IoT Alliance will power the machine economy by setting standards and specifications for global interoperability. BigchainDB is proud to join and support the Alliance as the decentralized data substrate for event logging and connecting immutable data to valuable assets.” Bruce Pon, CEO, BigChainDB

“Skuchain, having recognized that Blockchain and the Internet of Things would be that much more powerful when combined, took the lead in authoring the IOT Registry and is proud to contribute it to the Trusted IOT Alliance. The work of the Alliance will allow Blockchain to be that much more effective in absorbing signals from smart devices in a digestible and secure manner, enabling IOT to reach its full potential. We are excited to work with our partners in the Alliance to realize this mission. ” Srinivasan Sriram, CEO, Skuchain

“We are very excited about the Trusted IOT Alliance and hope to see it emerge as a central hub to facilitate the discussion and collaboration between various stakeholders and technologies. With such an organization we are able to cross the chasm between different technologies, communities and even industries, and in turn enable the creation of new disruptive applications” Dominik Schiener,Co-Founder, IOTA

“This consortium, which comprises well-established companies and the emerging blockchain industry, illustrates that the need to standardize the practices and protocols of IoT devices is greater than us all.”Jordan Earls, co-founder of the Qtum Project.

“We’re excited to contribute to the authoring of industry standards for IoT and blockchain. Device interoperability on these blockchain platforms will lead to exponentially more valuable products from all companies participating in the Trusted IoT Alliance. A set of core standards for our industry will set the correct foundation for powerful blockchain based IoT offerings, as we bring products to market.” John Gerryts, CEO, Oaken Innovations

“At Ledger, we have always focused on bringing the best tools to secure endpoints of Blockchain infrastructure. We strongly believe that IoT, alongside crypto assets, will be amongst the first sectors to embrace this new technology and we will gladly support this shift.” Thomas France, VP Business Development, Ledger

“The Trusted IoT Alliance allows us keep in touch with competitors that have now become partners. Together, we progress Blockchain technology towards a common standard for an autonomous, user-centric IoT. We are proud to be founding member and look forward to furthering our partnerships amidst the inevitable growth of the machine economy.”