According to a recent survey conducted by research and advisory company Gartner, inc., around three-quarters of Internet of Things (IoT)—having electronic devices connected to one another—adopters in the US also work with blockchain technology, or plan to adopt it by the end of 2020.

The IoT and blockchain are two technologies that are widely projected to experience meteoric growth in the future. Despite both being relatively new, there is already a considerable amount of overlap between the two, with blockchain often regarded as one of the key technologies that will enable IoT networks to interact more securely and efficiently. However, what might not be so obvious, is that there is also a significant overlap between IoT and blockchain adopters.

Among dual adopters, 86% of these are working to implement both technologies together whereas more than half of adopters claim that increased efficiency and cost reductions are the main drivers for working with IoT and blockchain.

Moreover, Gartner discovered that around 66% of those implementing both technologies consider "increased security and trust" as one of the main reasons behind their decision.

“As enterprises implement IoT projects, many of them focus their efforts on building more security, trust and transparency around the management or movement of physical things, so that they can improve situational awareness and greater efficiencies,” said Avivah Litan, vice president at Gartner.

Curiously, among all the industries working with IoT, the financial services industry is the least like to also co-adopt blockchain technology. On the other hand, pharmaceutical, energy and transportation companies are among those most likely to integrate both IoT and blockchain, the report found.

“These industries all have business models that include the movement of physical goods, so they benefit from links that bridge the physical to the digital world, especially those enabled by a combination of blockchain and IoT technologies,” said Ms. Litan.

Nonetheless, it remains to be seen whether blockchain technologies can support the scale needed for many IoT applications, since few blockchain concepts have demonstrated the capability of handling more than a few dozen transactions per second at low cost.