Kontakt.io Teams IoT Platform with IOTA’s Blockchain for Monitoring and Asset Tracking

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Polish internet of things (IoT) location tracking group Kontakt.io has teamed up with the IOTA Foundation to integrate the latter’s distributed ledger technology with its platform.

According to a press release Thursday, the integration will enable tamper-proof and chargeable readings of smart sensor data, equipping healthcare operators and supply chain firms — which monitor environmental conditions for compliance reasons — with fully transparent ways for storing and reporting on telemetry data.

The release claims that the partnership will deliver a concrete solution with a combination of blockchain and IoT technologies, specifically designed for condition monitoring and asset tracking.

Monitoring temperature, humidity, and other environmental factors is becoming increasingly important for risk management, compliance, and ensuring high-quality goods and services for healthcare operators and logistics companies, Kontakt said in the press release.

Existing condition monitoring solutions store data in sensors or collect it manually and relay to the cloud. In both cases, it is possible and often easy to manipulate the records, which raises questions about data security and reliability, Kontakt said.

Though distributed ledger technology, the Kontakt.io and IOTA solution will encrypt device-to-device and device-to-cloud communication of telemetry so the data is unalterable. The companies expect manufacturers, carriers, inspectors, technology providers, and consumers will benefit from this technology, which will increase trust and transparency, ease dispute resolution, resulting in better compliance breach detection.

Together with sensor-equipped tags and the IoT application platform, the IOTA module will become part of Kontakt.io’s turnkey offering for healthcare and supply chain applications. Kontakt.io says it has already developed a working prototype of this solution and has scheduled first commercial rollouts later this year, with the next goal is to offer IOTA beacons in prototyping kits.

“IoT and blockchain technologies naturally go hand in hand because they have a lot in common,” said Philipp von Gilsa, CEO at Kontakt.io, in a statement. “Both are decentralized, their markets are in early stages, and a limited number of players showcased successful applications. We are starting our blockchain initiative with IOTA to speed up adaptation and innovation in both spaces.”

“Up until now, we have not heard about successful blockchain applications in IoT because of the amount of computing needed to execute a transaction,” says Łukasz Szelejewski, CTO at Kontakt.io. “In IoT, where a transaction involves tiny bits of data transferred by small battery-powered devices, blockchain has been too expensive and energy-consuming to succeed. We have decided to work with IOTA because it removes the cost barrier, and it needs little computing power to confirm transactions. Moreover, IOTA, unlike blockchain or Ethereum, is capable of processing a lot of operations in almost real time. In fact, the more transactions it has queued, the faster it scales. For all these reasons, IOTA makes Proof of Work possible and efficient in the IoT environment and is likely to become the next security standard for IoT.”