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Applications of distributed ledger technologies to the Internet of Things: a survey
Zhu Q., Loke S., Trujillo-Rasua R., Jiang F., Xiang Y. ACM Computing Surveys52 (6):1-34,2019.Type:Article
Date Reviewed: Mar 22 2021

If you have ever wondered how the Internet of Things (IoT)--the interconnection of physical and virtual things through existing and evolving communication technologies--might benefit from blockchain and other distributed ledger technologies (DLTs), this valuable survey gives a recent (but not totally up to date, and partly inaccurate) report.

The introductory section on DLT features a nice five-layer architecture for structuring an explanation on how blockchains typically work. It also rightfully mentions the use of non-block-oriented architectures (like a directed acyclic graph in IOTA and others) in order to overcome scalability issues of classical blockchains. Unfortunately, the text contains some severe inaccuracies that render it unreliable for the unversed reader (for example, mining is not about finding a “correct pre-hash”; miners also get a block reward, not just transaction fees; Ethereum at large is still not using proof-of-stake; and others).

The survey itself uses a bottom-up (technology-based) and a top-down (use case) approach to briefly introduce around 50 interesting applications of DLT. Security, privacy, identity management, machine-to-machine (M2M) transactions, traceability, and (data) provenance are the technology domains covered in more detail, while the smart city context with a focus on smart homes, smart transport, smart grids, healthcare, and supply chains is used to guide the top-down discussion regarding use cases. The booming area of decentralized finance (DeFi) is (deliberately) missing.

Each section introduces the domain and explains how it operates today and what challenges are currently unsolved. The main part consists of vignettes (of widely varying detail) on how DLTs are solving some problems better than available technologies, typically citing several interesting but superficially explained example implementations.

The authors include paragraph-long summaries for, and a superficial comparison of, 14 DLTs for IoT (including Bitcoin and Ethereum).

Finally, they highlight open challenges such as the physical connection of the DLT to a device, the problem of scalability, and the quest for interoperability of the many multi-blockchain scenarios encountered previously.

Disregarding several further inaccuracies--for example, a logically central application does not necessarily become a single point of failure; Hyperledger Indy is specialized for identity management; IOTA is not limited to M2M, but also provides identity management, marketplaces, and smart contracts--I really did like the breadth of the material, much of which is hard to obtain from other sources.

For instance, I was easily able to identify the two prevalent architectural patterns employed in almost all applications, namely (i) the use of a blockchain gateway to enable resource-constrained IoT devices to access the ledger, and (ii) the deployment of several interconnected blockchains to solve some shortcomings of current DLTs (such as limited scalability).

I recommend this survey to everyone interested in getting a comprehensive overview and initial understanding of how DLTs may benefit the IoT domain. While readers must not expect a good and exact introduction to blockchains, nor all the required (technical) details for every single use case, the nearly 180 references provide ample anchors to delve deeper into this exciting combination of two technology domains.

Reviewer:  Christoph F. Strnadl Review #: CR147221 (2106-0152)
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