Sharing of views | IoT data requires sharing protocols

IoT devices generate a lot of data, and even though real secondary and tertiary market opportunities may exist in this data, most of it is siloed in proprietary networks and clouds, or abandoned at the edge of the network. What is lacking is a strong and vendor-agnostic data sharing protocol. In essence, decentralized and scalable peer-to-peer (P2P) networks provide a good blueprint for building this data market.

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According to Gartner, there will be 20 billion Internet-connected objects in the world within two years, and 95% of new technology products will be designed with Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities. In every connected device, there is at least one sensor collecting valuable data that can be shared and sold in real time to third parties who have a demand for the data. However, opening this data to the market is risky, but if done right, it can be a real business opportunity.

In the vast majority of cases, data remains locked away in proprietary, centralized systems, with the potential value of the data inaccessible to the outside world. The people, organizations, and machines that produce the data cannot leak it to the markets eagerly awaiting it. Because data is confined to silos, only a fraction of its value is realized.

With the rise of social media and the Internet of Things, some emerging economies need more real-time data. Smart cities, smart homes, and self-driving cars will collect more local data, whether it is recording human behavior, machine operation, or everything about the environment around people. However, there is no neutral platform provider on the Internet today to support the conditions for secure transmission, storage, and monetization required for the new data economy. For this valuable data, there is currently no real way to trade in the world.

Is a data sharing economy necessary?

Currently, the industry still lacks a scalable distribution system for publish/subscribe messaging, where no one party owns the information, even though anyone can use it. To illustrate this, imagine an instant messaging (IM) application, where text published to a stream can be securely delivered to everyone listening to (or subscribing to) that stream. Furthermore, it's not just text messages, imagine that all data has similarities, and the system needs to support one-to-many conversations, as well as many-to-many and private models.

Historically, in cases like instant messaging (IM), online gaming, and data distribution between subscribers in real time, they either had to create their own infrastructure or rely on centralized cloud services. On the one hand, building your own infrastructure adds costs and risks to even the simplest projects. The result is usually a unique, closed network that doesn’t help anyone else and is difficult to maintain. On the other hand, the barrier to entry for centralized alternatives is that they usually put data in the hands of large, irresponsible companies, which puts them at risk of being used by another party to create a proprietary solution that competes with them.

The Internet requires a protocol through which humans, organizations, and machines can publish data and through which authorized parties can subscribe to it. But it also requires a trusted market to handle the millions of financial transactions that come with it. An open, fair, and free data economy requires that data networks and their markets meet several conditions:

• Distributed: shared, scalable infrastructure owned and available globally;
• Open: Open to everyone and built with open source code and open standards;
• Security: protect data and participants, and protect transactions from fraud;
• Scalability: Data sources from a single sensor to thousands of sensors, and a marketplace capable of handling both macro and micro transactions.

Build a network

At present, there are relatively mature and emerging technologies that can meet the above requirements, but the difficulty lies in how to combine them into a clear and powerful data management protocol. For the data network itself, the peer-to-peer network (P2P) widely used for file sharing is a good method.

P2P networks are decentralized and inherently scalable, providing an excellent foundation for the real-time exchange of information. Data-sharing networks can be built on existing open source libraries, using additional technologies, including end-to-end encryption, to strengthen the system and ensure privacy and anonymity when needed.

It follows that markets can be built using blockchain technology to ensure value settlement, identity, and permission control are at least within the constraints of blockchain technology. This approach has the added benefit of enabling incentives (cryptocurrency) for those who support the node and bandwidth data network. Can people go beyond the limitations of blockchain and meet the growing demand for data sharing platforms? Time will tell.