IBM Whitepaper: Device democracy

[notbatman]

The greatest challenge, however, is not in simply building a
decentralized IoT, but one that can scale universally while
maintaining private, secure and trustless transactions. In other
words, the IoT represents a case of billions of players, not all of
which can be trusted – some even malicious – with a need for
some form of validation and consensus. And for this, the
“blockchain” offers a very elegant solution.

http://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/ecm/gb/en/gbe03620usen/GBE03620USEN.PDF

[pawel7777]

Sounds like interesting read, I'll study this more when I have a bit more free time.

I was curious whether they've mentioned Bitcoin at all, or try to look like they came with an idea of blockchain by themselves. But yup, they did:

A technology breakthrough that has fundamentally changed
our notions of centralized authority, the blockchain is a
universal digital ledger that functions at the heart of decentralized
financial systems such as Bitcoin, and increasingly, many
other decentralized systems.

and

While the blockchain may carry regulatory and economic risk
as a long-term store of value (as in the case of Bitcoin), it can
be quite revolutionary as a transaction processing tool.

[Come-from-Beyond]

And for this, the “blockchain” offers a very elegant solution.

The scalability issue is not solved yet. "Elegant" doesn't seem to suit there.

[Hazir]

The best part of Device Democracy is definitely these paragraphs:

Winners will:
• Enable decentralized peer-to-peer systems that allow for
very low cost, privacy and long term sustainability in
exchange for less direct control of data
• Prepare for highly efficient, real-time digital marketplaces
built on physical assets and services with new measures of
credit and risk
• Design for meaningful user experiences, rather than try to
build large ecosystems or complex network solutions.

Losers will:
• Continue to invest in and support high-cost infrastructure,
and be unmindful of security and privacy that can lead to
decades of balance sheet overhead
• Fight for control of ecosystems and data, even when they
have no measure of what its value will be
• Attempt to build ecosystems but lose sight of the value
created, probably slowing adoption and limiting the usage of
their solutions

Actually they did a great job on that Whitepaper. I like it!

[Snail2]

And for this, the “blockchain” offers a very elegant solution.

The scalability issue is not solved yet. "Elegant" doesn't seem to suit there.

Indeed, but according to figure 4 they are thinking about a distributed cloud based solution. So I guess that will be some sort of semi-decentralized network with trusted nodes and lightweight clients.

[Come-from-Beyond]

Indeed, but according to figure 4 they are thinking about a distributed cloud based solution. So I guess that will be some sort of semi-decentralized network with trusted nodes and lightweight clients.

You are a master of diplomacy! Other people would call it "kludge".