Abstract
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of smart and self-configuring
devices that exchange data by interacting with the environment to make decisions
without human intervention. Endowed to sense surrounding events, these physical
objects generate large amounts of real-time data that need an acceptable architecture
with better security to process and convert it into meaningful information.
Implementation of blockchain in IoT offers a secure, transparent and efficient
mechanism to store and manage data generated by connected IoT devices. Even though
the integration of blockchain with IoT is pretty recent, there are at present a huge
number of applications that include smart healthcare, smart homes, e-government,
automotive industry, smart education, precision agriculture etc. However, there are
several challenges encountered in Blockchain-IoT integration which include
anonymity, standardization, interoperability, heterogeneity, data privacy, smart
contracts, legal issues, transparency, storage capacity and scalability, security, etc. This
chapter presents the current state-of-the-art Blockchain-IoT integration in order to
examine how blockchain could possibly improve the IoT ecosystem catered towards
Industry 4.0. This chapter investigates the various application domains of Blockchain-IoT integration. It also discusses the main challenges faced in the adoption of
blockchain in IoT environments for I4.0