Interacting with the Internet of Things using Smart Contracts and Blockchain Technologies

Abstract: Despite technological advances, most smart objects in the Internet of Things (IoT) cannot be accessed using technologies designed and developed for interacting with powerful Internet servers. IoT use cases involve devices that not only have limited resources, but also they are not always connected to the Internet and are physically exposed to tampering. In this paper, we describe the design, development, and evaluation of a smart contract-based solution that allows end-users to securely interact with smart devices. Our approach enables access control, Thing authentication, and payments in a fully decentralized setting, taking at the same time into consideration the limitations and constraints imposed by both blockchain technologies and the IoT paradigm. Our prototype implementation is based on existing technologies, i.e., Ethereum smart contracts, which makes it realistic and fundamentally secure.