On the use of Blockchain to enable a highly scalable Internet of Things Data Marketplace

Abstract

As data becomes the new fuel of the economy and a key asset to address our societal challenges, we cannot afford to have the data of businesses, public sector and individuals stored and kept unexploited or, what is worse, exploited by others that actually have the resources and capacity to do it. This is affecting not only our economic performance but also our security, safety and sovereignty. Among the plethora of data sources that exist nowadays, the Internet of Things (IoT) is recognised as a game-changer technology that expands its applicability to a huge variety of domains. Its main asset is, precisely, the data that the myriad of sensors embedded in the environment are constantly generating. The diffusion of platforms for IoT data sharing and monetisation is one of the key success factors which may help to drive the data economy and industrial transformation. In this paper, we are presenting a data sharing platform based on Blockchain, so-called Blockchain-based IoT Data Marketplace (BIDM) over which data producers and data consumers are able to share data in a decentralised and trustworthy manner. The BIDM enables a data marketplace where owners of IoT infrastructures can expose the observations that their devices generate while retaining control over who accesses each observation and directly getting revenues according to the price they have set. The evaluation that we have carried out of the BIDM's behaviour and performance in terms of operational execution times and scalability has been the basis for the discussion that we are presenting on the shortcomings that are typically associated with the use of Blockchain technologies as enablers for data marketplaces. This discussion also includes the evaluation of the challenges that must be considered for the creation of secure and interoperable Data Spaces based on Blockchain.