What is Blockchain IoT Network?
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
“All world-changing products have one thing in common – they arise as a direct consequence of convergence of multiple, individually revolutionary technologies
THE INTERNET OF THINGS
The internet permeates deep into our lives. Everything seems to be connected to the internet in some way or the other. Globally the IoT market is expected to reach $9 Trillion by 2020 from $3Trillion in 2014, growing at a staggering 20% CAGR.
Dubbed as part of the Industry 4.0, IoT is expected to bridge the gap between the physical and the digital world, opening up a plethora of opportunities for the industry and consumers to benefit from. Applications of IoT are unlimited, and range from consumer electronics to life sciences, logistics to retail. Gartner estimates that there will be about 50billion connected devices by 2020, with the spend on IoT services expected to cross $7 Trillion.
DISCOVERY
At its heart, Discovery is a blockchain solution that helps brands track their products through the supply chain. It enables brands to udnerstand where each of their products are lying, at a unit level. Our unique Data Analytics / AI engine converts all these data points into meaninful information, generating unique and actionable insights for brands to act upon.
There are three layers to the Discovery Solution:
1. Cliot: The Cliot is a uniquely identifiable self-charging printable tag would be placed on the product that is desired to be tracked. We are developing it along the lines of a printable solution, where mass-production could take place through a decentralized infrastructure. Each enterprise user could print their own set of tags based on a pre-defined protocol built on the lines of EAN. Since data transfer from the tag is meant to be periodic (~100 times/day), and since the data blocks are very small (Few bytes – 1kb), battery life is expected to be long. Moreover, the device would be self-charging, drawing power from electro-magnetic waves (cellular network / wi-fi waves). This would make the tag long-lasting, at very low costs (~$0.05 – $0.10 per tag). We believe this would help penetrate IoT to applications that were hitherto considered too cost conscious to warrant such application.
Typically, IoT tags cost $5-$10 which makes it unviable for low-priced daily products to implement. With the low-priced Cliot, we are making IoT affordable even to daily products like a bottle of shampoo or a tube of toothpaste.
2. The User Community: The second layer of the Discovery solution is a community of public users, who would have our mobile application installed on their smartphones. It works on the principle of distributed infrastructure, which is the underlying building block of a block-chain. It harnesses the residual power and network capabilities that reside in the mobile phones of individual community members, thereby creating a global communications network.
The cornerstone of the Discovery Network is that it does not require any active effort from the community members. It works on a passive mode, where the Cliot engages with the user’s mobile phone, through Wi-Fi and Bluetooth protocols, thereby connecting with the telecommunications network (through the cellular data network of the smartphone). The residual application on the mobile phone and the Cliot get paired through a smart contract, thereby enabling quick transmission of small “blocks” or packets of data to be transmitted over the cellular network.
The financial compensation to the user community would be commensurate to the data prices charged by the underlying telecom network, costs of which have been on free-fall mode over the past few years. This would render possible delivery of the service to client at exceptionally low costs compared to the currently available solutions. . Further, as the network is built on the base of blockchain, the data generated by the system is not only accurate and timely, but also secure and reliable, which is very critical for enterprise customers.
Since the network is crowd-sourced, the IoT tracking costs for comapnies are very low, in the order of $0.04 per product per month. This is a 100+x savingds compared to the current network cost of $4-$5 per month per device.
3. Data Analytics / Artificial Intelligence: This is the third layer of the Discovery solution and converts the data collected through the network/Cliots into meaningful information. These are a set of reports that can be customized for each client, based on their unique requirements. This could include insights like “this WalMart outlet in 12th St Chicago is expected to run out of your stocks tomorrow – plan a refill” or “there’s too much stock in the Target outlet on Washington Avenue, Seattle – plan an activity for liquidation”.
These meaningful and actionable information for clients could potentiall yhlpe brands and organizations save several billions of dollars.
THE CONSUMER ANGLE
The Discovery solution is not restricted to trakcing products till the retail level. There is also a strong consumer angle to the solution. For instance, Amazon could track your bottle of shampoo, and understand that you’re two days away from running out. This could enable Amazon to ship you a new bottle without you breaking a sweat!
The value that this information creates to brands is tremendous, and enables them to improve customer engagement and market share!
WHERE ARE WE
We are an existing business that has been in operations for 3+ years. With tremendous knowledge of the supply chain domain, we already track and handle more than 150 million lbs of products on an annual basis, through our network. In essence, we are an already running solution, and moving it to the blockchain to help is scale further.