IOTA Lands Strategic Partnerships to Advance Tangle Technology and Data Marketplace

IOTA is partnering with the Norwegian Science and Technology University in Trondheim (NTNU) and Nordic Semiconductor, a semiconductor company specializing in ultra-low power performance wireless devices. IOTA has also announced a partnership with Norway’s DNB ASA, the country’s largest financial services group.

The NTNU-Nordic Semiconductor collaboration focuses on integrating the Nordic Thingy:52, a multi-purpose sensor developer kit, onto the IOTA Data Marketplace. The device connects to Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones, laptops, tablets and other similar devices, and sends data to and from its sensors to an app and to the cloud.

Seven students from the informatics department at NTNU are working to allow users to publish sensor data from Thingy:52 to the IOTA Data Marketplace by using the IOTA cryptocurrency to make transactions on the Tangle, turning the device into a gateway between the sensor kit and the world of data commerce.

According to Nordic Semiconductor, integration of the IOTA Data Marketplace is the first time the sensor kit has been used for a blockchain project.

A use case — Company A wants to collect data on air quality (temperature, humidity, CO2 emissions, air pressure and VOC) and then monetize the data by selling it to location scouts, scientists, researchers or anyone who would be interested in air quality conditions at specific locations.

The DNB banking partnership gives IOTA exposure to global markets. According to the announcement, IOTA and DNB will explore the IOTA Tangle technology to drive “citizen centric innovation, machine economy and decentralised data marketplaces.”

Says Lasse Meholm, head of distributed ledger technology at DNB?, ?“As Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine to Machine (M2M) communication and payment for microservices seem to escalate in the future, we think engaging in a Distributed Ledger based technology like IOTA gives us valuable experience and know-how on future revenue streams and business models. We are looking forward to dive into the IOTA space.”

Connected physical devices that can communicate and transact autonomously are expected to grow dramatically over the next two decades. IOTA’s Tangle is an open-source permissionless distributed ledger technology designed to power such devices, known as the Internet of Things (IoT), with fast, fee-less micro-transactions.

IOTA use of quantum resistant cryptographic algorithms is designed to make it immune to brute force attacks and hacks that can break blockchains.