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#News(General) [ via IoTForIndiaGroup ]
Starting today, blockchain is going to fuel innovation in the Internet of Things just like TCP/IP did in the world of wireless.
The historical context above helps illustrate my point. When the wireless world was thinking of voice, innovators were thinking of data and TCP/IP. Innovators are always three moves ahead of the rest of us, and TCP/IP drove a wireless revolution that wired telcos couldn’t capitalize on. Brands like AT&T were made irrelevant and reconfigured (AT&T was essentially sold to Cingular in a complex multi-part transaction), and companies like Cisco, known as enterprise vendors back then, became household names.
Yet the more things change, the more they stay the same. Institutions like the telcos and Cisco, who were once innovators but are now incumbents — rose but then became complacent. They’ve been touting the promise of the Internet of Things for years, but consumers and the tech industry have seen little real progress outside of the occasional connected thermostat or wireless speaker, and even mature technology like Bluetooth gets glitchy after a few meters. A world that was once chomping at the bit to embrace IoT now regards it with a healthy dose of skepticism.
Helium, one of Khosla Ventures’ portfolio companies, is using a bleeding edge combination of RF (radio) and a protocol blockchain to deliver IoT from its past missteps and create unbelievable value — and doing it faster than telecom giants could ever hope to and in a way compatible with TCP/IP. The blockchain adds unique capabilities which no network can offer. Decentralization, security, and native geolocation are built-in. At scale, Helium adds exactly what’s missing in IoT — a new layer of connectivity that is less power-hungry than WiFi, has more range than Bluetooth, and is much more affordable than cellular. A physical blockchain providing an incentivization and economic layer for radio communication is a blueprint that can be applied to other networking technologies, even potentially disrupting cellular networks and city-wide WiFi infrastructure.
Helium’s low-power, long-range connectivity doesn’t just deliver on what IoT should have done already.
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