The Unification of IoT devices through the blockchain

Iot is widely spread now and we can see it implemented in various different machines and things. This wide adoption has created what is called fragmentation. In many cases in order to operate a given device you need to open a different application every time making them closed networks. You can't use an application say for a smart door on a say Samsung's smart watch. This fragmentation lead to high discrepancy in IoT devices and now unification is needed more than ever.

There is a need for a standard that can adopted between the IoT devices to create a homogeneous ecosystem. Just like how Alt coins in Ethereum use the same standard RUFF chain proposed the creation of a unified OS that would unite different IoT devices rendering them homogeneous. If we examine IoT devices we will realized that on the hardware level there exist a level of standardization like the bluetooth used or WIFI standard used and so on. What is lacking is on OS and application level. If the latter is achieved devices from different manufacturers would be able to communicate.

You might wonder now; wouldn't the existing solutions suffice to create a standard? Yes and No. Yes in the sense that it will need a lot of work and refactoring to achieve that; the No is because the current solutions lack in features and functionalities and are quite hard to read and maintain. This is quite similar to programming languages where we had Fortran and C++. The later had many functionalities and features that were lacking in Fortran. Fortran was ancient and was not able to cope with hardware advancements unlike C++. With ruff chain compare this Ruff chain's syntax:

$('led-green').on();

to this General Purpose I2C I/O Expansion Chip programming syntax :

RCC_APB2PeriphClockCmd(RCC_APB2Periph_GPIOB, ENABLE);
GPIO_LED.GPIO_Pin = GPIO_Pin_1 | GPIO_Pin_11 | GPIO_Pin_14 | GPIO_Pin_15;
GPIO_LED.GPIO_Mode = GPIO_Mode_Out_PP;
GPIO_LED.GPIO_Speed = GPIO_Speed_50MHz;
GPIO_Init(GPIOB, &GPIO_LED);

Courtesy of http://www.robot-electronics.co.uk/gpio14.html

You can see with ruff chain the syntax is quite easy to comprehend and develop unlike the General Purpose I2C I/O Expansion Chip. This alone has attracted many developers.

Ruff chain community had more than 13k engineers registered in the network with more than 50% actually buying the RUFF hardware and deploying code. As more engineers join the network the more innovation is expected to happen and also the likely the standard would shape properly and become widely adopted.

The other advantage to Ruff Chain is the ability to allow communication between different devices. So you can have multiple manufacturers building over the platform which means those devices would have the same underlying technology allowing those devices to communicate between each other.

Ruff Chain's consensus is the delegated proof of stake. Unlike the current bitcoin's proof of work where whales with high has power machinery control the network the delegated proof of stake tries to minimize to eliminating that by a voting system. On each cycle a vote takes place as to who can create the next block. The more tokens you hold the higher your vote's weight. That way you shifted weight from hardware power to stakes power. The more tokens you own the more power you have. In the ruff chain network a block is generated every 9 seconds. Voting takes place every round. A round has 105 slots for 105 agents producing 105 blocks. that means a block for each agent. Each block has the round number, the slot number and its height or the size of data it contains.

Interesting times ahead for Ruff chain. On July 19th there would be an IoT workshop at Shanghai Kungfu Startups Held by Ruff chain and Microsoft Azure IoT hub. Participants will get development packages in an effort to get more developers on board. The reason why this is important is to generate more traction and exposure among IoT enthusiasts. As more people get onboard and specially IoT developers the more applications we will be looking at on the Ruff Chain. The founder seems quite connected to be able to land such events. The development team has successfully tested account transfer, elections and the voting over the Ruff Chain.

Resources:

Ruff Chain Website: https://ruffchain.com/
Ruff Chain Medium Channel: https://medium.com/@ruffchain