Interledger Demo: IoT Integration

Abstract

With the spread of pragmatic approaches to blockchains and distributed ledger technologies (DLTs), the need to operate securely across multiple DLTs has become apparent. The class of operations that span two or more DLTs is generally referred to as interledger. Various interledger approaches have been proposed, researched and taken into use, including for example, atomic cross-chain transactions, sidechains, bridging approaches, ledger-of-ledger structures, and layered value transfer protocols, such as the W3C Interledger Protocol (ILP).In this demonstration, we exemplify ongoing work in our research group at Aalto University. We demonstrate how a resource-constrained IoT device may be made able to interact with an “IoT-friendly” ledger, with an interledger gateway service bridging to a public permissionless ledger. The demo use case reflects a scenario where an IoT device advertizes a service that is available for anyone on the Internet, pending a successful and validated payment has been made on the Ethereum ledger. This demonstration shows how this can be accomplished in an auditable and secure manner across ledgers using hashed timelock agreements (HTLAs) to provide payment escrow.