Distributed Ledger Technologies for M2M Communications

Abstract

Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) are seen as data bases of the future, which reduce the cost of trust and revolutionize transactions between individuals, companies and governments. They are considered as one of the main drivers of future applications, especially in field of Machine to Machine (M2) communications which are one of the basic technologies for Internet of Things (IoT). Therefore, Distributed Ledger Technologies with their inherent property to provide security, privacy and decentralized operation are engine for todays and future reliable, autonomous and trusted IoT platforms. For this reason, IoT using DLT can be considered as “Internet of Trusted Things”. This paper considers tree basic DLT technologies according to their architecture: blockchain, tangle and hashgraph. Their characteristics are compared considering number of criteria, with the aim to find a proper architecture for a specific M2M application.