IOTA’s Tangle Protocol to Transform Taipei into a Smart City
The city of Taipei has joined hands with IOTA foundation to achieve it smart city goals. The capital of Taiwan is striving to integrate the technology’s “blockless” distributed ledger technology, Tangle, to its multiple programs of the smart city project.
A New Era of Blockchain Smart Cities
The Taipei smart city project was initiated last year in which the city introduced multiple pilot projects in most of the townships. These experimental projects include intelligent roadside parking and smart citizen cards that could be used for numerous purposes.
Wei-bin-Lee, Commissioner of the Department of Information Technology in Taipei city government, said:
“IOTA is one of the innovative players in the cryptocurrency world because of its unique technology. With Taipei City always thinking ahead and with IOTA’s technology, this partnership is a strategic move to usher in the era of smart cities to the citizens of Taipei. We welcome the IOTA Foundation to Taipei City and are excited to embark on the future together.”
David Sonstebo, Co-Founder of IOTA foundation iterated the commissioner’s comments with, “We are so excited about teaming up with Taipei City.”
Taipei municipality and the IOTA Foundation teams up on Taipei's Smart City Living Lab initiative together with @biilabsrocks to make Taiwan's capital a leading smart city.#IOTA #smartcity pic.twitter.com/mS8M0O5Kxa
— IOTA (@iota) January 30, 2018
The non-profit foundation uses directed acyclic graph (DAG), opposed to standard blockchain technology, which makes transactions completely free irrespective of the size of the amount. IOTA states that its system is capable of managing multiple transactions at a time. At press time, IOTA is the tenth largest cryptocurrency by market cap according to Coinmarketcap data.
Smart City Projects
Sonstebo pointed that the new technology is inclined to be a real-world use case. He said:
“It proves that our next-generation technology is ready for real-world use cases and is more than just a theory. We’re just beginning to scratch the surface of the effect IOTA can have on making the world of IoT ever-more connected and paving the way for not just smart cities, but a smart world.”
The first phase of the project is to create citizen ID cards with built-in TangleID to make it tamper proof. The project aims to terminate any chance of identity theft and voter fraud. Additionally, the project will be designed to operate as a database to maintain public and personal records of citizens.
According to Lman Chu, co-founder of Biilabs, a startup examining IOTA technology for its use in Smart city project, said:
“TangleID changes the role of the identifier more secure [sic] by turning it into an encrypted asset. Because it’s encrypted, no one can copy or spoof it. Only the owner can unlock it. TangleID also stores personal attributes separately from the identifier by means of storing these attributes with a small number of trusted third party institutions.”
Alongside TangleID, IOTA is working on another project with Taipei city, Airbox. Airbox will employ data sharing technology for palm-sized air sensors installed around the city that would detect temperature, light, and pollution. The project intends to provide real-time information to Taipei residents. Initially, these sensors would be installed in 150 Taipei city elementary schools and residents homes.
Will other major cities employ blockchain technology to build a smarter lifestyle? Let us know your opinion in the comments section.
