Taipei City to use IOTA’s distributed ledger technology for smart city

The IOTA Foundation, an open-source non-profit foundation from Germany, announced its partnership with Taipei City in order to help reach its smart city goals.

IOTA, which is the first distributed ledger technology (DLT) to go beyond a blockchain with a blockless protocol called the Tangle, enables machines to securely transact data and money with each other. It is the first step to further the shared data economy in IoT ecosystems, clearing the way for new applications and business models for mobility, energy, Industry 4.0, and more. The IOTA technology has already enabled millions of micropayments to be transacted, and has been utilized for use-cases including transparent value chains, secure Over-the-Air Updates and feeless micropayment-based electric vehicle charging, parking and more.

Now, IOTA and Taipei City will explore the possibilities of adapting IOTA’s technology to meet its smart city needs through a number of projects, seeking to improve data integrity and authenticity concerns in public services and other domains. The first project will be digital citizen cards with built-in TangleID. As Taipei City’s “Smart City Living Lab” opens to proof-of-concept projects, IOTA’s ultimate secure distributed ledger technology could help Taipei City’s digital citizen cards from being tampered with, allowing citizens to feel at ease without worrying about identity theft or fraud when voting, providing background medical record information, or using any government-related service. Other areas of exploration include healthcare, and inter-organization and inter-city data exchanges.

A project already underway is Airbox, a joint effort by Edimax, Realtek, Asus, and Academia Sinica, LASS and Taipei City, to create palm-sized air sensors that detect temperature, humidity, light, and pollution. Installed in citizens’ homes, as well as in 150 Taipei City elementary schools, Airbox is collecting and sharing air quality data online, making it one of the most comprehensive environmental sensor networks in the world. In cooperation with BiiLabs, the Airbox data will be put on the Tangle, in order to integrate incentivized payment in IOTA. This will enable a real-time air pollution monitoring with IOTA’s technology utilized by all the PM2.5 stations in Taiwan.

The IOTA Foundation will work with the Taipei City and BiiLabs, a startup focused on DLT, to explore more possibilities of incorporating IOTA’s Tangle and data marketplace into the smart city. IOTA’s data marketplace is an open innovation initiative, with the intention of showcasing how the IOTA protocol can enable such data marketplaces and how micropayment based business models will function in the future.

“IOTA is one of the innovative players in the cryptocurrency world because of its unique technology,” said Wei-bin Lee, Commissioner of the Department of Information Technology in Taipei City Government. “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.”

“The cooperation that is already underway with BiiLabs, IOTA, and Taipei City offers exciting possibilities for sustainability,” Lman Chu, Co-Founder of BiiLabs. “There is enormous potential for other opportunities with IOTA’s DLT for the Internet of Things, as well as Smart Cities.”

“We are so excited about teaming up with Taipei City,” said David Sønstebø, Co-Founder of the IOTA Foundation. “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.”

“Partnering with Taipei City lays new foundations for business models and real implementation of our technology,” said Dominik Schiener, Co-Founder of the IOTA Foundation. “It is great to see IOTA’s technology implemented in a variety of scenarios that will offer true value, even affecting voting fraud.”