Over the past several decades, our society has undergone an unprecedented transformation; the digital age is undeniably here, and has been for some time. Exponential advances in human technological capability have created, not just new devices, but entire industries and novel ways of interacting with all elements of our increasingly connected global society.
The Internet of Things is rapidly becoming central to our new world, one where IoT sensors have become ubiquitous in day-to-day life. Smartphones, smartwatches, drones, sensors—and much more—headline a seemingly endless array of IoT tech. This has impacted virtually every industry on earth: energy, logistics, medicine, fitness, as well as countless others.
Beyond Protocol aims to become a backbone of IoT by providing developers and chip manufacturers a new set of tools; one capable of building endless applications on top of IoT sensors and microcontrollers. These apps and devices will then connect to a secure, decentralized network powered by intelligent autonomous contracts—a connected world powered by Beyond Protocol.
To fully understand the purpose of Beyond Protocol, as well as our ongoing mission, the two main problems currently facing IoT must first be understood. Put simply, they are:
Security
Interoperability
Firstly, no existing IoT standard has been built from the ground up to solve for unauthorized access. Hacks and exploits are paralyzing innovation and preventing us from opening our devices up for collaboration. Additionally, there are inherent challenges in securing a vast network of myriad device types (many of which have relatively modest hardware capabilities); especially in the absence of common network standards. This point segues nicely into the second problem identified above—interoperability.
Chip manufacturers are producing new sensors, microcontrollers, and other chips on a daily basis, pushing the boundaries of IoT tech. Each manufacturer is building an ecosystem with its own unique Software Development Kit (SDK), which allows developers to build products and applications using the manufacturer’s IoT product(s). So the second major industry-wide problem is the lack of any singular protocol to connect devices from different manufacturers. The existing “closed-silo” paradigm represents a great deal of developmental sunk cost for these companies.
Beyond Protocol’s solution is powerful and elegant—a highly flexible protocol that combines blockchain and hardware signatures, providing a probabilistically unhackable foundation for anyone to build on. Blockchain is an immutable public ledger, creating a reliable permanent record of all network activity; hardware signatures securely identify each network device, permitting a safe basis for collaboration in a trusted environment.
