Let's recall an important item that was mentioned in Chapter 3, Explaining Blockchain Technology and Working with Hyperledger. Here are a few questions that can be used to identify a good use case for blockchain:
- Is there a business network?
Yes—producers, manufactures, transportation companies, and retail stores.
- Is there a transaction that needs validation or consensus?
Yes—recording who owns what, and when and where an asset is in the supply chain.
- Are audit trails important (showing provenance)?
Yes—customer requests, regulatory agency requirements.
- Is there any need to track data changes (data immutability and finality)?
Yes—it involves different companies, and asset(s) are passed on from one party to another, which has different levels of control.
So, our food chain example meets all the pertinent requirements for being a suitable use case for blockchain. But how does IoT feature in this scenario?
In more ways than one. For example, smart farming based on IoT will enable growers and farmers to reduce unnecessary waste and enhance productivity, ranging from the quantity of fertilizer utilized to the number of journeys farm vehicles make for a harvest. Food contamination and its consequences can be prevented by detecting potential trouble before it happens.
IoT allows for such real-time monitoring; it not only checks historical data checks but also provides cost savings as sensors allow maintenance engineers to notice changes to equipment in near real-time.