Lower the blockchain cost with a secret algorithm, ITM put blockchain in your IoT devices

International Trust Machine(ITM) designed a breakthrough algorithm based on Merkle Tree, which can tremendously lower the cost of adding blocks on the blockchain, Drawing tech giants like Microsoft and MediaTek to develop IoT devices collaboratively with ITM.

"Software is eating the world," renowned venture capitalist Marc Andreessen coined the phrase in 2011; the digital era is coming. More and more data, information, and texts are becoming electronic these 30 years. As a result, how to manage tons of electronic data becomes an issue everyone wants to know.

"In the digital era, people may receive a variety of important official documents, official letters and, data only in electronic version, but how can people trust that there is no one tampering with the original documents and data? In other words, the core issue is TRUST, and we want to use blockchain to solve this pain point," said Julian Chen, CEO of International Trust Machine(ITM).

ITM CEO Julian Chen emphasis that ITM wants to use blockchain to solve the trust issue in the digital era / Photograph : 顏思允攝影

In 2009, given the distrust of central banks, Satoshi Nakamoto brought up Bitcoin, which is a peer-to-peer electronic cash system without intermediaries. For solving the trust issue in transactions, Satoshi Nakamoto developed the blockchain that the data can barely be altered on it. Since then, people have started to leverage the power of blockchain to tackle the trust issue in different industries.

However, adding data to the blockchain causes too much time, which means it is still hard to apply this technology. Targeting this problem, ITM Chief Scientist & Co-Founder professor Gwan-Hwan Hwang led the technical team to successfully develop the Transaction Positioned Merkle Tree algorithm, which can tremendously lower the time for adding data to the blockchain. "Because of the data structure of blockchain, usually querying data in blockchain will be 500 to 1000 times slower than querying data in the traditional database," Julian Chen said. "For example, last time I heard a blockchain company told me that they need 15 minutes to search for one piece of data. There is no way people can live with that. But with ITM's algorithm, we boost the efficiency of adding blocks and query data to make blockchain application realistic."

ITM brought up the Transaction Positioned Merkle Tree algorithm can increase the efficiency of the blockchain. / Photograph : ITM

Starting with strong technology expertise, ITM has won several awards within a year including an award from the Ministry of Science and Technology and ranked as No.2 in Qualcomm Innovate in Taiwan Challenge. Chief Scientist & Co-Founder doctor Gean-Hwan Hwang was the former vice dean at the college of science at National Taiwan Normal University. He has been conducting information-security-related research for over 20 years and published dozens of SCI journals as well as IEEE conference papers.

Once blockchain technology became lite and fast, ITM decided to put the algorithm in the IoT chips, and this move drew many tech giants like Microsoft and MTK to develop chips collaboratively with ITM.

Many tech companies have integrated ITM SDK with the MCU. / Photograph : ITM

ITM choose energy sector as their first goal, they team up with Microsoft to help Taiwan Power Company, which is a state-owned electric power industry providing electricity to Taiwan, solve the certify problem of green electricity.

As the world starts to value green energy and sustainability, government from different countries set the green electricity quata they need to meet, which means they must generate more electricity from renewable source like wind and solar, and the governments rewards those company that help generate green electricity.

To make sure companies do not fake the data, Taiwan Power Company installs Microsoft IoT chips in the machine to solve this problem. Powered by ITM algorithm, the IoT chips can verify the electricity source and ensure no one alter the data.

With the successful case of applying blockchain, ITM has expanded the business to different industries including cloud computing, smart manufacturing, and logistics. They now partner with many system integration companies aim on going to the global market. "ITM's target audience is clear: becoming an international company," Julian Chen said.

〔Original :Meet Global〕
https://meet-global.bnext.com.tw/articles/view/47328