An Evaluation of Distributed Ledger Technologies for the Internet of Things

The aim of this work will be the study of different distributed ledger technologies in IoT context. The main objective will be to identify the limits that intrinsically render unsuitable the distributed ledgers in real time scenarios, possible solutions or new technologies that enable this union. In order to succeed, technologies already known, such as Ethereum, or new technologies that are more suited to the IoT context, such as IOTA or Radix, will be analyzed. The behaviors of the just mentioned distributed ledgers will be analyzed in particular through tests that measure their degree of scalability, availability and in general their performance in real-time scenarios, specific of the IoT, where the transactions load they have to register is able to stress their architecture. Thanks to the tests it will be possible to notice not only the reactivity of mechanisms that govern these networks (transaction validation, consensus), but also the hardware limits of the nodes that constitute networks themselves. The test results will be analyzed to obtain certain answers, thanks to descriptive statistics, but above all to have a final comparison between the different technologies treated. It will possible to notice how some of the technologies discussed have different limits, while others succeed almost in the intent of a harmonious union. This is to say that we are still far from a perfect integration between distributed ledgers and IoT devices, but progress is rapid and new technologies are very promising. Thanks to the data collected and to what has been learned, it will also be possible to identify possible future scenarios, in which an integration of the technologies studied in this thesis will not be unusual