Poland Tests Blockchain Solution For Smart Cities

OST in Poland isn't an area typically associated with emerging tech, but that changed in late 2020. It was hard work to convince everybody that blockchain is something good. Now we have prepared some roadmap, how it works, how we can use it in other public authorities. Blockchain is often linked with cryptocurrencies, but techies say it's much more than that. It provides a decentralized, tamper-proof database where huge amounts of information can securely be stored and processed from a large number of devices across the network. Blockchain's been the talk of the town among smart city insiders for years. But there are few use cases that back up the buzz. Can Olsztyn Poland change that? We are today, we are... in the middle of the digital transformation. A major challenge is to build the inter -preparability solution to connect all public and private sectors to communicate with each other. The city felt blockchain could serve as that network, but it needed to test it first. That's when it developed its own public token to be used by tourists at major attractions. name was Copernicoin. You get some tokens and you can exchange them on a special platform, for example, for the cups, pens, souvenirs from our region. This project gives us something new about and given up knowledge about how blockchain works, what is the love problem. with implementing blockchain, what is the cryptocurrency, how it works, and other things. This project initially served as a way to learn about the tech, but it soon became the foundation for a citywide blockchain network for public services. It needed a communication standard to do that. It turned to SmartKey. SmartKey's technology acts as a connector that combines IoT devices with blockchain. It does this through NFT keys that are assigned to IoT. IoT devices. Olsgen put the solution to the test in a project called Rescue Without Barriers. In this experiment, rescuers were given phones with blockchain-enabled SIM cards provided by Orange. Those SIM cards gave rescuers immediate access to secure sites during an emergency. If you are appearing in front of the barrier, you are just pressing the button. If blockchain says, yes, that is the right key, sending the information through the blockchain. blockchain through the network to this controller, just open the barrier and that's it. The system is built on Orange's LiveObjects IoT platform. This platform manages IoT devices in the environment, and it now extends a blockchain network to these devices as well. Blockchain, in fact, just giving us the possibility to extend our responsibility because to manage access in their very... intensive you know an environment like city when you have different kind of gates doors barriers with different with different vendors of those solutions on the other hand you have thousands of different applications for instance Warsaw there are some applications which belong to the city there are you know hundreds of applications which belong to private equities or private companies that's why blog just give us this possibility to make some kind of standardization around it. And that opens up a number of opportunities beyond public safety. I want to park a car, for example, for one day, for a few hours, for the long term. I choose the best place and automatically the cost goes, the cash goes to the owner of the places. It's one of the things we... cooperate with one municipality. But in order for that to happen, cities need to make sure the law aligns with blockchain. For the city of Olsztyn, that meant... Now we start, we have something, build something not only technical, but there's some processes about using the blockchain, giving the access to this barrier. And the cost of the solution? It's very cheap, I think it's $2,000. okay for for implementing token the in -house we put the application we built the the special platform to to exchange this token for rescue the barriers we don't spend no money yes our part was to prepare the environment to implement this solution infrastructure is on site you have infrastructure you have the hardware which is current available, you can get it. Those small sales, even for us, which are controlling barriers, cost in fact dollars, not thousands of dollars, you know. Transmission around the blockchain is almost for free because this concept was created by SmartKey. It means not cost a lot. Some development of application and reusability of our live object is not cost a lot. because we are we everything have in the SaaS model you know it means that you are paying as you're growing. It all comes as the economic downturn caused by COVID -19 forces cities to operate more efficiently than ever before and experts say blockchain can help. It does this by addressing challenges currently faced by traditional IoT networks which could have difficulty scaling to a large amount of IoT devices that'll soon be on the network. They're also to be less secure. As a result, a number of cities are now beginning to test blockchain in some way. Estonia is using the technology to decentralize its personal identification in electric systems. And Dubai is developing use cases for blockchain across multiple sectors such as finance, education and transportation. So has this technology finally gone from buzzword to reality? Orange Poland seems to think so. The telecom says at least eight 80 cities in Poland have signed up for the service. We are not creating some buzzwords. We are creating real services with real clients and with real money behind of it. However, in the model like Google, Nike like the model on the telecom side, because as you know, Google created the ecosystem of hundreds of different applications that are paying small money for using and blockchain give... gives us this possibility for more coverage on blockchain and how it's impacting smart cities be sure to stick with current insights and if you have a question a story or a comment be sure to hit the button below