Across Poland, an NFT developer’s SIM cards are turning mobile phones into a key that opens up the smart cities of tomorrow.
Blockchain developer SmartKey’s Live Objects technology is using non-fungible tokens and the Internet of Things to create a smart technology network that can manage bike sharing systems, read electric meters, and even unlock doors for emergency services workers.
Working with the major European mobile service provider Orange in 80 cities across Poland, Live Objects is building a Blockchain Internet of Things (BIoT) to become the infrastructure provider of choice for smart cities of the future.
Far from being another key fob like the ones that turn on car engines, Live Objects lives directly on the SIM card in every mobile device, which means any Orange device connected to the SmartKey blockchain network — which is publicly available — is able generate and distribute standardized smart NFTs usable in any Orange device worldwide.
“To enable Blockchain of Things devices to operate within the smart city of the future, we created a universal communication standard to connect devices over short distances,” says Szymon Fiedorowicz, CEO and co-founder of SmartKey. “This cooperation with Orange, the leader of urban IoT services in Poland, will help our solution become a connective tissue for smart cities and cement our role in the smart city of the future.”
The technology, Fiedorowicz adds, will “open up a world of new possibilities of using the Internet of Things.”
Making smart cities smarter
NFTs are at the heart of SmartKey’s Ethereum-based technology, providing a unique token — a virtual key — that in combination with Orange network’s security standards prevent unauthorized acts as a proof of ownership for smart city IoT functions. Thanks to blockchain technology, that virtual key is programmable, interoperable and transferable, but not cloneable or reprogrammable. So, an NFT could provide service workers like a plumber — or a plumbing firm — access to an apartment for a single day.
Orange’s SmartKey-enabled mobiles will be able to handle more complex device control tasks. A car share program could use Live Object NFTs to not only let renters turn on the car but control access to it based on anything from the time of day to whether the users’ account is paid up to date. It could also automatically close out the rental when it is returned to a garage and even add a charge if the gas tank wasn’t refilled.
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The flexibility of the SmartKey NFTs make the technology suitable for a wide range of urban and commercial services, ranging from parking lots and public transportation to the loading and refueling of trucks, and even the fledgling distributed energy market.
Smart devices are not a new idea anymore — there are two million of them connected by Orange machine-to-machine cards in Poland alone, says Sebastian Grabowski, director of IoT and advanced technologies at Orange.
“However, even a wide range of such devices does not create a network in itself, just as a collection of houses does not create a city,” Grabowski explains. “We also need an infrastructure that connects IoT technology with the end user, and this is what blockchain provides.”
This combination, he adds, “is a real revolution not only in the world of technology, but also in the global economy.”
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