A Tripartite Partnership to Create Smart Cities

IOTA announced on Friday that it has partnered with two innovative firms, Tanglehub and the Observer Foundation. The trio intends to revolutionize the real estate industry in Asia and Europe through the use of smart city technology.

Beginning in 2021, South East Asia, South Korea, and Europe will be the focal point of the project’s development. 

According to Holger Köther, the Director of Partnership for the IOTA Foundation, the alliance will be instrumental in the evolution of smart city design. It will bridge the gap between the real and digital world. 

Köther explains:

“As the Observer Foundation is committed to collaborating with the IOTA Foundation on South Korean projects, this will also be a vice versa commitment. The Observer Foundation will be introduced into smart city projects where IOTA plays a large role.”

He continued:

“With Tanglehub’s expertise, we have already started first tests to integrate IOTA into Observers environmental stations, securing data directly at the source.”

This development is in line with the project’s mission to enable an environment fully compatible with distributed ledger technology (DLT). 

Smart City Design

The process of digitizing smart cities by integrating the IoT (Internet of Things) remains a priority for the cryptocurrency’s Tangle technology. Data security and privacy are front and center for all parties.

TangleHub CEO, Dennis Schouten, revealed his companies involvement with IOTA since its inception. He expressed excitement in the partnership, adding that he believes in the potential synergies. He also believes the project has the competence to develop the necessary digital solutions.

Quoting Schoute: 

“We have been actively developing with IOTA since its inception and are convinced of its potential to provide a global secure and scalable infrastructure for data, micropayments, digital twins and many other use-cases.”

He added that,

“With the upcoming version of the protocol and additional standardizations, IOTA will provide the basis to develop production-ready solutions. We are excited to work with the IOTA Foundation and the Observer Foundation in smart city projects.”

IOTA Market Sentiment

The token was little changed on the news and traded around $0.45 a coin at press time. IOTA has managed a 60% gain since November, though, has largely underperformed compared with other top-tier coins.

Several European cities, including Munich, are already trialing blockchain-based smart city solutions.