Minima, a blockchain designed to manage transactions across the Internet of Things (IoT) consisting of mobile phones, cars and other devices, is teaming up with semiconductor giant ARM to develop a microchip with a decentralized ledger embedded in it.
Under the agreement announced Tuesday, Minima will partner with ARM’s Flexible Access Program, which gives about 70 startups access to the hardware giant’s intellectual property portfolio and chip design system. The “Minima Chip” will provide each device with a secure node that can authenticate data, generate tokens, enable peer-to-peer messaging and generally bring “blockchain everywhere,” the companies said.
The concept of IoT and blockchain first emerged with projects like IOTA, and the idea has become part of a broader trend in crypto known as decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN), which includes use cases around telecom (Helium) and storage (Filecoin) .
Much of Minima’s efforts to date have been in the automotive industry, working with companies like Volvo, running full nodes in car head units to do things like telemetry data attestation, battery passports and improving support flexibility of electric vehicle charging using tokens generated by a private wallbox. charge devices.
Blockchain-embedded chips offer a streamlined and secure design approach, unlike the initial testing phases in a sandbox, when it’s okay to download software, said Hugo Feiler, CEO of Minima. For live enterprise deployment, it is preferable to isolate the blockchain’s operations from the complexity of an existing tech stack by having it captured on a chip, he said.
Having each device do a proof of work is also a guarantee of decentralization, although the actual mining is done in a much more collaborative way using the Minima consensus system, Feiler said.
He used the analogy of a highway as a “classic example of a permissionless network.”
“It’s the path that everyone has to use, and you have Volvos, Audis and Teslas etc. that don’t trust each other, but they have to be able to trust the information and the data that comes from those devices,” Feiler said in an interview. “So it’s about enabling secure communication between these vehicles, and also transparent value, such as implementation in the EV charging infrastructure.”
Neil Parris, ARM’s director of partner success and business models, says the access program accelerates startup innovation and time to market.
“With ARM Flexible Access, new players like Minima will have a streamlined, cost-efficient route to prototyping, giving them the freedom to experiment and design with confidence,” Parris said in a statement.