Hyperledger > Case Studies > Step-by-step process leads Bosch to Hyperledger Labs with Perun layer-2 protocol

Step-by-step process leads Bosch to Hyperledger Labs with Perun layer-2 protocol

Customer Company Size

Large Corporate

Region

Europe

Country

Germany

Product

Perun

Tech Stack

Blockchain
Layer-2 Protocol
Ethereum
Polkadot
Cosmos

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Productivity Improvements
Innovation Output

Technology Category

Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Blockchain
Analytics & Modeling - Real Time Analytics

Applicable Industries

Electronics
Automotive

Applicable Functions

Discrete Manufacturing
Product Research & Development

Use Cases

Machine to Machine Payments
Smart Contracts

Services

Software Design & Engineering Services
System Integration

About The Customer

Bosch Research is an advanced research group of 1,800 people and part of The Bosch Group. The Bosch Group was founded in 1886 and currently employs 395,000 people with 2020 sales of € 71.5 billion ($80 billion). The company is active in everything from autonomous vehicles to thermal plants. The Economy of Things will touch many lines of business. That's why the company's advanced research group, Bosch Research, was looking into the Economy of Things in 2017. The Bosch Group comprises Robert Bosch GmbH and its roughly 440 subsidiary and regional companies in some 60 countries. With more than 400 locations worldwide, the Bosch Group has been carbon neutral since the first quarter of 2020. At 129 locations across the globe, Bosch employs some 73,000 associates in R&D, of which nearly 34,000 are software engineers.

The Challenge

Bosch Research was exploring the Economy of Things, where IoT devices will need to buy and sell to one another. The first challenge was creating a secure platform to support automated micropayments between 'things'. This suggested distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) such as blockchain. However, blockchains don't scale well. Reaching consensus on a transaction takes time. And tiny IoT devices have limited power, memory, processing, and connectivity. They certainly can't run heavy code. The question was how any blockchain could possibly work around all these constraints and how Bosch could help pioneer the standards needed for IoT devices to buy and sell among themselves.

The Solution

In 2017, Bosch researchers came across Perun, an early layer-2 protocol that passes state information off-chain through virtual channels. Bosch joined forces with several academics to implement this protocol and start creating an ecosystem, using a step-by-step strategy for open source. The project joined Hyperledger Labs in 2020, and the partners have now demoed Perun running with Ethereum, Polkadot, and Cosmos blockchains. The university spun off a new company, PolyCrypt GmbH, with funding from the German government. Perun was one of 2021’s 10 most active projects in Hyperledger Labs with developers completing an SDK and a library for embedded devices. Perun is now available for anyone looking for a fast, proven protocol to support micropayments.

Operational Impact