IOTA is on Renault’s short list of compatible DLTs, says VP of blockchain

• Odile Panciatici, vice president of Renault’s blockchain division, revealed details of the partnership with the IOTA Foundation.
• Ethereum’s congestion makes it incompatible with Renault’s use of blockchain technology.

Groupe Renault’s Vice President blockchain, Odile Panciatici, participated in the conference “How Blockchain can transform the Automotive Industry”. Panciatici spoke about the partnerships with the IOTA Foundation, GAIA-X, cybersecurity, and the factors that determine the successful implementation of a blockchain project.

Renault and the IOTA Foundation are cooperating partners in the Mobility Open Blockchain Initiative (MOBI). Chaired by General Motors (GM), Honda, and supported by Accenture, CPChain, IBM, the IOTA Foundation, Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E), Politecnico di Torino and R3, the initiative has been created with the objective of promoting and creating solutions for smart mobility based on blockchain technology.

In a Q&A round, Panciatici stated that in the blockchain ecosystem it is important to know how to choose which projects are the most suitable to apply to a given use case. As part of the cooperation with the IOTA Foundation, Renault has developed a framework and defined criteria to determine how they integrate IOTA and other blockchain capabilities into a solution.

Renault chooses its partners after following a benchmarking process, as Panciatici stated:

We work with the IOTA Foundation and based on the need you have the development of things on the blockchain. So you need to have a very good market surveey on the technology (…) based on that we identify (…) we define and evaluate each solution to test the resilience of the technology and the protocol.

As Odile said, the blockchain division needs to know approximately how much information can be handled by a blockchain. For example, a network with high volume and low scalability could be incompatible.

Ethereum incompatible in contrast to IOTA

The car manufacturer’s Blockchain VP stated that Ethereum is “inconsistent” when referring to the volume of information it can process. As users of this blockchain should know, Ethereum is a network that is dealing with congestions issues and high fees making it incompatible with the use Renault seeks to implement. Panciatici also remarked:

So we know it’s not a good solution, but it could very well be another use case. So we have defined a criteria and based on that, we can see if it (a blockchain) is relevant or not. Frankly speaking, you have thousands of protocols, but we have four…. A short list that can support this kind of big things. We’re talking about projects with ecosystems.

Panciatici said that to integrate IOTA’s blockchain technology or integrate with any other blockchain it is important to create a proof of concept and “think about the next step.” Otherwise, cooperation could end in incompatibility with the scale that the use case needs.