Hi Cardano community,
I am a BS Computer Science Software Engineering student working on our undergraduate thesis called SolarTrust, a Blockchain-IoT incentive software system for sustainable household solar energy management. The system integrates IoT energy monitoring via a local industry partner’s API with Cardano blockchain-verified record keeping and a gamified reward mechanism. We use Blockfrost as our REST API layer and Lucid for transaction construction.
Our thesis panel asked us to consult a blockchain expert to validate our technical decisions before we finalize our revisions. We would really appreciate any insights from this community on the following:
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Is Cardano and Blockfrost an appropriate choice for an IoT energy incentive system at household scale, or are there architectural concerns we should address?
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Our panel raised the Oracle Problem - sensor tampering could result in fake data being immutably recorded on-chain. Is implementing an Anomaly Detection Algorithm at the backend layer before data reaches the blockchain a sufficient mitigation for this?
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We are considering a Data Aggregation approach where IoT readings are collected off-chain and a single Merkle Root hash is submitted to Cardano periodically instead of each individual reading. Is this approach sound, and what aggregation interval would you recommend - hourly or daily?
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Does an architecture combining IoT validation, cryptographic batching, and a dynamic reward computation algorithm constitute a meaningful Computer Science contribution, or does it lean more toward IT implementation?
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Are there existing blockchain-IoT energy systems with similar architecture to SolarTrust that you are aware of and could point us toward?
Thank you so much for any guidance. This consultation will be documented and credited in our thesis.