IoT data notarization oracle on IOTA rebased: performance and cost evaluation on edge deployments

Abstract

Distributed ledger technologies (DLT) can enhance trust and auditability in the Internet of Things (IoT). Among them, IOTA has been specifically designed to support machine-to-machine interactions and IoT data anchoring through scalable DLT architectures. However, their integration with Low-Power Wide-Area Networks (LPWANs) remains limited due to device constraints, strict timing requirements, and the operational costs of on-chain transactions. The transition from the fee-less Stardust to the fee-based IOTA Rebased model introduces explicit transaction costs, questioning the viability of continuous IoT data anchoring. IOTA provides a suitable platform to examine the challenges of integrating distributed ledger technologies with LPWAN-based IoT systems. Its transition to a fee-based execution model raises important questions regarding cost predictability and performance in continuous data anchoring scenarios, particularly under the constraints of resource-limited and latency-sensitive environments. This article investigates the practicality of the execution and payment model introduced by IOTA Rebased for IoT scenarios requiring continuous data notarization. We provide an empirical evaluation of continuous IoT data notarization on the public IOTA Rebased Mainnet and characterize the performance implications on edge-oriented deployments, including resource-constrained and resource-rich devices. We implement a notarization oracle that ingests LoRaWAN uplinks from The Things Network (TTN), canonicalizes payloads, generates SHA-256 commitments, and records them on-chain through reusable notarization objects. The oracle enables continuous anchoring of IoT telemetry while minimizing transaction overhead through object reuse. Two 24-h experimental campaigns compare a notarization oracle on resource-constrained and resource-rich hardware under periodic workloads. Results show consistent steady-state gas consumption for UPDATE operations, indicating that object reuse enables stable on-chain cost behavior in IOTA Rebased regardless of the deployment platform. From a performance perspective, both environments achieve stable execution; however, the resource-constrained edge deployment exhibits higher median and tail latency, alongside tighter memory margins compared to the resource-rich centralized baseline. These findings confirm the feasibility of deploying notarization services on constrained edge infrastructure under the new fee-based model.