Last week, when my charging pile automatically completed the 1389th transaction, I truly realized that the future economy is not about transfers between people, but rather about silent settlements between machines. That device, in an unattended state, automatically collected money, split accounts, and even 'paid itself' for maintenance services through the Polygon network.
Why does the Internet of Things need its own central bank?
Traditional payments completely fail in the machine economy:
Credit card fees eat into small profits
Cross-border settlement takes 3 working days
There is no programmable automatic splitting function
The smart contract I deployed on Polygon has a cost of $0.001 per transaction, with a settlement time of 2 seconds, perfectly supporting a real-time payment network for charging piles, solar panels, and shared devices.
Four real operating cases of money printing
Smart charging pile matrix
Automatic deduction per kilowatt-hour, income proportionally shared with venue, operator, and maintenance party
→ Average monthly revenue per pile increased by 40%Rooftop photovoltaic power station
Surplus electricity real-time bidding, sold to the nearest demand side
→ Power generation revenue increased by 23%Edge server cluster
Automatically charged based on computing duration, supports second-level billing
→ Resource utilization rate reaches 91%Agricultural sensor network
Weather data sold to insurance companies per instance
→ Create entirely new revenue streams
Three core elements of technology implementation
As an engineer who has deployed multiple IoT protocols, I simplified complex architectures into three key components:
Device identity card system
Each device has its own encrypted wallet
Prevent counterfeit transactions
Support for hierarchical access management
Compatible with existing hardware
Flow payment engine
Using state channel technology to achieve:
Billing by the second (e.g., charging settled every minute)
Batch on-chain (reducing gas fees by 90%)
Real-time arrival (no clearing delay)
Compliance channel design
Through stablecoin conversion and regulatory sandbox:
Automatic tax calculation
Meet KYC requirements
Support fiat currency withdrawal
90-day startup blueprint
Month 1: Choose EV charging or shared office equipment scenarios, deploy 10 test devices
Month 2: Develop automatic settlement dashboard, connect to USDC stablecoin
Month 3: Expand to 200 devices, optimize rate strategy
Risks and solutions
Data credibility → Using multiple oracles for verification
Device hijacking → Hardware-level security module protection
Regulatory uncertainty → Choose clearly defined energy trading areas
Future imagination: When everything has payment capabilities
Your self-driving car can earn road fees on its own
Home energy storage systems sell electricity during peak prices
Surveillance cameras earn revenue by providing traffic data
This is no longer the Internet of Things, but the eve of the explosion of the value Internet.
Soul-searching question
When machines gain economic autonomy, are we creating a more efficient society, or have we sown the seeds of loss of control?
Support for technological innovation in 【evolution】
Concerns about uncontrolled risks in 【caution】
Within 36 hours, I will DM the (device economic startup toolkit) to the 20 most practical comments, including:
Audited smart contract code library
Device integration SDK and documentation
Multi-industry rate design model
Compliance checklist
The cases mentioned in this article are all based on empirical data, and specific revenues vary by scenario. The cryptocurrency market has volatility risks, and investments should be cautious.
