Performance Evaluation of IOTA Tangle and EVM Blockchain Over LoRaWAN IoT Access Networks

Abstract

The growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) has highlighted the limitations of centralized data platforms, particularly in terms of security and scalability. Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) offer a solution, but traditional DLT architectures, such as blockchain, are often incompatible with low-power wireless IoT networks (LPWAN) due to their latency and operational cost. This paper presents a comparative and empirical performance analysis of two end-to-end data oracle systems designed to record data from a LoRaWAN sensor network. The first implementation uses IOTA Tangle, while the second is based on a blockchain compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). By evaluating key indicators such as latency and transaction costs, our results demonstrate that the IOTA system offers significant superiority, with a predictable median latency of 4.47 seconds and transaction costs that are economically negligible. In contrast, the blockchain implementation incurred measurable gas costs and demonstrated an architecture with inherently higher and extremely unpredictable latency, with a median of 11.52 seconds and outliers exceeding 200 seconds. We conclude that the IOTA Tangle architecture is technologically and economically better prepared to support scalable and sustainable IoT applications over wireless infrastructures.