## 1 Introduction
DLTs counter these threats through decentralized  
Figure 1: Standard IoT layered architecture with three main layers. consensus and P2P communication models that eliminate reliance on centralized intermediaries, often a single point of failure in traditional systems. Trust and reputation mechanisms built on DLTs can detect and isolate malicious nodes, while the distributed nature of ledger updates ensures network robustness against routing-based manipulation and congestion. The Application Layer is vulnerable to malicious code injection, unauthorized access, and data breaches, which compromise end-user privacy and service availability. DLTs can mitigate these threats by enabling fine-grained, rule-based access control and distributed storage mechanisms. Through cryptographic access permissions and smart contracts, DLT-based systems can enforce privacy-preserving data sharing and prevent unauthorized interactions with application services. Among DLT solutions, Holochain emerges as a particularly suitable framework for IoT environments due to its agent-centric architecture, scalability, and ability to operate effectively on resource-constrained devices. This study proposes a Holochain-based framework as a decentralized and resource-efficient alternative to traditional architectures, capable of mitigating common attacks across the IoT stack. Holochain's lightweight architecture and ability to scale without compromising security or performance while maintaining low overhead make it a promising candidate for IoT applications. This research explores the potential of Holochain in providing decentralized solution that aims to improve data integrity, trust, and security across distributed IoT networks. Through this paper, we aim to provide an in-depth review of Holochain's capabilities, compare it with other leading DLTs, and propose a conceptual framework, _HoloSec_, for securing IoT distributed networks. We also present a practical scenario in healthcare application, demonstrating Holochain setup and implementation. Ultimately, we explore the challenges of Holochain application in decentralized IoT networks and outline future research directions aimed at enhancing its interoperability, scalability, security, and regulatory compliance in IoT environments. The main contributions of this paper are summarized as follows:  
* A comprehensive review of DLTs in the context of resource-constrained IoT environments, highlighting the motivation for adopting Holochain over traditional blockchain. * Introduction of the _HoloSec_ framework, a conceptual security solution that integrates Holochain's agent-centric architecture with advanced cryptographic mechanisms and machine learning for enhanced IoT network protection. * Implementation of a Holochain-based IoT network tailored to a healthcare scenario, providing practical insights into real-world deployment. * Empirical performance comparison between Holochain and traditional blockchain, demonstrating Holochain's superior latency (50 ms publish, 30 ms retrieve) and throughput (20 TPS vs. blockchain's 10 TPS) in a single-node setup. * Identification of key research challenges and future directions related to the integration of Holochain in IoT, including scalability, interoperability, security, and regulatory compliance. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 reviews the literature, provides a comparison of Holochain with other DLTs, including blockchain, Tangle (IOTA), Hashgraph, and Sidechains, and discusses recent applications of IoT networks in Holochain-based solutions. Section 3 introduces the _HoloSec_ framework, a proposed Holochain security framework for IoT distributed networks, leveraging Holochain's agent-centric architecture, advanced cryptography, and machine learning. Section 4 presents an experimental evaluation of Holochain in a healthcare IoT network scenario.