Providing a cognitive blockchain for user privileges is provided. A distributed secure encrypted ledger is established for storing information related to privileges for users across a plurality of nodes in a permissioned network with known identities. An internet of things (IoT) device node in the plurality of nodes records a first block in the distributed secure encrypted ledger containing activity information related to a privilege corresponding to a user of the IoT device node. A licensing node in the plurality of nodes evaluates information in the first block. The licensing node records a second block containing privilege information corresponding to the user of the IoT device node based on the evaluating.