Special Track on

Blockchain and Decentralized technologies for social good (BANDIT)


4-6 September 2024, Bremen, Germany

in conjunction with

ACM International Conference on Information Technology for Social Good (GoodIT2024)


 

Social good has a big impact on society. Indeed, the term “social good” refers to something which benefits the general public, and at the same time, it is something which reflects and respects their wishes, being ‘from’ the people. The social good can be envisioned as global citizens uniting to unlock the potential of individuals through collaboration to create a positive societal impact. Much interest has been produced in the last years, and new proposals and technologies have been considered. Among them, Blockchain, distributed ledger technologies, and decentralized technologies in general, such as IPFS, have been considered to improve all the aspects of the social good. Blockchain and decentralized technologies have had a big impact on the world. In particular, Blockchain technology has been applied to several fields, such as e-health, IoT, media, etc. The big question around the definition of this track is: “How does the blockchain have a big impact on the social good? And how can decentralization improve the ICT industries?”. The track manages the possible application of decentralized technologies in research fields included in the global scope of the social good. These address sectors such as agriculture, supply chain traceability, energy, health, property rights and digital identities, ranging from a global to a local scope. More recently in the realm of civic participation, civil society initiatives and social economies, blockchains are being tested to implement collaborative models: social finance and local currency schemes, peer-to-peer production and exchanges, decentralized organizations management and decision-making, purpose-driven tokens that incentivize pro-social behaviors, etc.

Examples of applications involving considerable experimentation and innovation are complementary and community currency systems. These systems aim to support humanitarian aid initiatives, self-organizing local community development and basic income projects.

These involve novel tokenization mechanisms based on smart contracts that necessitate further investigation and discussion. While the revolutionary potential of blockchains has been largely tested (in the financial domain in particular), its possible applications in social domains and to address sustainability challenges have been explored far less.


This special track aims to explore and debate the main concepts and implications of blockchain technology, how it can be a driver of innovation and its positive effects on our societies, industry, legal systems and economic/financial systems. Also, the risks and uncertainties that blockchain arrows are welcome to be debated in this section, as regards: conflicts arising from the introduction, in mutable social interactions, of logics based on tokenization, automation, and trustlessness; energy consumption and environmental impacts; technical accessibility and digital skill divides.


This special track will provide both academic and industry researchers with a forum to discuss the impact, future, and limitations of blockchain technology regarding its effect across specific industries, economics, finance, law, civil society initiatives, social economies, the not-for-profit sector, etc.


TOPICS of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:


Important Dates




SUBMISSION GUIDELINES


Please submit your papers through our online submission portal, available at https://goodit2024.hotcrp.com/

Paper Lengths

Papers should be a maximum of 12 pages, including references, tables, and figures. Documents with a length disproportionate to their contribution will be rejected.

For format requirements check here: https://blogs.uni-bremen.de/goodit2024/submission-of-papers/