Blockchain systems, also referred to as distributed ledgers, or decentralized consensus networks, have been a rapidly evolving technology since the introduction of Bitcoin in 2008. Today, businesses around the globe are investigating Blockchain systems and attempting to assess the degree to which their business logic can be incorporated in Blockchain transactions. The interest of the businesses in Blockchain systems, accompanied with special requirements for strong identity management, transaction accountability, as well as the potential of concealing the logic itself from non-authorized counter-parties, gave a new twist to Blockchain systems research and business, that is now expanded to permissioned systems.
The first IEEE International workshop on Blockchain Technologies and Applications (BTA), co-located with International Conference on Cloud Engineering (IC2E) being held in Orlando Florida, will bring together researchers and industry practitioners. This workshop aims at discussing topics around practical, general-purpose, open, or permissioned Blockchain technologies as well as Blockchain-based applications to (novel) use-case problems. The workshop solicits submissions describing current work addressing Blockchain technologies and Blockchain-based applications, including analytical results, work on systems, and/or position papers. The topics include, but are not limited to:
Distributed ledgers
Consensus protocols
Ledger analytics
Consistency
Support for trusted execution of smart contracts
New architectures and paradigms
Smart contracts
Model checking of smart contracts
Smart contracts using serverless systems
Programming paradigms
Performance
Performance metrics for blockchain
Evaluation of consensus protocols (across multi-cloud deployments)
Security, Privacy, and Compliance
Strong identity management
Attacks on blockchain
Blockchain and compliance (e.g., GDPR, PCI)
Detecting and recovering from "malicious" transactions
Industry applications
Crypto currencies, healthcare, finance, supply chain, identity management, fraud detection, audit
Governance
Governance of distributed ledgers spanning clouds
Deployment and Operation
Deployment of distributed ledgers and smart contracts
Techniques for testing smart contracts
Interconnecting distributed ledgers on multiple clouds and customer data centers
Submissions are single blind and should follow the IEEE conference guidelines for formatting. They can be in one of the two formats: a traditional 6 page paper (excluding references) or a 1-2 page extended abstract/proposal for operational experiences and position pieces. The category of submission (paper or extended abstract) should be mentioned in the title of the submission.
Submissions will be judged on novelty, relevance, clarity of presentation, and correctness. Authors of accepted submissions are required to present their work. Accepted papers and abstracts will be made available in the conference website at least one week before the workshop, so that the participants can come prepared having read the papers. Accepted submissions will published via IEEE eXplore.
Submission link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=bta2018
Important dates:
Submission Deadline: January 13, 2018 @ 23:59pm GMT - EXTENDED
Author Notification: Feb 1st, 2018
Camera-ready Deadline: Feb 5, 2018
Workshop date: April 17, 2018
General chair
Salman Baset, IBM
Program committee chair
Elli Androulaki, IBM Research Zurich
Tien Tuan Anh Dinh, National University of Singapore
Program committee
Giuseppe Ateniese, Stevens Institute of Technology
Greg Adamson, University of Melbourne
Shehar Bano, University College London
Salman Baset, IBM
Christian Decker, Blockstream
Karim Eldefrawy, SRI
Chen Feng, UBC Okanagan Campus
Aquinas Hobor, National University of Singapore, Yale-NUS
Suman Jana, Columbia University
Philipp Jovanovic, EPFL
Ghassan Karame, NEC Labs
Eric Lo - Chinese University of Hongkong
Satya Lokam, Microsoft Research India
Beng Chin Ooi - NUS
Malek Ben Salem, Accenture Labs
Marko Vukolić, IBM Research