First IEEE Workshop on Blockchain Technologies and Applications (BTA) 2018

Call for Papers

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


Submission Info

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


Organization

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