CALL FOR PAPERS - ACM SAC 2026 – DAPP Track

The 41th ACM Symposium on Applied Computing, March 23rd – 27th 2026, Thessaloniki, Greece
https://www.sigapp.org/sac/sac2026/
Track: Decentralized Applications and Platforms (DAPP) with Blockchain, DLT and Crypto-Currencies
The most up-to-date information can always be found on the ACM SAC DAPP track Website:
https://www.cas-blockchain-certification.com/en/acm-sac-dapp-track


Proceedings in the ACM digital library!

After the successful ACM SAC 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 DAPP tracks, the goal of the ACM SAC 2026 DAPP track is to continue to review the set of decentralized applications that benefit from the use of blockchains, other distributed ledger technologies (DLT) such as Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) and crypto-currencies. Blockchain has gained momentum since it was brought to light by Bitcoin around 15 years ago. Since then, new DLTs have been proposed and applied in many different application domains such as finance, supply chain, IoT, notarization, credentials in education, art NFT… As the applications are decentralized and may involve payments and other financial activities, the track will also cover related legal contributions and include lawyers and law professors working with DLTs and crypto-currencies in its program committee. This year has a special focus on decentralized communication platforms!

We would like to emphasize that we may accept the submission of industrial experience reports, commercial tools case studies, and reports of innovative computing applications if they are written scientifically.

The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
• Practical use of blockchain, DLT, crypto-currencies, and NFT in the real world, online, or in the metaverse
• Application of decentralized consensus algorithms and protocols
• Attack-resistant decentralized trust systems
• DAPP with Artificial Intelligence (AI)
• Decentralized communication platforms
• Decentralized Identifiers (DID), Web 3.0 and decentralized Web
• Computational trust and risk engines
• DAPP integrated development environments (IDE)
• DAPP, blockchain, DLT, and/or crypto-currencies software engineering
• Permissioned and permissionless DAPP designs, implementations, and testing
• Peer-to-peer systems (IPFS, DAG…)
• Performance of DAPP, blockchain, DLT and/or crypto-currencies
• Interoperability between different blockchains/DLT
• Computational social models of decentralized applications
• Standardization of blockchain, DLT, NFT, stablecoins, CBDC and/or crypto-currencies
• Security and formal verification of DAPP, blockchain, DLT and/or crypto-currencies
• Hardware security modules use in DAPP, blockchain, DLT, and/or crypto-currencies
• Legal aspects (smart contracts, utility tokens, security tokens, stablecoins, ICO, STO, NFT, metaverse...)
• Business models and economics of DAPP, blockchain, DLT, crypto-currencies, NFT and metaverse
• Economics aspects (decentralized finance, tokenomics, other incentives, and sustainability mechanisms)
• Usability and user studies of DAPP, blockchain, DLT and/or crypto-currencies
• Privacy issues and protection (Zero Knowledge Proof, DID…)

Submission guidelines are posted on the ACM SAC DAPP Web site, which always contains the latest updates. The ACM SAC papers/reviews management tool will be used. The average number of double-blind reviews per paper will be equal to 3 or even greater. Authors are invited to submit full papers about original and unpublished research. Parallel submission to other conferences, other tracks of SAC or any other publications is forbidden. Papers submitted should not have been previously published and should not be subsequently published in the same form elsewhere. Submissions should be properly anonymized to facilitate blind reviewing: papers being submitted should not list the authors, affiliations or addresses on the first page and authors are also encouraged to take care throughout the entire document to minimise references that may reveal the identity of the authors or institution. Papers failing to comply with anonymization or length limitations risk immediate rejection. Be aware that the average acceptance rate per track should be under 25%. Please check the author kit on the main SAC website: the format is usually the format used in the ACM templates. Student Research Competition (SRC) papers can only be at maximum 4 pages long. The length of full papers is 8 pages including references and all appendices (included in the registration) + 2 pages (at extra charge) = 10 pages maximum including references and all appendices. Papers that received high reviews (that is acceptable by reviewer standards) but were not accepted due to space limitation can be invited for the poster session. The length of poster papers is 3 pages including references and all appendices (included in the registration) + 1 page (at extra charge) = 4 pages maximum including references and all appendices. Paper registration is required, allowing the inclusion of the paper/poster in the conference proceedings. An author or a proxy attending SAC MUST present the paper: This is a requirement for the paper/poster to be included in the ACM/IEEE digital library. No-show of scheduled papers and posters will result in excluding them from the ACM/IEEE digital library.

IMPORTANT DUE DATES
• September 26, 2025: Submission of papers
• October 31, 2025: Notification of paper acceptance/rejection
• March 23 – 27, 2026: Presentations in Thessaloniki, Greece

Track Program Co-Chairs:
• Jean-Marc Seigneur, University of Geneva, Switzerland
• Kristián Košťál, Slovak University of Technology, Slovakia


Important update on ACMs new open access publishing model for 2026 ACM Conferences:

Starting January 1, 2026, ACM will fully transition to Open Access. All ACM publications, including those from ACM-sponsored conferences, will be 100% Open Access. Authors will have two primary options for publishing Open Access articles with ACM: the ACM Open institutional model or by paying Article Processing Charges (APCs). With over 1,800 institutions already part of ACM Open, the majority of ACM-sponsored conference papers will not require APCs from authors or conferences (currently, around 70-75%).
Authors from institutions not participating in ACM Open will need to pay an APC to publish their papers, unless they qualify for a financial or discretionary waiver. To find out whether an APC applies to your article, please consult the list of participating institutions in ACM Open and review the APC Waivers and Discounts Policy. Keep in mind that waivers are rare and are granted based on specific criteria set by ACM.
Understanding that this change could present financial challenges, ACM has approved a temporary subsidy for 2026 to ease the transition and allow more time for institutions to join ACM Open. The subsidy will offer:

$250 APC for ACM/SIG members
$350 for non-members
This represents a 65% discount, funded directly by ACM. Authors are encouraged to help advocate for their institutions to join ACM Open during this transition period. This temporary subsidized pricing will apply to all conferences scheduled for 2026.

The most up-to-date information, including the Program Committee, can be found on the ACM SAC DAPP track Website:
https://www.cas-blockchain-certification.com/en/acm-sac-dapp-track