IEEE 1st Workshop on Blockchain theoRy and ApplicatIoNs (BRAIN 2020)

in conjunction with ISCC, 25-th IEEE International Symposium on Computer and Communications

7 July 2020, online

***** Please note the following update due to COVID *********************************

The BRAIN workshop will be held online and the accepted papers will be published in IEEExplore if the authors provide a online presentation and/or a video. The registration fees will be reduced as follows:

- Workshop Author Member Fee: *100 Euros*

- Workshop Authors Non-Member Fee: *125 Euros*

The submission deadline has been extended to May 9th 2020.

**************************************************************************************

Workshop Co-chairs

Damiano Di Francesco Maesa, University of Cambridge, UK
Laura Ricci, University of Pisa, Italy
Nishanth Sastry, King's College, London, UK


Important Dates

Paper Submission: 9 May 2020
Notification: 29 May 2020
Camera Ready: 8 June 2020


Weblink: https://sites.google.com/view/brain-2020/home


Special Issue: Authors of papers presented at this workshop will be invited to submit an extended version of the paper to a Special Issue of an International Journal. The details of this special issue will be published soon.


Scope and Motivation

A blockchain protocol is employed to implement a tamper free distributed ledger which stores transactions created by the nodes of a P2P network and agreed upon through a distributed concensus algorithm, avoiding the need for a central authority. Blockchain technology has a great potential to radically change our socio-economical systems by guaranteeing secure transactions between untrusted entities, reducing their cost and simplifying many processes. Such technology is going to be exploited in many different areas like IoT, social networking, health care, electronic voting and so on.
Even if several applications are already leveraging its disruptive potentials, further research and development is required for several challenging aspects like scalability, effiviency, privacy and support for complex queries, both from a theoretical and applicative point of view. This workshop aims to provide a venue for researchers from both academy and industry to present and discuss important topics on blockchain technology. The workshop's goal is to present results on both theoretical and more applicative open challenges, as well to provide a venue to showcase the current state of existing proposals.

Topic of interest include, but are not limited to:

Blockchain Protocols

- Distributed Consensus Algorithms
- Permissioned vs. permissionless paradigms
- Scalability issues
- P2P communication protocols
- Inter-ledger protocols
- Smart contracts automatic verification
- Layer-2 payment protocols, lightning networks
- Legal aspects (smart contracts, utility and security tokens, ICO,..)

Blockchain Data Analysis

- Analysis of transaction graphs
- Social media analysis correlation studies
- Crytocurrencies exchange rate analysis
- Smart contracts classification
- Illicit activity tracking and analysis
- Blockchain Data visualization

Blockchain applications

- Blockchain for IoT
- Blockchain based social media
- Distributed supply chains
- Blockchain based access control
- Distributed Notaries
- Blockchain for health care
- Blockchain for telecommunications
- Smart Contracts and dApp software engineering aspects
- Cryptocurrencies



Technical program Commettee

- Andrea Bracciali, University of Stirling, UK
- Mauro Conti, University of Padova, Italy
- Damiano Di Francesco Maesa, University of Cambridge, UK
- Carolina Goberna Caride, University of Passau, Germany
- Stefano Ferretti, University of Bologna, Italy
- Barbara Guidi, University of Pisa, Italy
- Salil Kanhere, UNSW, Sidney, Australia
- Paolo Mori, IIT, CNR, Pisa, Italy
- Laura Ricci, University of Pisa, Italy
- Nishanth Sastry, King's College, UK
- Nishant Saurabh, University of Innsbruck, Austria
- Claudio Schifanella, University of Turin, Italy
- Jatineder Singh, University of Cambridge, UK
- Frank Tietze, University of Cambridge, UK



--