Call for Papers - International Congress on Blockchain and Applications

Scope

The 5th International Congress on Blockchain and Applications (BLOCKCHAIN'23) will be held in Guimarães from 12th to 14th of July, 2023. This annual congress will bring together researchers and practitioners of blockchain and other distributed ledger technologies (DLT), who will share ideas, projects, lectures, and advances associated with those technologies and their application domains. This meeting will be co-located with the PAAMS’23 conference.

Among the scientific community, the advance in next-generation blockchain and distributed ledger technologies is seen as a promising combination that will transform the production and manufacturing industry, media, finance, insurance, e-government, agriculture, energy, or even medicine. Besides, the combination of DLT with other cutting-edge disruptive technologies (AI, metaverse, quantum computing...) will will open up a multitude of amazing opportunities that entail an interesting challenge of research at the same time.

The BLOCKCHAIN’23 congress is devoted to: promoting the investigation of next-generation blockchain and DLT technologies; exploring the latest ideas, innovations, guidelines, theories, models, technologies, applications and tools of blockchain/DLT combined with other cutting-edge technologies; and identifying critical issues and challenges that researchers and practitioners must deal with in future research. We want to offer researchers and practitioners the opportunity to work on promising lines of research and to publish their developments in this area.

As in previous editions, the best speaker and best student speaker will receive an award sponsored by the MDPI Smart Cities journal (500 CHF and 300 CHF respectively).

Topics

Technologies and techniques

  • Key and innovative theories, methodologies, schemes and technologies of blockchain and AI
  • Architectures and platforms for blockchain and AI
  • Blockchain and AI for Big Data
  • Blockchain and AI for Multi-Agent systems
  • Blockchain and AI for the Internet of Things
  • Blockchain and AI in 5G
  • Sensors and devices for blockchain
  • Distributed consensus mechanisms (PoW, PoS, PoE…)
  • Encryption algorithms
  • Fault tolerance mechanisms
  • Other distributed ledger technologies
  • Cloud, fog, and edge computing approaches for blockchain
  • Blockchain standardization issues
  • Platforms for smart contracts
  • Side-chain and cross-chain systems
  • Anonymity and privacy in blockchain
  • Malicious transactions detection
  • 4th and 5th generation blockchain

Applications

  • Blockchain and AI enabled new business models and applications
  • Blockchain and AI for e-commerce
  • Blockchain and AI for logistics and transportation
  • Blockchain and AI for supply chain management
  • Blockchain and AI for product life cycle
  • Blockchain and AI for knowledge and innovation management
  • Blockchain and AI for agriculture
  • Blockchain and AI in eHealth
  • Applications of cryptocurrencies
  • Blockchain as a Tamper-Proof Technology
  • Application of smart contracts
  • Blockchain Governance and Human Rights
  • Applications of blockchain and AI in other domains.
  • Use-cases of blockchain and AI in Industry 4.0, banking, etc.
  • Blockchain and AI for fintech
  • Blockchain and AI for insurtech

Doctoral Consortium

The aim of the Doctoral Consortium is to provide a framework as part of which students can present their ongoing research work and meet other students and researchers and obtain feedback on lines of research for the future.

The Doctoral Consortium is intended for students who have a specific research proposal and some preliminary results, but who are still far from completing their dissertation.

All proposals submitted to the Doctoral Consortium will undergo a thorough reviewing process with the aim of providing detailed and constructive feedback. The accepted submissions will be presented at the Doctoral Consortium and published in the conference proceedings.

Submissions

Format

All papers must be formatted according to the LNNS template, with a maximum length of 10 pages (6 pages for Doctoral Consortia), including figures and references:

Submission

All proposed papers must be submitted in electronic form (PDF format) using the Blockchain congress management system.

Review process

BLOCKCHAIN welcomes the submission of papers and gives preference to the topics listed under the call. All submitted papers will undergo a thorough review process; each paper will be refereed by at least three experts in the field based on relevance, originality, significance, quality and clarity.

The papers must consist of original, relevant and previously unpublished sound research results related to any of the topics of the conference.

Publication

Accepted papers will be included in Blockchain Congress Proceedings, published by Springer.

At least one of the authors will be required to register and attend the symposium to present the paper in order to include the paper in the conference proceedings. All accepted papers will be published by Springer Verlag.

Springer Verlag

** Indexing: The books of this series are submitted to DBLP, INSPEC, Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals and Series, SCImago, SCOPUS, WTI Frankfurt eG, zbMATH, Google Scholar, Springerlink. **

Special Issues

Authors of selected papers from Blockchain Congress will be invited to submit an extended and improved version to special issue in different journals.

MDPI Systems Journal
Authors of selected papers from PAAMS and Co-located Events will be invited to submit an extended and improved version to a Special Issue "Frontiers of Agents and Multiagent Systems" published in MDPI Sensors Journal (ISSN: 1424-8220, JCR (2021): 3.847 (Q2))
MDPI Systems Journal
Authors of selected papers from PAAMS and Co-located Events will be invited to submit an extended and improved version to a Special Issue "Edge Computing in IoT Networks Based on Artificial Intelligence" published in MDPI Sensors Journal (ISSN: 1424-8220, JCR (2021): 3.847 (Q2))
MDPI Systems Journal
Authors of selected papers from PAAMS and Co-located Events will be invited to submit an extended and improved version to a Special Issue "Advanced Architectures for Hybrid Edge Analytics Models on Adaptive Smart Areas" published in MDPI Electronics Journal (ISSN: 2079-9292, JCR (2021): 2.690 (Q3))
MDPI Systems Journal
Authors of selected papers from PAAMS and Co-located Events will be invited to submit an extended and improved version to a Special Issue published in ADCAIJ (ISSN: 2255-2863, JCI (2021): 0,05(Q4)) indexed in DOAJ, ProQuest, Scholar, WorldCat, Dialnet, Sherpa ROMEO, Dulcinea, UlrichWeb, Emerging Sources Citation Index of Thomson Reuters, BASE y Academic Journals Database.

To Be Completed

Important dates

  • Main Track - Paper submission deadline: 24th March, 2023 14th April, 2023
  • Doctoral Consortium - Paper submission deadline: 14th April, 2023 21st April, 2023

  • Notification of acceptance: 3rd May, 2023
  • Camera-Ready papers due: 19th May, 2023
  • Conference Celebration: 12th-14th July, 2023

Committees

General Chairs

  • Javier Prieto - Chair of the IEEE Blockchain Spain Initiative - University of Salamanca (Spain)
  • José Manuel Machado - University of Minho (Portugal)

Local Chairs

  • Hugo Peixoto - University of Minho (Portugal)
  • António Abelha - University of Minho (Portugal)

TPC Chair

  • Paulo Vieira - Guarda Polytechnic Institute (Portugal)

Advisory Board

  • Abdelhakim Hafid - Université de Montréal (Canada)
  • Ashok Kumar Das - IIIT Hyderabad (India)
  • António Pinto - Instituto Politécnico do Porto (Portugal)
  • Paulo Leitao - Technical Institute of Bragança (Portugal)
  • Francisco Luis Benitez Martínez - Fidesol (Spain)
  • Pedro Nevado - University of Salamanca (Spain)

Local Organizing Committee

  • Paulo Novais (Chair) - University of Minho (Portugal)
  • José Machado (co-Chair) - University of Minho (Portugal)
  • Hugo Peixoto - University of Minho (Portugal)
  • Regina Sousa - University of Minho (Portugal)
  • Pedro José Oliveira - University of Minho (Portugal)
  • Francisco Marcondes - University of Minho (Portugal)
  • Manuel Rodrigues - University of Minho (Portugal)
  • Filipe Gonçalves - University of Minho (Portugal)
  • Dalila Durães - University of Minho (Portugal)
  • Sérgio Gonçalves - University of Minho (Portugal)

Contact