2nd Workshop on Trusted Smart Contracts
March
2nd 2018
In Association with Financial Cryptography 2018
February 26–March 2, 2018
Santa Barbara Beach Resort
Curaçao
Call for Papers
February 26–March 2, 2018
Santa Barbara Beach Resort
Curaçao
A potentially highly transformational technology currently developing on top of blockchain technologies are smart contracts, i.e. self-enforcing agreements in the form of executable programs that are deployed to and run on top of (specialised) blockchains. The Bitcoin proposal itself relied on a limited language for the validation of economical transactions. Subsequent proposals have further developed the idea of algorithmic validation of decentralised trust, along Szabo's intuition. A prominent example, also in terms of capitalisation and market share, is the Ethereum blockchain. It has a Turing-complete programming model, and bears one of the most strikingly performed attacks, the DAO attack (not to mention the discussed fork adopted as a counter measure). Possible further directions, are drawn by in-progress proposals like Tezos, where algorithmic validation also embraces decentralised consensus: smart contracts can negotiate the rules themselves which enable decentralised trust.
These technologies introduce a novel programming framework and execution environment, which are not satisfactorily understood at the moment. Multidisciplinary and multifactorial aspects affect correctness, safety, privacy, authentication, efficiency, sustainability, resilience and trust in smart contracts. Existing frameworks, which are competing for their market share, adopt different solutions to issues like the above ones. Merits of proposed solutions are still to be fully evaluated and compared by means of systematic scientific investigation, and further research is needed towards laying the foundations of Trusted Smart Contracts.
A non-exhaustive list of topics of interest and open problems includes:
- validation and definition of the programming abstractions and execution model,- foundations of software engineering for smart contracts,
- authentication and anonymity management,
- privacy and privacy-preserving contracts,
- oblivious transfer,
- data provenance,
- access rights,
- game-theoretic approaches for security and validation,
- resilience of the validation/mining/execution model,
- verification of the properties expected to be enforced by smart contracts,
- fairness and decentralisation of contracts and their management,
- effects of consensus mechanisms and proof-of mechanisms on smart contracts,
- blockchain data analysis,
- rewards, economics and sustainability/stability of the framework,
- comparison of the permissioned and non-permissioned scenarios,
- use cases and killer applications of smart contracts,
- future outlook on smart contract technologies.
WTSC focuses primarily on smart contracts as an application layer on top of blockchains, however aspects of the underlying supporting blockchains may clearly become relevant in so much as they affect properties of the smart contracts.
The Workshop on Trusted Smart Contracts (WTSC) aims to gather together researchers from both academia and industry interested in the many facets of Trusted Smart Contract engineering, and to provide a multi-disciplinary forum for discussing open problems, proposed solutions and the vision on future developments.
Experts in fields including (but not limited to!):
- programming languages,- verification,
- security,
- software engineering,
- decision and game theory,
- cryptography,
- finance and economics,
- monetary systems,
- finance and economics
as well as, practitioners and companies interested in blockchain technologies, are invited to submit their findings, case studies and reports on open problems for presentation at the workshop, take part in this second edition of WTSC and make it a lively forum.
Invited Speaker
|
Arthur Breitman “Models for Smart Contracts: present and future perspectives” Tezos |
Invited Speaker (applications)
|
Prof. Bud Mishra “BURPA or Bust! NYU School of Medicine New York University NYU and Mt Sinai School of Medicine |
Important Dates
WTSC adopts this year a novel submission schedule with double deadline. A first deadline will allow authors to plan their participation well in advance. A second deadline will allow authors who need extra time to develop their contributions, to have a further opportunity to participate. Selected borderline papers from the first deadline will be considered for and also allowed to resubmit to the second deadline. Abstract registration is kindly requested in advance for both deadlines (but not mandatory). Papers can be submitted to the second deadline even if they have not been submitted to the first deadline.
| Abstract Registration | November 26, 2017 |
| Paper Submission Deadline | December 1, 2017 |
| Early Author Notification | December 20, 2017 |
| Late Abstract Registration | January 10, 2018 |
| Late Submission Deadline | January 14, 2018 |
| Late Author Notification | January 31, 2018 |
| Early registration deadline | TBA |
| Final Papers | TBA |
| WTSC | March 2, 2018 |
| Financial Cryptography | February 26 - March 2, 2018 |
Submission
WTSC solicits submissions of manuscripts that represent significant and novel research contributions. Submissions must not substantially overlap with works that have been published or that are simultaneously submitted to a journal or a conference with proceedings.
Submissions should follow the Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science format and should be no more than 15 pages including references and appendices. Papers may also be in a short format, no more than 8 pages including references and appendices. In-progress work and developing ideas can be submitted as a poster.
Accepted papers will appear in the proceedings published by Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Authors who seek to submit their works to journals may opt-out by publishing an extended abstract only.
All submissions will be reviewed double-blind, and as such, must be anonymous, with no author names, affiliations, acknowledgements, or obvious references.
Submission Page
Contributions can be submitted at this link.
Program Chairs
| Andrea Bracciali | University of Stirling, UK |
| Federico Pintore | University of Trento, IT |
| Massimiliano Sala | University of Trento, IT |
Program Committee
| Marcella Atzori | UCL, UK / IFIN, IT |
| Daniel Augot | INRIA, FR |
| Massimo Bartoletti | University of Cagliari, IT |
| Devraj Basu | Strathclyde University, UK |
| Alex Biryukov | University of Luxembourg, LU |
| Stefano Bistarelli | University of Perugia, IT |
| Daniel Broby | Strathclyde University, UK |
| Bill Buchanan | Napier University, UK |
| Martin Chapman | King’s College London, UK |
| Tiziana Cimoli | University of Cagliari, IT |
| Nicola Dimitri | University of Siena, IT |
| Stuart Fraser | Wallet.services, UK |
| Neil Ghani | Strathclyde University, UK |
| Davide Grossi | Utrecht University, NL |
| Oliver Giudice | Banca d'Italia, IT |
| Yoichi Hirai | Ethereum DEV UG, DE |
| Ioannis Kounelis | Joint Research Centre, European Commission |
| Victoria Lemieux | The University of British Columbia, CA |
| Loi Luu | National University of Singapore, SG |
| Carsten Maple | Warwick University, UK |
| Michele Marchesi | University of Cagliari, IT |
| Fabio Martinelli | IIT-CNR, IT |
| Peter McBurney | King’s College London, UK |
| Neil McLaren | Avaloq, UK |
| Philippe Meyer | Avaloq, UK |
| Bud Mishra | NYU, USA |
| Carlos Molina-Jimenez | University of Cambridge, UK |
| Ilya Sergey | UCL, UK |
| Thomas Sibut-Pinote | INRIA, FR |
| Jason Teutsch | TrueBit Establishment, LIE |
| Roberto Tonelli | University of Cagliari, IT |
| Luca Vigano' | University of Verona, IT |
| Philip Wadler | University of Edinburgh, UK |
| Santiago Zanella-Beguelin | Microsoft, UK |
FC is organized annually by the International Financial Cryptography Association in cooperation with IACR.