[ APOLOGIES FOR CROSS-POSTING / PLEASE DISSEMINATE !]

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7th International Workshop on Trusted Smart Contracts (WTSC’23)
- https://fc22.ifca.ai/wtsc/

May 05, 2023, in Bol, Brac, Croatia.




In Association with Financial Cryptography and Data Security 2023
- https://fc23.ifca.ai/


In Association with Blockchain Governance Initiative Network (BGIN) block #8
- https://bgin-global.org/

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CALL FOR PAPERS



Decentralised computing and smart contracts are emerging as a mainstream framework, with applications to cryptocurrencies, decentralised finance, provenance, self-sovereign identity, non-fungible tokens, healthcare data, government and governance, to cite but a few.

Smart contracts, i.e. self-enforcing agreements in the form of executable programs are deployed to and run on top of (specialised) blockchains. Present in Bitcoin, mainstream within Ethereum and pervasive in all the last-generation blockchain and multi-chain proposals, smart contract languages and technologies are undergoing an interesting and challenging evolution, which poses open research questions.

Such a novel and evolving programming framework and execution environment is challenging in terms of definition and verification. Multidisciplinary and multifactorial aspects affect correctness, safety, efficiency, resilience, privacy, accountability, regulatory compliance, and trust in smart contracts. This workshop focuses on various aspects of the new engineering paradigms, research on programming languages and verification methodologies, in broad terms, for 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,
- smart contract in side-chains and multi-chains,
- blockchain data analytics,
- law and regulatory aspects,
- rewards, economics and sustainability/stability of the framework,
- comparison of the permissioned and non-permissioned scenarios,
- use cases and killer applications of smart contracts.

Applications of interest include (non-exhaustive list):

-decentralised finance,
-self-sovereign identity,
-non-fungible tokens,
-central bank digital currencies,
-programmable money,
-future outlook on smart contract technologies.

The WTSC workshop 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. WTSC focuses primarily on smart contracts as an application layer on top of blockchains. Aspects of the underlying supporting blockchains may clearly become relevant, particularly if they affect properties of the smart contracts.

Experts from fields like (non-exhaustive list):
- programming languages,
- verification,
- security,
- software engineering,
- decision and game theory,
- cryptography,
- finance and economics,
- law and regulators,

as well as, practitioners and relevant companies, are invited to take part and submit their findings, case studies, SOK papers, and reports on open problems for presentation at the workshop.

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INVITED SPEAKERS (TBA)

WTSC has traditionally had recognised innovators and renown contributors giving invited talks at previous editions, including

- Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum) 2017,
- Arthur Breitman (Tezos) and Bud Mishra (NYU) 2018,
- Igor Artamonov (Splix - Ethereum Classic) and Ian Grigg (www.iang.org) 2019,
- Peter Gutmann (University of Auckland, with Workshop on Coordination of Decentralized Finance) 2020,
- Darren Tapp (Dash Investment Foundation), 2021

This year we are aiming at similar high-level invitees.

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IMPORTANT DATES



WTSC adopts a submission schedule with a 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 may be considered for and also invited to resubmit to the second deadline after revision. Abstract registration is kindly requested in advance for both deadlines.

Early Abstract Registration January 23, 2023
Early Paper Submission Deadline January 27, 2023
Early Author Notification February 20, 2023

Late Abstract Registration March 3, 2023
Late Submission Deadline March 6, 2023
Late Author Notification March 27, 2023

Final pre-proceeding papers April 21, 2023

))) WTSC May 5, 2023

Financial Cryptography May 1-5, 2023

Final Papers TBA for the post proceeding Springer volume.


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SUBMISSION



Submitted papers should describe novel, previously unpublished and unsumbitted scientific contributions to the field, and will be subject to rigorous peer review.

Accepted submissions will be included in the conference proceedings to be published in the Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series . Submissions are limited to 15 pages in standard LNCS format excluding references and appendices and must be submitted as a PDF file. A total page restriction may apply for the printed proceedings version. Committee members are not required to read the appendices, so the full papers have to be intelligible without them.
Regular papers must be anonymous with no author names, affiliations, acknowledgments, or obvious references. For each accepted paper the conference requires at least one registration at the general or academic rate.

All papers must be submitted electronically according to the instructions and forms found in the submission page - online.



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SUBMISSION PAGE



Submission page: WILL OPEN IN DUE COURSE

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PROGRAM CHAIRS



Andrea Bracciali University of Stirling, UK

Geoff Goodell UCL, UK

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PROGRAM COMMITTEE (To Be Completed)



Monika di Angelo Vienna University of Technology, AT
Daniel Augot INRIA, FR
Fadi Barbara University of Turin, IT
Massimo Bartoletti University of Cagliari, IT
Stefano Bistarelli University of Perugia, IT
Christina Boura Versailles SQT Univ., FR
Andrea Bracciali University of Stirling, UK
Daniel Broby Ulster University, UK
Martin Chapman King’s College London, UK
Nicola Dimitri University of Siena, IT
Oliver Giudice Banca d'Italia, IT
Davide Grossi University of Groningen, NL
Geoffrey Goodell UCL, UK
Yoichi Hirai BedRock Systems GmbH, DE
Ioannis Kounelis Joint Research Centre, European Commission, IT
Pascal Lafourcade University Clermont Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand, FR
Andrew Lewis-Pye London School of Economics, UK
Carsten Maple Warwick University, UK
Akaki Mamageishvili Offchain Labs, CH
Patrick McCorry Pisa Research, UK
Sihem Mesnager University of Paris VIII, FR
Alex Norta Tallin University of Technology, EE
Akira Otsuka Institute of Information Security, JP
Federico Pintore University of Bari, IT
Massimiliano Sala University of Trento, IT
Yilei Wang Hong Kong Polytechnic University, HK
Tim Weingärtner Lucerne University, CH
Santiago Zanella-Beguelin Microsoft, UK
Dionysis Zindros Stanford University, USA