Call for Papers - 2nd IEEE International Workshop on Programmable Zero-knowledge Proofs for Decentralized Applications (ZKDAPPS 2025)

Co-located with IEEE International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency (ICBC 2025), Pisa, June 02-06, 2025

https://icbc2025.ieee-icbc.org/workshop/zkdapps

Zero-knowledge proofs and succinct cryptographic proof systems (in the following called ZKPs for simplicity) have become a central cornerstone in blockchain ecosystems and for developing decentralized applications (dApps). They can mitigate privacy and scalability deficiencies of blockchains by moving computations to off-chain nodes without compromising blockchains‘ strong integrity guarantees if corresponding cryptographic proofs are verified on-chain. This allows for developing next-generation dApps compatible with organizations’ and users’ requirements.

Since ZKPs were first conceptualized, they have been inaccessible to developers for a long time. Recent advancements in ZKP protocols, languages, libraries, and tooling have ushered the adoption of ZKPs in systems engineering. In the blockchain space, this has led to an exploding number of ZKP projects, comprising ZKP-based dApps in various domains or infrastructural layer-2 services like zero-knowledge / validity virtual machines. Parallel developments of novel ZKP protocols in the core cryptography community promise significant further improvements in ZKP-based dApps regarding performance, security, and applicability.

Building on the momentum of ZKDAPPS 2024 in Dublin, we are excited to present the second edition of the ZKDAPPS workshop, which will be held in conjunction with the IEEE International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency (ICBC 2025) in Pisa from June 2-6, 2025. This workshop continues our mission to foster a vibrant scientific community where researchers and practitioners can collaborate and advance the dynamic field of zero-knowledge decentralized applications.

TOPICS OF INTEREST
Authors are invited to submit papers that fall into or are related to the topic areas listed below:

- Applications of ZKP-enabled verifiable off-chain computation, e.g.,
---- Blockchain scaling
---- Blockchain privacy
---- Bridges and oracles
---- Decentralized identity
---- Decentralized machine learning
---- Further domain-specific dApps
- Benchmarking and comparisons
- Opportunities arising from novel proof protocol
- Execution models and system architectures for ZKPs
- Tooling and (domain-specific) languages for ZKP system development
- Education material, terminologies, and systematization of ZKPs and related technologies

IMPORTANT DATES
Papers Submission Deadline: 28/02/2025
Reviews Released to Authors: 31/03/2025
Rebuttals Due: 09/04/2025
Final Acceptance Notification: 14/04/2025
Camera Ready: 23/04/2025

PAPER SUBMISSION
Authors are invited to submit original, unpublished research papers written in English. We encourage submissions of technical, educational, and vision papers, best-practice reports, and demos of tools. Paper length is limited to 6 pages (including title, abstract, figures, tables, and references) for regular conference papers and 4 pages for short papers. Submissions must be in IEEE 2-column style. Papers exceeding these limits, multiple submissions, and self-plagiarized papers will be rejected without further review. The paper submission templates are available on IEEE Manuscript Templates for Conference Proceedings (https://www.ieee.org/conferences/publishing/templates.html). Submitted papers will be peer-reviewed. The review process will be double-blind.

All papers should be submitted through the EDAS system: https://edas.info/N33476

PROCEEDINGS
Papers accepted for ZKDAPPS 2025 will be included in the ICBC conference proceedings and IEEE Xplore. The IEEE reserves the right to remove any paper from IEEE Xplore if the paper is not presented at the conference.

Workshop Organizers
Jonathan Heiss, TU Berlin (Program Co-Chair),
Johannes Sedlmeir, University of Luxembourg (Program Co-Chair)