[Event at CIG] WTSC at FC22 - call for papers

[Andrea Bracciali]

[APOLOGIES FOR CROSS-POSTING / PLEASE DISSEMINATE] 

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6th International Workshop on Trusted Smart Contracts (WTSC’22) 
- https://fc22.ifca.ai/wtsc/ 


February 18, 2022, in Grenada. 

In Association with Financial Cryptography and Data Security 2022 
- https://fc22.ifca.ai/ 

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CALL FOR PAPERS 

Decentralised computing and smart contracts are emerging as the framework for applications ranging from cryptocurrencies, to decentralised finance, provenance, self-sovereign identity, non-fungible tokens, 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 to (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 in so much as 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 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 ** 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 invited to resubmit to the second deadline. 
Abstract registration is kindly requested in advance for both deadlines. 

Abstract Registration (recommended) November 19, 2021 
Paper Submission Deadline November 26, 2021 
Early Author Notification December 17, 2021 
Late Abstract Registration January 10, 2022 
Late Submission Deadline January 17, 2022 
Late Author Notification February 7, 2022 
Final pre-proceeding papers February 10, 2022 
WTSC February 18, 2022 
Financial Cryptography February 14–18, 2022 
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SUBMISSION 

Submitted papers should describe novel, previously unpublished 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. 

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SUBMISSION PAGE 

Contributions can be submitted at this link: 

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=wtsc22 

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PROGRAM CHAIRS 

Andrea Bracciali University of Stirling, UK 

Massimiliano Sala University of Trento, IT 

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PROGRAM COMMITTEE 


Igor Artamonov, Ethereum Classic Dev, UK 
Daniel Augot, INRIA Saclay--Île-de-France & LIX, FR 
Fadi Barbara, University of Torino, IT 
Massimo Bartoletti, University of Cagliari, IT 
Stefano Bistarelli, University of Perugia, IT 
Christina Boura, Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, FR 
Andrea Bracciali, University of Stirling, UK 
Daniel Broby, University of Strathclyde, IK 
Martin Chapman, King's College London, UK 
Monika di Angelo, Vienna University of Technology, AT 
Nicola Dimitri, University of Siena, IT 
Josselin Feist, Trail of Bits, USA 
Murdoch Gabbay, Heriott-Watt University, UK 
Oliver Giudice, Banca d'Italia, IT 
Davide Grossi, University of Groningen, NL 
Yoichi Hirai, Brainbot AG 
Ioannis Kounelis, Joint Research Centre, European Commission 
Pascal Lafourcade, LIMOS, University Clermont Auvergne, FR 
Andrew Lewis-Pye, London School of Economics, UK 
Akaki Mamageishvili, ETH Zurich, CH 
Carsten Maple, The University of Warwick, UK 
Carla Mascia, University of Trento, IT 
Patrick McCorry, Newcastle University, UK 
Sihem Mesnager, University of Paris VIII and LAGA, FR 
Bud Mishra, New York University, USA 
Carlos Molina-Jimenez, University of Cambridge, UK 
Alex Norta, Blockchain Technology Group, Tallinn University of Technology 
Akira Otsuka, Institute of Information Security 
Federico Pintore, University of Bari, IT 
Massimiliano Sala, University of Trento, IT 
Jason Teutsch, TrueBit, USA 
Yilei Wang, Qufu Normal University, CN 
Tim Weingärtner, Hochschule Luzern 
Santiago Zanella-Béguelin, Microsoft, UK 
Dionysis Zindros, University of Athens, GR