[hpc-announce] BLOCKISA 2025 - CFP

[Attila Kertesz]

Call For Papers

BLOCKISA 2025 : BLOCKchain Infrastructure as a Service and its Applications

** Introduction **

PDP is among the prime European and International conferences covering 
all aspects of parallel and distributed processing, ranging from theory 
to practice, from small to the largest parallel and distributed systems 
and infrastructures, from fundamental computational problems to 
full-fledged applications, from architecture, compiler, language and 
interface design and implementation, to tools, support infrastructures, 
and application performance aspects. The PDP 2025 will be hosted by the 
University of Turin at the rettorato buildings, via Po 17, 10123 Torino, 
Italy.

The cryptocurrency application Bitcoin, proposed back in 2009, availed 
the potential of Blockchain (BC) as a promising technology for hundreds 
of foundational applications, including Smart Systems, IoT, e-Health, 
supply chain, and digital identity. One of the solid properties of BC is 
its high security guarantees in classical fully distributed systems, 
which can be challenged by Machine Learning (ML) solutions. However, the 
recent advances in the field of Quantum Computing (QC), derived 
basically from the concepts of quantum mechanics revealed several 
security risks on BC-based solutions. Many proposals attempted to 
address these risks by improving BC methods, including infrastructure, 
data structure, cryptography, networking, etc. targeting the so-called 
post-quantum blockchains. On the other hand, QC and ML can also be used 
for the optimization of BC methods and configurations, leading to 
quantum and smart blockchain principles that can see the light once 
quantum computers are commercialized. Papers submitted to this Special 
Session of PDP are expected to study and investigate BC-based 
infrastructure management, services and applications. We also aim at 
focusing on special ML and QC aspects and potential for strengthening, 
attacking, and protecting BC-based solutions.

The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Blockchain-based infrastructure management, services and applications
• ML for advanced blockchains, quantum computing, or both, including 
integrated QML algorithms for smart blockchains and AI-enabled 
post-quantum blockchains
• Quantum and ML methods (e.g. Formal methods, Software, Hardware, 
Evolutionary algorithms, etc.) for optimizing blockchains in terms of 
energy efficiency, latency, (cyber)security, privacy, etc.
• Quantum and ML algorithms for attacking layered blockchain 
systems/applications (e.g. Infrastructure, Data structure, Smart 
Contracts, APIs, etc.)
• Blockchain applicable quantum methods, for approaching post-quantum 
blockchains including cryptography, networking, hardware-based 
mechanisms, etc.
• Testing methods and algorithms for blockchains under the assumption of 
quantum/ML enabled attackers.
• Advancements of ML mechanisms for developing robust post-quantum 
blockchains.
• Integration approaches of ML-BC, QC-BC, and ML-QC-BC systems.
• Any other relevant topic that targets Blockchain optimization and/or 
security.

** Important dates **

Deadline for paper submission: 20th October 2024
Acceptance notification: 2nd December 2024
Camera ready paper due: 27th January 2025
Conference: 12-14th March, 2025


** Submission guidelines **

Prospective authors should submit a full paper not exceeding 8 pages in 
length (and in the IEEE Conference proceedings format – IEEEtran, double 
column, 10pt) including a 150-200 word abstract. To facilitate an 
anonymous reviewing process, the first page of the paper should contain 
only the title and abstract (i.e., no author names and affiliations 
should be included) and reference entries to the author’s own work 
should be substituted with the string “omitted for blind review”.

Papers submitted for this special session must be submitted through the 
conference submission system with an indication of the name of the 
special session. Papers must adhere to the formatting rules of the 
conference and will undergo the same review process as other papers 
submitted to the conference.

Proceedings will be published by Conference Publishing Services (CPS) in 
the same volume as the main conference proceedings. Authors of accepted 
papers are expected to register and present the paper at the Conference.