Blockchain has emerged as a disruptive, and transformational technology, with great potential, benefits, and impact. Blockchain is now foreseen as a panacea for many challenging problems across many businesses, industries, and domains. Many businesses and governments have been moving aggressively in adopting blockchain, with $2.1 billion spent globally on blockchain during 2018. According to Gartner, blockchain will require another 5 to 10 years to reach a state of maturity and become mainstream.

This special Issue focuses on recent advances in research and development of blockchain infrastructures and applications. Researchers are invited to contribute high quality articles on the latest advances related to improving and solving key challenges within blockchain underlying infrastructure, networks, architecture, platforms, and algorithms to improve the overall blockchain performance, scalability, governance, privacy, and security. We also encourage researchers to submit articles sharing experiences on the application and use of blockchain to solve problems seen in diverse domains, including finance, digital identity, supply chain, logistics, manufacturing, healthcare, real estate, food industry, education and certification, insurance, oil and gas, real estate, and voting. Researchers are also invited to share articles on the many other emerging innovative blockchain-based applications such as prediction markets, bidding for smart traffic control, shared compute power, and many others. Furthermore, we welcome papers on the integration of blockchain with other emerging technologies such as AI, IoT, 3D printing, big data, fog computing, robotics, and smart connected devices.

Topics:

Both original practical work and review articles are welcome. Topics of interest include:

Interoperability of blockchains

Cross-blockchain ecosystems

Decentralized applications

Consortium governance and ownership models

Privacy and security of ledgers

Secure smart contracts

Formal verification for smart contract code

Smart contract languages and oracles

Trusted Execution Environment for blockchain

Zero knowledge proof Consensus mechanisms

Scalability and performance Identity and reputation management

Blockchain-based IoT, fog, cloud, and mobile devices Supporting architecture for blockchain

Side chains and channels

Auditability and traceability

On-chain and off-chain applications

Blockchain in AI, ML, cyber security, IAM.

Distributed storage in blockchain

Building private blockchain systems

Blockchain tools, simulators, and test-nets

Blockchain PaaS GDPRP solutions for blockchain ledgers

Decentralized financing and payments

Applications for smart cities, governments, and manufacturing

Submission guidelines:

Research articles must not have been published or submitted for publication elsewhere. All articles will be peer-reviewed and accepted based on quality, originality, novelty, and relevance to the special issue theme. Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which is available at

http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/367/authorinstructions

Manuscripts must be submitted online at https://www.evise.com/profile/#/COMPELECENG/loginby selecting “SI-bcia” from the Special Issues pull-down menu during the submission process.

Schedule:

Submission of manuscript: June 30, 2019

First notification: August 30, 2019

Submission of revised manuscript: October 30, 2019

Notification of the re-review: November 30, 2019

Final notification: December 30, 2019

Publication: Feb. 2020

Guest Editors:

Prof. Khaled Salah (Managing Guest Editor)

Khalifa University of Science and Technology, UAE

Email: ksalah@ieee.org

Prof. Ala Al-Fuqaha

Western Michigan University, USA

Email: ala.al-fuqaha@wmich.edu

Dr. Mamoun Alazab

Charles Darwin University, Australia

Email: alazab.m@ieee.org

Dr. Tariq Umer

COMSATS University, Pakistan

Email: t.umer@ciitwah.edu.pk