-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

9th Workshop on Trusted Smart Contracts (WTSC)

April 18th, 2025

Hotel Shigira Mirage
Miyakojima, Japan


https://fc25.ifca.ai/wtsc/



In Association with

Financial Cryptography and Data Security 2025

https://fc25.ifca.ai/


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------



CALL FOR PAPERS



Decentralised computing and smart contracts are supporting applications ranging from cryptocurrencies, to decentralised finance, provenance and supply chain, self-sovereign identity, non-fungible tokens, governance, notarization, decentralised social media, layer2 frameworks, ... to cite but a few, and are key for the developing Web3.

Smart contracts , i.e. self-enforcing agreements in the form of executable programs, are deployed to and run on top of blockchains, in different formats and flavours, from Bitcoin to Ethereum, to the last-generation blockchain, multi-chain and layer2++ frameworks. Making them correct and trustworty poses open and multidisciplinary research questions, solution is key for mature and consolidated adoption.
Such a complex and evolving programming framework and execution environment is challenging in terms of modelling and verification, particularly for its distiguishing features of being "autonomous and untamperable" and source of ultimate trust.

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 and their applications in very many different contexts.

A non-exhaustive list of topics of interest and open problems includes:

- validation and definition of the programming abstractions and execution models,
- 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,
- smart contracts in/for layer2++,
- 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,
- 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.
A non-exhaustive list of applications includes:

- governance and decentralised organisations
- decentralised finance,
- layer 2++ models, frameworks and applications
- self-sovereign identity,
- non-fungible tokens,
- central bank digital currencies,
- programmable money,
- future outlook on smart contract technologies.
WTSC gathers together researchers from both academia and industry interested in the many facets of Trusted Smart Contract engineering and provides a multi-disciplinary forum for discussing open problems, proposed solutions and the vision on future developments in blockchain technology and applications. WTSC focuses on smart contracts as an application layer(s) on top of blockchains, and blockchain theory and applications are of strong interest as well.

Experts in fields including (a non-exhaustive list):

- programming languages,
- distributed systems,
- decentralised systems,
- 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.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------



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
- Massimo Morini (Algorand Foundation), 2023
- Edward Felten (Arbitrum and Offchain Labs), 2024
- Fabian Schaer (University of Basel, with Workshop on Coordination of Decentralized Finance), 2024

This year we are aiming at similar interesting invitees.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------



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 (recommended) February 2, 2025
Early Paper Submission Deadline February 8, 2025
Early Author Notification February 15, 2025

Late Abstract Registration March 2, 2025
Late Submission Deadline March 8 (AoE), 2025
Late Author Notification March 15, 2025


WTSC April 18, 2025
Financial Cryptography April 14-17, 2025

Final Papers TBA for the post proceeding Springer volume.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------



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.

Please see https://fc25.ifca.ai/wtsc/cfp.html


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------



SUBMISSION PAGE



Submission page: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=wtsc25

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------



PROGRAM COMMITTEE (To Be Completed)


Monika di Angelo Vienna University of Technology, AT
Igor Artamonov Emerald, US
Fadi Barbara La Sapienza, University of Rome, IT
Massimo Bartoletti University of Cagliari, IT
Marco Benedetti Banca di Italia, IT
Stefano Bistarelli University of Perugia, IT
Andrea Bracciali University of Turin, IT
Daniel Broby Asian Institute of Management, PH
Martin Chapman King’s College London, UK
Josselin Feist Trail of Bits, US
Oliver Giudice Banca di Italia, IT
Davide Grossi University of Groningen,
Bernhard Haslhofer Complexity Science Hub, AT
Yoichi Hirai Nexus, PT
Michela Iezzi Banca di Italia, IT
Andrew Lewis-Pye London School of Economics, UK
Akaki Mamageishvili Offchain Labs, CH
Sihem Mesnager University of Paris VIII, FR
Bud Mishra NYU, USA
Alex Norta Tallin University of Technology, EE
Akira Otsuka Institute of Information Security, JP
Massimiliano Sala University of Trento, IT
Jason Teutsch Truebit, USA
Sara Tucci Piergiovanni University of Paris-Saclay, FR
Philip Wadler University of Edinburgh, UK
Yilei Wang Hong Kong Polytechnic University, HK
Tim Weingaertner Lucerne University, CH
Santiago Zanella-Beguelin Microsoft, UK
Dionysis Zindros Stanford University, USA