3rd Blockchain Software Engineering Workshop

Blockchain technologies are rapidly evolving and have been applied to diverse domains such as finance, supply chains and logistics, industry 4.0, energy, smart cities, and health care. Many governments have listed blockchain technology as a key enabler of their future economy, together with AI and machine learning, and are actively promoting blockchain adoption through various grants and pilots. Consequently, we can expect to see many novel software applications based on blockchain technologies. To effectively develop high-quality blockchain applications, software engineering theories and practices need to be evaluated, adapted, and further developed to address the emerging challenges. The 3rd edition of the workshop plans to build on the success of 2 previsions editions to promote the sound adoption of software engineering practices, evaluation, and assessment in developing blockchain and their applications.

Accepted Papers

Keynotes

Speaker: A/Prof. Alysson Bessani

Title: System Support for Secure Permissioned Blockchains

Abstract: The success of bitcoin and other blockchains has led to a renewed interest in Byzantine fault-tolerant (BFT) consensus protocols, with many recent contributions both from industry and academia. However, there are a few long-standing issues with the practical deployment of these protocols that remain mostly unaddressed. In the first part of this talk, I’ll discuss some subtle issues that arise when using BFT consensus for implementing blockchains. After that, I’ll discuss how permissioned blockchains can be made robust against common vulnerabilities and support data confidentiality. The objective is not to be extensive, but to point mostly-unaddressed issues that deserve more attention from the community.

Short speaker bio: Alysson Bessani is an Associate Professor of the University of Lisbon Faculty of Sciences, Portugal, and the Director of the LASIGE research unit. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from UFSC (Brazil) in 2006, was a visiting professor at Carnegie Mellon University (2010) and a visiting researcher at Microsoft Research Cambridge (2014). Alysson coordinated/collaborated in ten international projects and co-authored more than 100 peer-reviewed publications on dependability, security, Byzantine fault tolerance, and cloud storage. He is also the principal researcher behind the BFT-SMaRt consensus library (http://bft-smart.github.io/library/) and a co-founder of the Vawlt dependable & secure cloud storage startup (https://vawlt.io). More information about him can be found at http://www.di.fc.ul.pt/~bessani.

Call for Papers

Themes

We welcome submissions of original and unpublished research that uses and empirically evaluates software engineering approaches and theories for developing blockchain-based applications. The related software engineering technologies include, but are not limited to:

• Blockchain-Based Application Architecture
• Requirement engineering
• Design patterns and reference architecture
• Design/modeling notations, tools, and analysis
• Quality of Smart Contracts and Blockchain-Based Applications
• Reliability
• Quality assurance
• Security and privacy
• Software engineering analytics
• Software Processes for Blockchain-Based Applications
• Software testing technologies and tools
• Estimating effort for developing and testing applications
• Software processes, such as Agile, DevOps, and AIOps
• Software engineering issues related to operating blockchain platforms and applications
• Experience and lessons learned from transferring blockchain-based applications to industry
• Software project management and knowledge management

Important Dates

• Paper submission – February 28, 2022
• Author notification – March 28, 2022
• Camera-ready submission – April 25, 2022
• Workshop – TBA (June 14 or 15, 2022)

Submissions

We accept following 2 types of submissions:

• Full research paper – up to 8 pages.
• Short paper or industrial experience report – up to 4 pages

Submitted papers must be written in English, contain original unpublished works, conform to the ACM Proceedings Format (https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template), and be in PDF format. The workshop enforces the ACM Policy and Procedures on Plagiarism (https://www.acm.org/publications/policies/plagiarism-overview). Please submit manuscripts via EasyChair (https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=ease2022), and in pdf format. Each submitted paper will be reviewed by no less than 2 members of the program committee. Accepted papers will be in the main proceeding of EASE 2022, which the ACM Digital Library will publish. At least one author of each accepted paper must register by the camera-ready deadline.

Hybrid Participation

The workshop will be a hybrid event with support for virtual participation to accommodate ever-evolving COVID-19 restrictions. We will provide the possibility to be on-site in Gothenburg and virtually via video link.