Second Blockchain Software Engineering Workshop

Along with the development of blockchain technologies, more and more critical software applications, such as FinTech applications and supply chain technologies, apply blockchain technologies or integrate blockchain-based components. To assure reliability, security, privacy, maintainability, etc. of blockchain-based applications, existing software engineering theories and approaches need to be evaluated, customized, and improved. The primary motivation for this workshop is to gather together empirical software engineering practitioners, researchers, and people from industry to evaluate, assess, and advance the research and the practical usage of software engineering theories, approaches, and tools for effectively developing high-quality blockchain-based applications.

Accepted Papers

Workshop Program

24 June 2021

Keynote

Dr. Qinghua Lu

Data61 of CSIRO, Australia

Thursday 24 June 2021

Pattern-Driven Architecture Design for Blockchain Applications

Blockchain is an emerging technology that enables new forms of decentralised software architectures, where distributed components can reach agreements on shared system states without trusting a central integration point. A systematic and holistic view on designing software systems that use blockchains is yet to emerge. This keynote aims to systematically capture and organise knowledge on designing blockchain-based applications in the form of a set of design patterns. A design pattern is a reusable solution to problems that commonly occur within a given context during software design. It further defines constraints that restrict architectural elements’ roles (e.g., processing, connectors, and data) and the interaction among those elements. Adopting a design pattern causes trade-offs among quality attributes. Blockchain is normally used as part of a bigger system, where patterns could assist the robust design of large blockchain-based systems. Some of the patterns are explicitly identified based on real-world, blockchain-based applications that leverage blockchains’ unique properties. Others are variants of existing design patterns applied in the context of blockchain-based applications and smart contracts. These patterns are useful to software architects, developers, system administrators, and technical leads who need to design, develop, and monitor blockchain and distributed ledger-based projects.

Biography

Dr. Qinghua Lu is a senior research scientist at Data61 of CSIRO, Australia. Before she joined Data61, she was an associate professor at China University of Petroleum. She formerly worked as a researcher at NICTA (National ICT Australia). She received her PhD from University of New South Wales in 2013. Her research interest includes software architecture, blockchain, and software engineering for machine learning. She has published 100+ academic papers in international journals and conferences. She is the editorial board member of IEEE Blockchain Technical Briefs and Blockchain Research and Applications. She served as a guest editor for IEEE Internet of Things Journal and IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics. She served as an organisation/program committee member for numerous IEEE international conferences. She is the organisation committee member of IEEE Blockchain 2021 and IEEE ICBC 2021. She is an IEEE senior member.

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 Application Architecture

• Design patterns and reference architecture for blockchain applications
• Design notations/tools/analysis for blockchain applications

Quality of Blockchain-based applications

• Reliability of blockchain-based applications
• Security and privacy of blockchain-based applications
• Quality assurance of smart contract and blockchain-based applications

Software Process

• Software testing technologies and tools related to blockchain-based applications
• Estimating effort of developing and testing blockchain-based applications
• Software process, such as Agile, DevOps, and AIOps, for developing blockchain-based applications
• Software engineering issues related to operating blockchain-based applications
• Experience and lessons learned from transferring blockchain-based applications to industry

Submissions

We will accept two types of submissions.

• Full research paper: up to 8 pages in camera-ready version. The submission should follow the ACM proceeding template.
• Short paper or industrial experience report: up to 4 pages in camera-ready version.

Submitted papers must be written in English, contain original unpublished works, and conform to the ACM Proceedings Format: Download template here. (Note: In the new ACM template https://www.acm.org/publications/taps/word-template-workflow, the submission template provided by the ACM is now one-column. The camera-ready version is still supposed to be two-column. The difference may make it difficult for authors to estimate their page numbers in the camera-ready version. For Word Template users, they shall refer to the Table at the bottom of the link https://www.acm.org/publications/taps/word-template-workflow to estimate the paper's pages in the camera-ready version. For Latex template users, the authors can use \documentclass[sigconf,authordraft]{acmart} to write the paper and to control the number of pages in the camera-ready version, and then change it to \documentclass[manuscript]{acmart} for submitting the paper for review.)

Please submit manuscripts via EasyChair, and in pdf format.

Each submitted paper will be reviewed by no less than two members of the program committee. Accepted papers will be in the main proceeding of EASE 2021, which will be publised by ACM.

At least one author of each accepted paper must register by the camera-ready deadline.

Important dates