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<div style="text-align: center;"><strong>CALL FOR
PAPERS</strong></div>
<div style="text-align: center;"><strong>8th
Conference on Blockchain Research &
Applications for Innovative Networks and
Services</strong></div>
<div style="text-align: center;"><span
style="color: #3598db;"><strong>BRAINS 2026</strong></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">October 13 - 16,
2026 Florence, Italy (In-person conference)</div>
<div style="text-align: center;"><strong>Full and
Short Paper submission deadline: <span
style="color: #e03e2d;">May 17th, 2026</span></strong></div>
<div style="text-align: center;"><strong><span
style="color: #e03e2d;"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://brains.dnac.org/">https://brains.dnac.org/</a></span></strong></div>
<div> </div>
<div><strong>Submissions Link:</strong> <a
href="https://edas.info/N34965"
target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://edas.info/N34965</a></div>
<div> </div>
<div><strong>The best technical papers presented
at the conference will be invited to submit an
extended version for fast-track review in the
ACM DLT journal (Distributed Ledger
Technologies: Research and Practice).</strong></div>
<div> </div>
<div>Decentralized technologies (Web3, Blockchain,
Distributed Ledger Technologies, Distributed
Storage and Computation as IPFS) have started to
disrupt multiple domains, including finance and
payments, but also networks, computing, supply
chain, identity management, and Artificial
Intelligence with decentralized learning.</div>
<div>The BRAINS conference is dedicated to these
advances that could make the world of networks
and services more secure while enabling new
distributed business models.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>This year, a new DeFi track is open to both
technically oriented and economics-oriented
papers. We particularly welcome
interdisciplinary work that combines blockchain
protocols, smart contract engineering, and DeFi
market design, as well as empirical and
theoretical studies on crypto-economics and
financial innovation.</div>
<div>Areas of interest include, but are not
limited to:</div>
<div><strong>Effective challenges for
decentralized systems</strong></div>
<ul>
<li>Theoretical contributions to Blockchain, DLT
and decentralized storage</li>
<li>Distributed consensus and fault tolerance
solutions, including domain-specific consensus</li>
<li>Protocols and algorithms</li>
<li>Distributed ledger analytics</li>
<li>Trade-offs between decentralization,
scalability, and security</li>
<li>Zero-Knowledge proofs</li>
<li>Layer 2 solutions for scalability and
privacy</li>
<li>Blockchain interoperability and cross-chain
mechanisms</li>
<li>Storage solutions and data availability</li>
<li>Censorship resistance and fair ordering</li>
<li>Malicious or self-serving attacks, and
defenses</li>
<li>Obstacles to achieving effective
decentralization</li>
</ul>
<div><strong>Fundamentals of Decentralized Apps,
Smart contracts, and chain code</strong></div>
<ul>
<li>Languages and tooling for dApp development</li>
<li>Security, privacy, and forensics</li>
<li>Formal methods for blockchain</li>
<li>Transaction monitoring and analysis</li>
<li>Collaboration between on-chain and off-chain
code</li>
<li>Blockchain-defined networking</li>
<li>Web3 and distributed storage and computation</li>
</ul>
<div><strong>Application and service cases of DLT
and Smart contracts</strong></div>
<ul>
<li>Identity management</li>
<li>Finance, payments, and fraud detection and
prevention</li>
<li>IoT and cyber-physical systems</li>
<li>Smart grids and Industry 4.0, including
dataspaces</li>
<li>V2X, connected and autonomous vehicles</li>
<li>Networking, Edge, and Cloud technologies</li>
<li>Blockchain for Beyond 5G and 6G technologies</li>
<li>Service or resource marketplaces</li>
<li>Public sector Blockchain solutions and
infrastructures</li>
<li>Blockchain for education, public
administration, health</li>
<li>Blockchain for Business Process and Supply
Chain Management</li>
<li>Regulation and policies</li>
</ul>
<div><strong>Blockchain and AI</strong></div>
<ul>
<li>Machine learning and AI for blockchain
security</li>
<li>Federated and decentralized learning for
blockchain systems</li>
<li>Large Language Models for blockchain</li>
<li>Using Blockchain for agentic AI</li>
</ul>
<div><strong>Decentralized Finance (DeFi) Track</strong>
(Open to both technical and
economics/finance-oriented papers on blockchain
and DeFi.)</div>
<ul>
<li>AMMs (Automated Market Makers)</li>
<li>Lending Protocols</li>
<li>Stablecoins</li>
<li>Restaking</li>
<li>Decentralized Autonomous Organizations</li>
<li>DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure
Networks)</li>
<li>Prediction Markets</li>
<li>AI Agents & DeFi</li>
<li>DeFi and Privacy</li>
</ul>
<div><strong>Blockchain for Information Systems
and Business Process Management</strong></div>
<ul>
<li>On-chain and off-chain data and processes
integration</li>
<li>Business processes auditing and monitoring
on blockchain</li>
<li>Process mining techniques for
blockchain-based systems</li>
<li>Software architecture for blockchain-based
information systems</li>
<li>Modeling aspects for processes and data in
blockchain-based systems</li>
</ul>
<div><strong>Submission Guidelines</strong>
Submitted papers must represent original
material that is not currently under review in
any other conference or journal and has not been
previously published. All submissions should be
written in English following the Two-Column IEEE
Conference Format, with a maximum of eight (8)
pages (Full Papers), four (4) pages (Short
Papers and work in progress), or two (2) pages
(Poster Papers). These page limits include all
text and figures but exclude references and
appendices. For Full Papers, the total length
including references and appendices must not
exceed ten (10) pages. Papers should be
submitted through EDAS at:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://edas.info/N34965">https://edas.info/N34965</a></div>
<div>Submissions must be anonymous. We follow a
relaxed double-blind peer review process:
authors are allowed to share their work on
platforms such as arXiv and present it publicly.
However, authors should not mention their own
name or affiliation in the submission, or
include obvious references that reveal their
identity. A reviewer who has not previously
encountered the work should be able to read the
submission without learning the authors\u2019
identities. No modifications to the author list
on a paper can be made after submission.</div>
<div>If your work is not yet available online
(e.g., on arXiv), we recommend waiting until
after the notification of acceptance before
posting it publicly.</div>
<div> </div>
<div><strong>Use of Generative AI and LLMs</strong>
Guidelines for authors: Authors must adhere to
the IEEE policies (see , in particular section
\u201cGuidelines for Artificial Intelligence
(AI)-Generated Text\u201d). Authors must ensure that
all AI-generated content is accurate and
supported by appropriate evidence. Submissions
containing hallucinated citations, including
references to non-existent or fabricated works,
falsified or fabricated data, experiments, or
results, or other unsupported claims presented
as fact, will be desk-rejected.</div>
<div>Guidelines for reviewers: To protect the
integrity and confidentiality of the peer-review
process, reviewers must not upload any part of a
submitted manuscript to public generative AI
tools or LLM services. Reviewers who choose to
use AI tools to assist in drafting their reviews
(for example, for grammar checking of their own
text) may do so only if they refrain from
including any content from the submission
itself.</div>
<div> </div>
<div><strong>S</strong><strong>tudent Track</strong>
We encourage the submission of student papers
(i.e., all authors of the paper must be MSc or
PhD students) on the topics mentioned in the
CFP. Student papers have to be clearly stated on
the first page. The papers should follow the
same guidelines as short papers (max 4 pages)
and be submitted on the dedicated track for
student papers.</div>
<div> </div>
<div><strong>Best paper awards</strong> Two best
paper awards will be delivered:</div>
<ul>
<li><strong>Best Full Paper Award</strong></li>
<li><strong>Best Student Paper Award</strong>
(conditioned to the papers quality)</li>
</ul>
<div><strong>Important Dates:</strong></div>
<ul>
<li><strong>Paper Submission deadline: May 17,
2026</strong></li>
<li><strong>Notification of Acceptance: July 1,
2026</strong></li>
<li><strong>Camera-Ready: July 31, 2026</strong></li>
</ul>
<div><strong>TPC Chairs</strong></div>
<div>Jérémie Decouchant, TU Delft, Netherlands</div>
<div>Michele Fabi, Telecom Paris, Paris</div>
<div>Andrea Morichetta, University of Camerino,
Italy</div>
<div> </div>
<div><strong>General Chairs:</strong></div>
<div>Antonella Del Pozzo, CEA List, Paris-Saclay
University, France</div>
<div>Emmanuel Bertin, Orange Innovation, France</div>
<div>Philip Raschke, TU Berlin, Germany</div>
<div>Francesco Tiezzi, University of Florence,
Italy</div>
<div> </div>
<div><strong>Details</strong>:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://brains.dnac.org/">https://brains.dnac.org/</a></div>
<div> </div>
<div><em>Looking forward to your submissions!</em></div>
</div>
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