[Announcements] BRAINS 2026 - CFP - 8th Conference on Blockchain Research & Applications for Innovative Networks and Services

[Giovanni Farina]

/Apologies for cross-posting./


*CALL FOR PAPERS*
*8th Conference on Blockchain Research & Applications for Innovative 
Networks and Services*
*BRAINS 2026*
October 13 - 16, 2026 Florence, Italy (In-person conference)
*Full and Short Paper submission deadline: May 17th, 2026*
*https://brains.dnac.org/*
*Submissions Link:* https://edas.info/N34965
*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).*
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.
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.
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.
Areas of interest include, but are not limited to:
*Effective challenges for decentralized systems*

  * Theoretical contributions to Blockchain, DLT and decentralized storage
  * Distributed consensus and fault tolerance solutions, including
    domain-specific consensus
  * Protocols and algorithms
  * Distributed ledger analytics
  * Trade-offs between decentralization, scalability, and security
  * Zero-Knowledge proofs
  * Layer 2 solutions for scalability and privacy
  * Blockchain interoperability and cross-chain mechanisms
  * Storage solutions and data availability
  * Censorship resistance and fair ordering
  * Malicious or self-serving attacks, and defenses
  * Obstacles to achieving effective decentralization

*Fundamentals of Decentralized Apps, Smart contracts, and chain code*

  * Languages and tooling for dApp development
  * Security, privacy, and forensics
  * Formal methods for blockchain
  * Transaction monitoring and analysis
  * Collaboration between on-chain and off-chain code
  * Blockchain-defined networking
  * Web3 and distributed storage and computation

*Application and service cases of DLT and Smart contracts*

  * Identity management
  * Finance, payments, and fraud detection and prevention
  * IoT and cyber-physical systems
  * Smart grids and Industry 4.0, including dataspaces
  * V2X, connected and autonomous vehicles
  * Networking, Edge, and Cloud technologies
  * Blockchain for Beyond 5G and 6G technologies
  * Service or resource marketplaces
  * Public sector Blockchain solutions and infrastructures
  * Blockchain for education, public administration, health
  * Blockchain for Business Process and Supply Chain Management
  * Regulation and policies

*Blockchain and AI*

  * Machine learning and AI for blockchain security
  * Federated and decentralized learning for blockchain systems
  * Large Language Models for blockchain
  * Using Blockchain for agentic AI

*Decentralized Finance (DeFi) Track* (Open to both technical and 
economics/finance-oriented papers on blockchain and DeFi.)

  * AMMs (Automated Market Makers)
  * Lending Protocols
  * Stablecoins
  * Restaking
  * Decentralized Autonomous Organizations
  * DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks)
  * Prediction Markets
  * AI Agents & DeFi
  * DeFi and Privacy

*Blockchain for Information Systems and Business Process Management*

  * On-chain and off-chain data and processes integration
  * Business processes auditing and monitoring on blockchain
  * Process mining techniques for blockchain-based systems
  * Software architecture for blockchain-based information systems
  * Modeling aspects for processes and data in blockchain-based systems

*Submission Guidelines* 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: https://edas.info/N34965
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’ identities. No modifications to the author 
list on a paper can be made after submission.
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.
*Use of Generative AI and LLMs* Guidelines for authors: Authors must 
adhere to the IEEE policies (see , in particular section “Guidelines for 
Artificial Intelligence (AI)-Generated Text”). 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.
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.
*S**tudent Track* 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.
*Best paper awards* Two best paper awards will be delivered:

  * *Best Full Paper Award*
  * *Best Student Paper Award* (conditioned to the papers quality)

*Important Dates:*

  * *Paper Submission deadline: May 17, 2026*
  * *Notification of Acceptance: July 1, 2026*
  * *Camera-Ready: July 31, 2026*

*TPC Chairs*
Jérémie Decouchant, TU Delft, Netherlands
Michele Fabi, Telecom Paris, Paris
Andrea Morichetta, University of Camerino, Italy
*General Chairs:*
Antonella Del Pozzo, CEA List, Paris-Saclay University, France
Emmanuel Bertin, Orange Innovation, France
Philip Raschke, TU Berlin, Germany
Francesco Tiezzi, University of Florence, Italy
*Details*: https://brains.dnac.org/
/Looking forward to your submissions!/

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