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*** 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)
https://brains.dnac.org/2026
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Full and Short Paper submission deadline: May 17th, 2026
👉 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.
For any questions regarding the double-blind policy, please contact the general co-chairs of BRAINS 2026.
Use of Generative AI and LLMs
Guidelines for authors: Authors must adhere to the IEEE policies (see Submission Publication Policies – IEEE Author Center Conferences, 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.
Student 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
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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!