CFP: Special track on BLOCKCHAIN AND DECENTRALIZED TECHNOLOGIES FOR
SOCIAL GOOD (BANDIT) @ ACM GoodIT 2024
https://sites.google.com/unipi.it/bandit2024
4-6 September 2024, Bremen, Germany
## MOTIVATION AND RATIONALE
Social good has a big impact on society. Indeed, the term “social good” refers to something which benefits the general public, and at the same time, it is something which reflects and respects their wishes, being ‘from’ the people. The social good can be envisioned as global citizens uniting to unlock the potential of individuals through collaboration to create a positive societal impact. Much interest has been produced in the last years, and new proposals and technologies have been considered. Among them, Blockchain, distributed ledger technologies, and decentralized technologies in general, such as IPFS, have been considered to improve all the aspects of the social good. Blockchain and decentralized technologies have had a big impact on the world. In particular, Blockchain technology has been applied to several fields, such as e-health, IoT, media, etc. The big question around the definition of this track is: “How does the blockchain have a big impact on the social good? And how can decentralization improve the ICT industries?”. The track manages the possible application of decentralized technologies in research fields included in the global scope of the social good. These address sectors such as agriculture, supply chain traceability, energy, health, property rights and digital identities, ranging from a global to a local scope. More recently in the realm of civic participation, civil society initiatives and social economies, blockchains are being tested to implement collaborative models: social finance and local currency schemes, peer-to-peer production and exchanges, decentralized organizations management and decision-making, purpose-driven tokens that incentivize pro-social behaviors, etc.
Examples of applications involving considerable experimentation and innovation are complementary and community currency systems. These systems aim to support humanitarian aid initiatives, self-organizing local community development and basic income projects.
These involve novel tokenization mechanisms based on smart contracts that necessitate further investigation and discussion. While the revolutionary potential of blockchains has been largely tested (in the financial domain in particular), its possible applications in social domains and to address sustainability challenges have been explored far less.
This special track aims to explore and debate the main concepts and implications of blockchain technology, how it can be a driver of innovation and its positive effects on our societies, industry, legal systems and economic/financial systems. Also, the risks and uncertainties that blockchain arrows are welcome to be debated in this section, as regards: conflicts arising from the introduction, in mutable social interactions, of logics based on tokenization, automation, and trustlessness; energy consumption and environmental impacts; technical accessibility and digital skill divides.
This special track will provide both academic and industry researchers with a forum to discuss the impact, future, and limitations of blockchain technology regarding its effect across specific industries, economics, finance, law, civil society initiatives, social economies, the not-for-profit sector, etc.
## TOPICS
Blockchain and decentralized architectures and algorithms
Protocols for management and access using blockchain
Consensus and Mining Algorithms Suited for Social Good
NFT and Web3 for Social Good
Security and privacy in Blockchains and decentralized platforms
Blockchain application in civic participation initiatives in local communities
Blockchain application in social and collaborative economies in local communities
Blockchain-based local currencies for financial inclusion
Tokenomics and collaborative incentives models for local communities
Decentralized Autonomous Organizations for smart communities
Voting and opinion formation systems
Blockchain applications for environmental sustainability
Blockchain applications for public administration
Blockchain applications in IoT
Blockchain applications in healthcare
Blockchain applications in business
Blockchain applications in supply-chain management and certification
Blockchain applications in the industry
Blockchain applications in mobile communications and wireless networks
Decentralized Technology for Social Media
Blockchain in Social Networking
AI for blockchain
Submitted papers must be original works and must not have been previously published. They will be peer-reviewed by the member of the TPC. All accepted and presented papers will be included in the conference proceedings published in ACM Digital Library. At least one of the authors of all accepted papers must register and present the work in presence at the conference; otherwise, the paper will not be published in the proceedings.
## IMPORTANT DATES
Papers submission: 31st May 2023
Notification of acceptance: 8th July 2023
Camera-ready paper due: 19th July 2023
## CHAIRS
Barbara Guidi, Department of Computer Science, University of Pisa, Italy.
Andrea Michienzi, Department of Computer Science, University of Pisa, Italy.
Laura Ricci, Department of Computer Science, University of Pisa, Italy.
Claudio Schifanella, University of Turin, Italy
Fadi Barbara, University of Turin, Italy