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.
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
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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