BTS 2018 is a joint event of Ryerson University and the Fields Institute which will bring together experts and practitioners in the blockchain space from academia, government and business from around the world to discuss the state of blockchain technology, the major use cases, and its potential disruptive impact on business, government and society. It is a great opportunity to hear from international experts and real-world practitioners and participate in a dialog about the evolution of this very important technology and its applicability to solving business problems and opening up new opportunities. You could attend the entire week, one day, one session or just the session(s) that are of particular interesting to you. Because we have been fortunate enough to have secured substantial sponsorship for the event, admission for the event is only $75 for the entire week.

REGISTRATION IS REOPEN - please register here.

Each day of the Symposium is focused on a theme:

Mon. Sept.17: Digital Trust
Tues. Sept. 18: Enterprise/Infrastructure Blockchain (followed by a banquet)
Wed. Sept. 19: Tokenization of Value and Cryptocurrencies
Thurs. Sept. 20: Core Technologies
Friday. Sept. 21: Law, Government and Society

Blockchain technology has solved a fundamental problem of how one can prove, and effectively manage, the ownership of an asset in an environment where everything can be copied or modified. With this problem solved, the Internet can be used as the foundation to build out large-scale transaction processing platforms. This fundamental breakthrough has created a lot of interest and investment in both academia and industry. Due to the great potential in revolutionizing many industry applications, there is a lot of hype and enthusiasm in the industry about blockchain technology. However, there remains a variety of challenges ranging from technological to cultural obstacles that need to first be addressed before blockchain technology realizes its full potential. Academia and industry need to work hand-in-hand to take this promising discourse from hype to reality.

Blockchain Technology Symposium 2018 (BTS’ 18) is a forum where academic researchers, industry professionals, and decision makers come together to present recent advancements, discuss adoption barriers, tackle common challenges, and explore future roadmaps surrounding blockchain and its related technologies such as consensus algorithms, smart contracts, distributed ledger technologies.

This is a joint event between Ryerson University and the Fields Institute.

Important Dates

March 30, 2018: Workshop Proposal Due
May 11, 2018: Abstract Submission Deadline for Contributed Talks
May 30, 2018: Presenter Notifications
September 17 - 21: BTS 2018

Program

With the goal of enhancing the research dialogue between academia and industry, the BTS’ 18 program will consist of contributed talks, workshops, keynotes, panel of experts, and breakout sessions.

• Contributed Talks - Presenters are invited to submit structured abstracts to be considered for short research talks or business presentations. The abstract will be reviewed by organizing committee and invited reviewers.
• Workshops - Hands-on workshops where participants learn about practical technical aspects of blockchain and related technologies.
• Keynotes and panel of experts - Presenters are invited by the organizing committee. However, you can contact the organizing committee with your suggestions as well.

The focus is to foster academia/industry research dialogue and the talks are chosen based on their quality and impact. There are no proceedings and, as a result, the talks can appear in other venues. In particular, we accept high quality presentations that are already published. In addition, selected presenters will be invited to submit a research paper on blockchain technology to a special issue of Internet Mathematics devoted to this event.

Symposium Topics

Areas of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Theoretical advancement of blockchain and related technologies
• Practical maturity and performance optimization of blockchain and related technologies
• Blockchain technology enabling security, privacy and trust
• Vulnerabilities of blockchain technology
• Integration roadblocks and widespread adoption challenges
• Enhancing robustness, interoperability and stability of blockchain technology
• Analysis and modelling of blockchain transaction graph topology
• Smart contracts and their role in industry
• Distributed consensus mechanisms
• Blockchain and Internet-of-Things (IoT) solutions
• Applications of blockchain technology in smart cities, vehicles, buildings
• Blockchain and Edge, Cloud Computing solutions
• Use of blockchain technology in vehicular and mobile ad hoc networks solutions
• Blockchain schemes in energy sector, healthcare, financial industry, real estate, e-Government

Contributed talks

We invite academic researchers as well as industry professionals and practitioners to submit abstracts for consideration on the aforementioned topics of interest.

The submissions to BTS’ 18 can have one of the following forms:

Research presentation
Industry presentation
Workshop

Research / industry presentations are 15 to 30 minute talks depending on the level of the contribution and workshops are 1 or 2 hour session around practical aspects of blockchain technology.

The deadline for the research and industry presentations is May 11, 2018.The accepted abstracts will be notified by May 30, 2018. The abstracts should adhere to the following structure: Title, Aim, Method, Results, and Conclusion.

The abstracts should be submitted via Fields submission system available at Submission Link before the deadline. Codes necessary for abstract submission will be automatically provided upon registration (and preregistration).
There is a 2 page limit on abstract submissions.

The deadline for submitting workshop proposals is March 30, 2018. You may send your workshop abstract to Bogumil Kaminski before this deadline with the subject `BTS 2018 Workshop Proposal’.

The Call for Participation can be found here.

Additional Sponsors

Travel and accommodation

Travel and accommodation Information can be found on Fields Institute website for visitors available at http://www.fields.utoronto.ca/resources/for-visitors

Daily Program Chairs

Monday, September 17th, 2018 Chair:          Atty Mashatan
Tuesday, September 18th, 2018 Chair:         Marek Laskowski
Wednesday, September 19th, 2018 Chair:  Bogumił Kamiński
Thursday, September 20th, 2018 Chair:      Przemysław Szufel
Friday, September 21st, 2018 Chair:              Pawel Pralat