Models for Blockchain Systems: Analysis and Simulation

Dear Colleagues,

Distributed computing has by now become a pervasive technology due to the widespread adoption of electronic devices connected by the Internet, which are used by individuals, companies, and institutions to perform an increasing number of activities digitally. One of the most prominent examples over the last decade is blockchain technology. This is a distributed ledger that permanently records transactions taking place among untrusted parties in a decentralized and disintermediated environment, which was devised to avoid the double spending problem on virtual currency platforms.

A number of shortcomings affect public, permissionless blockchains, including the excessive energy consumption required by the consensus protocol and conflicts between data immutability and regulations. In the specific case of innovative payment methods, there are also risks of losing monetary sovereignty and undermining financial stability, as witnessed by the fact that many central banks are exploring the issuance of what are termed central bank digital currencies (CBDC). For these reasons, private, permissioned blockchains are gaining momentum, as they could ultimately give businesses a greater degree of control.

Developing complex distributed systems based on blockchain technology is extremely challenging in terms of guaranteeing high levels of proper functioning, data protection, and quality of service.

This calls for a model-based approach in the early design stages so as to enable system property prediction.

This Special Issue encourages the submission of state-of-the-art research on formal methods for the compositional modeling of functional and non-functional aspects of the behavior and the structure of  blockchains.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Analysis of smart contracts.
• Performance evaluation.
• Simulation methods.
• Verification methods.
• Security issues.
• Non-interference
• Reversibility

Prof. Dr. Sabina Rossi
Prof. Dr. Andrea Marin
Prof. Dr. Marco Bernardo
Guest Editors

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