Blockchain Technology: Principles and Applications

Submission Deadline: 31 January 2021

IEEE Access invites manuscript submissions in the area of Blockchain Technology: Principles and Applications.

Blockchain is a disruptive technology for building consensus and trust in a peer-to-peer network without centralized control. It was first used in bitcoin, the very first cryptocurrency released at the beginning of 2009, to implement a secure ledger of transactions. This secure ledger ensures that once a transaction is placed in the ledger, it cannot be altered without being detected, which is a prerequisite for any digital currency implementation because it must guarantee that no one can double-spend one’s money. After a quiet period, the interest on blockchain has exploded in recent years. The number publications indexed by Web of Science on blockchain increased from 2 in 2013 (the first year in which publications on blockchain started to appear), to 4 in 2014, 21 in 2015, 118 in 2016, 521 in 2017, and 1,080 in 2018.

The research and developmental activities related to blockchain technology can be roughly divided into two areas: (1) The application of the blockchain in various industry sectors, such as fintech, medicine and health, energy and power generation systems, real estate, travel, manufacturing, education, or even government; (2) Fundamental research on blockchain technology itself, such as alternative consensus algorithms that consume less energy, provide better scalability, are more robust to cyberattacks, and are more scalable. In the former area, interesting issues could arise due to the particular needs of an application. For example, blockchain could be used to secure the data produced from a sensor network. However, the amount of data could easily exceed the capacity of any current blockchain platform. For the latter area, we have seen alternative consensus algorithms being proposed, such as proof of stake, that are likely to make blockchains more scalable, secure, and robust in the long term.

This Special Section welcomes original research and review articles on all aspects of blockchain technology.

The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • Consensus algorithms
  • Cyberattacks on blockchains
  • Economic impact on cyberattacks
  • Security and trust on permissioned blockchains
  • Scalability of blockchains
  • Reliability analysis on blockchain-based systems
  • Smart contracts
  • Visualization of blockchain data
  • Blockchain for Banking and Finance
  • Blockchain for Supply Chain
  • Blockchain for Consumer Products and Retail
  • Blockchain for Government
  • Blockchain for Automotive
  • Blockchain for Medicine and Health Care
  • Blockchain for Travel and Transportation
  • Blockchain for Internet of Things
  • Blockchain for Agriculture

We also highly recommend the submission of multimedia with each article as it significantly increases the visibility and downloads of articles.

 

Associate Editor: Wenbing Zhao, Cleveland State University, USA

Guest Editors:

    1. Chunming Rong, University of Stavanger, Norway
    2. Jun Wu, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China
    3. Zhixin Sun, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China
    4. Srinivas Sampalli, Dalhousie University, Canada

 

Relevant IEEE Access Special Sections:

  1. Innovation and Application of Internet of Things and Emerging Technologies in Smart Sensing
  2. Innovation and Application of Intelligent Processing of Data, Information and Knowledge as Resources in Edge Computing
  3. New Technologies for Smart Farming 4.0: Research Challenges and Opportunities


IEEE Access Editor-in-Chief:
  Prof. Derek Abbott, University of Adelaide

Article submission: Contact Associate Editor and submit manuscript to:
http://ieee.atyponrex.com/journal/ieee-access

For inquiries regarding this Special Section, please contact: w.zhao1@csuohio.edu.