Ahead of the Blockchain Protocol Analysis and Security Engineering 2017 conference slated for January 2017, the Cyber Initiative of Stanford University has announced its call for papers from interested presenters.

The conference will explore the use of formal methods, empirical analysis, and risk modeling to better understand security and systemic risk in blockchain protocols.

It aims to foster multidisciplinary collaboration among practitioners and researchers in blockchain protocols, distributed systems, cryptography, computer security, and risk management.

Some of its topics of interest include security engineering challenges in cryptosystems, effective testing of blockchain protocols and implementations (simulation, experiment design, testnets, etc), formal methods and symbolic execution applied to blockchain and cryptosystem analysis and design and formal verification of cryptographic and consensus-critical code.

Others are design and analysis tools for distributed systems and cryptosystems, limitations of formal methods in cryptography and distributed systems, aspects of cryptosystem design: intent/assumptions, model/specification, and implementation, programming language design & logic for blockchain protocols & smart contracts, the nature of systemic risk in a blockchain-based world, the implications of protocol-level engineering decisions on security, economics, and business risk in production and comparative utility/risk analysis: blockchain systems vs the systems they aim to replace.

The rolling submission deadline for papers is between October 31 and November 30, 2016 while the final author notification for the event to be held at the Paul Brest Hall of Stanford University will be made on December 1, 2016.

Some of the event’s program committee are Allison Berke (Stanford), Dan Boneh (Stanford), Byron Gibson (Entrepreneur, Startup Advisor), Emin Gün Sirer (Cornell, IC3) and Peter Todd (Bitcoin Core).

Featured image from iStock/c-photo.