The Science of Blockchain Conference 2023
(SBC'23)

The conference focuses on technical innovations in the blockchain ecosystem, and brings together researchers and practioners working in the space. We are interested in the application of cryptography, decentralized protocols, formal methods, and empirical analysis, to improving the security and scalability of blockchain deployments. We aim to foster collaboration among practitioners and researchers working on blockchain protocol development, cryptography, distributed systems, secure computing, crypto-economics, and economic risk analysis.

The conference is co-organized by the Stanford Center for Blockchain Research (CBR),   Cornell IC3,   and   Berkeley RDI.

The talks and papers from the previous events in this conference series are available here:   2022,   2020,   2019,   2018,   2017.

Conference Dates:   Aug. 28 - 30, 2023.

Venue: Arrillaga Alumni Center (326 Galvez St), Stanford University. Map.

Registration: Attendance is free, but please register if you plan to attend either in person or remotely.

Accommodations: Some hotels close to Stanford are the Sheraton Palo Alto, the Stanford Terrace Inn, and others listed at Stanford's lodging guide.

Parking: The nearest parking to the event is at the Galvez Lot across the street. Use this link to register your vehicle's license plate for parking in the lot. If the Galvez lot is full, please use Eucalyptus Grove, which is close by, for overflow parking.

Attending remotely: The talks will be streamed live and the recordings will be available after the conference.

Affiliated workshops

A number of workshop will take place before and after the main conference.

• Science and Engineering of Consensus. Sunday, August 27, 2023.
• DAO Workshop. Thursday, Aug. 31st.

Call for papers

Submission site

PDF submissions can be submitted at https://sbc23.hotcrp.com/

Important Dates

• Talk submission deadline: May 11, 2023, 11:59pm PT
• Final acceptance notification: June 26, 2023
• Conference: Aug. 28 - 30, 2023

Proceedings and Submission at other Conferences

SBC is not archival and does not have proceedings. It is allowed to submit work which has been published at or submitted to another conference or a journal.

Topics of Interest

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

Cryptography & distributed systems

• New cryptographic primitives or consensus protocols applied to blockchain architecture
• Novel applications of existing cryptography and consensus protocols to blockchain architecture
• Security proofs or analysis blockchain protocols

Formal methods and Programming Languages

• Secure programming languages for blockchain protocols & smart contracts
• Formal analysis or verification of cryptography, consensus-critical code and other blockchain components
• Limitations of formal methods in blockchain design and analysis
• Tools for design and analysis of distributed systems and cryptosystems (verifiers, solvers, provers, etc)

Infrastructure

• Secure scaling
• Secure oracles

Confidentiality

• Zero knowledge proofs and other methods for confidentiality
• Technologies for reconciling privacy and compliance

Hardware

• HSMs and other specialized custodial hardware
• Hardware wallets and similar
• Satellite, radio and alternative means of transport/relay
• Analysis of using off-the-shelf devices for cryptocurrency purposes

Testing & deployment

• Testing methodologies (simulation, experiment design, testnets)
• Measurement and analysis of production systems
• Production system upgrade strategies
• Reproducible build systems

Cryptoeconomics

• Analysis or critique of any economic aspect of permissionless or permissioned protocols
• Techniques for measurement of resource use and cost
• MEV
• Decentralized stabilization algorithms
• Systemic risk and resilience in crypto financial systems

Attacks and threat modeling

Do Not Submit

Submission Types

Technical Paper

WIP - Work In Progress

SOK - Systemization of Knowledge

Submission Instructions

• Please submit your talk at https://sbc23.hotcrp.com/. Please use Portable Document Format (.pdf).
• Submissions can be any length but the Program Committee will only review and decide on the first twelve (12) pages. We strongly recommend a minimum of six (6) pages and that it contain enough technical detail for the program committee to effectively evaluate the proposal. Insufficient detail will result in a resubmission request or rejection.
• Papers can optionally be anonymized. The authors can decide to optionally anonymize the submission by omitting the author names in the pdf. Author names will be recorded in either case in HotCRP but not displayed to the reviewers.
• If you have any conflict of interest with a member of the program committee, please note it in the designated section of the HotCRP submission form.

Organizing Committee

• Program Chairs

• Dan Boneh, Stanford University, CBR
• Ari Juels, Cornell Tech, IC3
• Dawn Song, U.C.Berkeley, RDI

• Program Committee

• Ittai Abraham, VMware Research
• Zeta Avarikioti, TU Wien, Austria
• Joe Bonneau, NYU and a16z Crypto Research
• Konstantinos Chalkias, Mysten Labs
• Jeremy Clark, Concordia University
• Justin Drake, Ethereum Foundation
• Ittay Eyal, Technion
• Giulia Fanti, CMU
• Dankrad Feist, Ethereum Foundation
• Ben Fisch, Yale
• Christina Garman, Purdue University
• Arthur Gervais, UCL
• Andrew Lewis-Pye, London School of Economics
• Dahlia Malkhi, Chainlink
• Deepak Maram, Mysten Labs
• Patrick McCorry, Infura
• Sarah Meiklejohn, University College London / Google
• Kartik Nayak, Duke University
• Joachim Neu, Stanford University
• Valeria Nikolaenko, a16z crypto research
• Charalampos Papamanthou, Yale
• Joseph Poon, Warp Engine
• Ling Ren, UIUC
• Dan Robinson, Paradigm
• Tim Roughgarden, Columbia University and a16z crypto research
• Will Scott, Protocol Labs
• Ertem Nusret Tas, Stanford University
• Chrysoula Stathakopoulou, Chainlink labs
• Alin Tomescu, Aptos
• Mahdi Zamani, Visa Research
• Fan Zhang, Yale
• Liyi Zhou, Imperial College London