2023 IEEE International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency (ICBC)

Abstract

Blockchain technology has already established itself for developing various new complex decentralized software systems. For example, integrating blockchains, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the Internet-of-Things (IoT) provides a promising new research and development direction that has generated significant research funding and venture capital investments. Each of these technologies is coming forward with a new set of engineering challenges (e.g., understanding the requirements related to trust and ethics, system resilience towards unpredictable market behavior, or development of ultra-long-term software systems). At the same time, various blockchain systems are going through turbulent swings in value, culture, trustworthiness, illegal activity, public perception, supporting market infrastructure, and censorship resistance. This keynote will present a selection of our recent work ranging from engineering trust to building censorship-resistant federated learning on decentralized permissionless blockchains. The common theme is understanding how various innovations, illegal activities, and system manipulations lead to blockchain system turbulences and vice versa. The keynote discusses the feasibility of engineering mechanisms to predict and dampen the effects of blockchain turbulences using market mechanisms and machine learning. The goal is to increase fundamental blockchain system trustworthiness, reliability, and public acceptability, while increasing the value and benefits of complex blockchain systems.