Call for Papers – UCL CBT Discussion Paper Series – Extended Deadline: 9 March 2020
The UCL Centre for Blockchain Technologies is pleased to announce the return of its Discussion Paper Series on Distributed Ledger Technologies. The aim of the CBT Discussion Paper Series is to share recent developments and state-of-the-art solutions on blockchain and DLT from UCL CBT Associates and our community.
Due to a number of requests, the deadline for the UCL CBT Discussion Paper Series has been extended. If you haven’t submitted a paper yet, you still have the chance to do so until the 9th of March.
The discussion paper series will be published on a quarterly basis. Submissions are circulated among the members of the UCL CBT Editorial Board, led by our Scientific Director Tomaso Aste. A selected few discussion paper authors may be invited to host a research seminar.
For more information about submission guidelines see here.
Call for Papers – 2020 Crypto Valley Conference
Dr. Paolo Tasca, the Executive Director of UCL CBT, will be chairing the “Economic and Financial Track” of the 2020 Crypto Valley Conference, to be held on 11th-12th June, in Rotkreuz, Switzerland.
The aim of the conference is to merge the gap between academics, technologists, policy makers and regulators engaged in the new field of distributed and peer-to-peer systems, by providing a unique cross-sectoral perspective which allows to exhaustively address questions of practical importance from an economic, financial and business perspective. UCL CBT is a technical partner of the CVC 2020.
Accepted papers will be considered for a publication into Frontiers in Blockchain journal – Financial Blockchain.
The deadline for submitted papers is 03/04/2020.
For more information about submission topics and guidelines, see here.
UCL CBT Blockchain Research Showcase Presentations
The UCL CBT ran its first blockchain research showcase where awardees from the first Call for Proposals presented their findings. The event took place on Thursday 20th February at UCL in London, UK. Learn more about the research proposals and watch the presentations here.
News from CBT Associates
Abel Maciel is pleased to announce the Construction Blockchain Consortium is hosting its annual conference titled ‘Blockchain & The Digital Golden Thread’ at University College London between 20th and 22nd May 2020. It will build upon the CBC’s 2019 symposium (hosted by the CSTB in Paris) with involvement from leading names in the application of blockchain technology in the built environment. The conference will feature keynotes and workshops across three days, with keynote sessions on Computational Construction Law and Digital Construction Management. The CBC will be presenting its most recent white paper and invite discussion with experts from across industry and academia. The link to the conference can be found here.
Patrick Osborne presented at the Construction Blockchain Consortium (CBC) – ETH Zurich “Blockchain in Construction Conference last Friday, February 21, 2020, on the topic. “A Blockchain Game in Eurasian Supply Chain Management”. The research motivation was to simulate the bidding process between an energy/construction company operator and supplier with an auditing regulator oversight (3 parties in total) on the Ethereum Blockchain using Zero-Knowledge Proofs. Since many aspects of the bidding process has to be public and private information. Overall, the operator has the ability to choose the lowest bid actually submitted by the approved supplier.
Nikola Tchouparov, co-founder & CEO of Moneyfold, presented a demo of sending euros over the public Ethereum mainnet. (Technical description: sending regulated EUR stablecoin e-money from an Eidoo wallet on a laptop to a Metamask wallet on a phone.) The demo took place at the event ‘Shining a Spotlight on Digital Assets: DLT and the Future of Financial Services‘ organised by industry body Innovate Finance and hosted by law firm DLA Piper. A recording of the demo can be viewed here. If you would like to meet Nikola, he will be speaking about blockchain & DeFi at the CFA UK Fintech Forum on the 6th March.
Giovanna Massarotto served as Distinguished Guest Scholar at the Global Antitrust Institute (GAI) in Washington DC from Feb. 20th to 27th. She delivered a lecture on Feb. 24th entitled “Grasping the Meaning of the Big Tech Consent”. An article on the topic of the lecture has been published in the Competition Policy International (CPI) journal. She will also be delivering a talk at Politecnico of Milan on March 5th entitled “E’ il diritto la chiave per guidare la Data Economy?”.
Paolo Sironi delivered a keynote of his latest philosophical and economics book, theory and principles of “Financial Market Transparency” for the annual event of CFA Institute in Italy, hosted by Borsa Italiana LSEG Group. Key message: “We don’t need a digital revolution but a revolution of ideas”. A short video summary of the speech content can be found here.
Navroop Sahdev took part in an expert interview with Block99 at the World Economic Forum which tells the story of The Digital Economist, a Washington-based global impact platform focused on co-creating solutions to drive technological convergence in the new digital economy to help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
Mark Esposito would like to share an article he co-authored, published in MIT Technology Review Insights entitled “AI in the election industry demands transparency”. This article can be read here.
Rajan Kashyap is pleased to announce that he will be speaking at Blockchain Summit in London on 1-2nd July. Find out more here.
Block-Sprint 2019: A Recap
Videos of the Block-Sprint winners’ pitches and highlights of the competition can be found here including a write-up on LinkedIn here. Watch out for the next one in 2020.
UCL CBT Releases Report on DLT in the Supply Chain
The UCL CBT, with the support of the Retail Blockchain Consortium (RBC), have created a market report looking at the adoption of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) in physical supply chains. This report is the first comprehensive outlook on the state of DLT in the global physical supply chain sector. As part of this report over 100 different projects have been analysed including start-ups, corporates, consortia and government that are implementing various aspects of DLT in the applications areas of tracing (provenance), logistics, financial transactions, retail operations and circular economy. Get a copy of the report here.