Mathematical Research for Blockchain Economy

This book presents the best papers from the 5th International Conference on Mathematical Research for Blockchain Economy (MARBLE) 2024, held in Malaga, Spain. While most blockchain conferences and forums are dedicated to business applications, product development, or Initial Coin Offering (ICO) launches, this conference focused on the mathematics behind blockchain to bridge the gap between practice and theory.

Blockchain technology has been considered as the most fundamental and revolutionizing invention since the Internet. Every year, thousands of blockchain projects are launched and circulated in the market, and there is a tremendous wealth of blockchain applications, from finance to healthcare, education, media, logistics, and more. However, due to theoretical and technical barriers, most of these applications are impractical for use in a real-world business context. The papers in this book reveal the challenges and limitations, such as scalability, latency, privacy, and security and showcase solutions and developments to overcome them.

Stefanos Leonardos is a lecturer in Machine Learning at the Department of Informatics, King’s College London, UK. His research interests span the areas of game theory and its applications in blockchain-enabled, digital economic systems, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and in strategic interactions that dynamically evolve over time. He has won numerous best paper awards for his research on the design of decentralized economies and on the analysis of exploration-exploitation algorithms in multi-agent systems. 

Elise Alfieri is an associate professor at IAE Gustave Eiffel–Paris Est Créteil University, France, and co-director of the Finance-Accounting group of the IRG Research Center. She received her Ph.D. in finance related to cryptocurrency and market efficiency from the University of Grenoble Alps, France, during which she was a visiting fellow at the Centre for Cryptocurrency Research and Engineering, Imperial College London. Her research interests include cryptocurrencies, blockchain, financial markets, and econometric modelling. She has published in the Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, in the Journal of Risk Finance, and in the Innovations Journal of Innovation Economics and Management, among others, and regularly presents papers in conferences.

William Knottenbelt is a professor of Applied Quantitative Analysis at the Department of Computing, Imperial College, London, UK. His broad areas of research interest are the application of mathematical modelling techniques to real-life systems. Specific areas of interest include but are not limited to modelling and optimization in parallel queuing systems, modelling of storage systems, stochastic modelling of sport, stochastic modelling of healthcare systems, resource allocation and control in cloud-computing environments, numerical solution of Markov models and specification techniques for SLA specification, compliance prediction, and monitoring.

Panos Pardalos is an emeritus distinguished professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Florida, USA. He also holds the Paul and Heidi Brown Preeminent Professor title in the same department. Additionally, he is the director of the Center for Applied Optimization and is an affiliated faculty member of the Computer and Information Science Department, the Hellenic Studies Center, and the Biomedical Engineering Program. Professor Pardalos is a world-leading expert in global and combinatorial optimization.  He is also a member of several Academies of Sciences and holds honorary Ph.D. degrees and affiliations. He is a founding editor of Optimization Letters, Energy Systems, and co-founder of the International Journal of Global Optimization, and Computational Management Science. His recent research interests include network design problems, optimization in telecommunications, e-commerce, data mining, biomedical applications, and massive computing.