The 83rd meeting of the IFIP Working Group 10.4 on Dependable Computing and Fault Tolerance was held in person in Melbourne, Australia, from 12-16 January 2023, hosted by Jiangshan Yu (Monash University), Dan Kim (University of Queensland) and Gernot Heiser (University of New South Wales). 

The meeting was attended by 30 people from seven countries across four continents. The technical program, chaired by Jiangshan Yu (Monash University, Australia), Paulo Verissimo (KAUST, KSA), and Matti Hiltunen (AT&T Labs, USA), focused on “The future of blockchains”.

The objectives of the workshop were to discuss the current challenges and future opportunities in blockchain systems and applications. The workshop featured four main sessions of formal presentations, covering Blockchain for Critical Infrastructures, Future Applications and Regulations, Dependability and Security Aspects of Blockchain, and Performance and Scalability Aspects of Blockchain. Like many previous editions of IFIP 10.4 WG meetings, the workshop was also facilitated by guided discussion sessions and research report sessions.

Blockchain is a promising technology for building a trustworthy and dependable system in many scenarios, such as the Internet, CPS and database auditing, where establishing trust is challenging. However, the current permissionless blockchain paradigm might be too strong and not necessary for many applications. Finding the right application-specific balance may accelerate the deployment of distributed ledger technology. 

In addition, while great progress is being made, blockchain performance (in particular when considering complex DApps), is still unsolved. Moreover, more research on blockchain dependability beyond consensus (eg. smart contract dependability, responsible and dependable law and regulation), is urgently needed.