Dear Colleagues,

As it has the potential to create new foundations for economic and social systems, blockchain, a distributed ledger technique, has become a buzz word of today. Essentially, a blockchain is a continuously growing list of records, which are linked and secured using cryptography and can be inherently resistant to modification of the data. Blockchain has many potential applications, one of which is the blockchain-based sharing services in Internet of Things (IoT), in which distributed IoT devices can participate in trust-free transactions, and contracts can be captured in computing codes to automatically perform the obligations that parties have committed to in an agreement. Although blockchain and its applications in IoT are promising, there are still many security and privacy challenges, and there is no consensus regarding best practices that specify how blockchain should be securely applied in IoT whilst preserving privacy. This Special Issue intends to collect current developments and the future directions in blockchain-relevant cryptographic algorithms, which can potentially deal with security and privacy issues in emerging blockchain-based IoT technology. We invite authors to submit their original papers. Potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Cryptographic algorithms for accountability in blockchain
• Cryptographic algorithms for anonymity in blockchain
• Cryptographic algorithms for proof-of-work
• Cryptographic algorithms for proof-of-state
• Cryptographic algorithms for smart contracts in IoT
• Cryptographic algorithms for distributed ledgers in IoT

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Cryptography is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Cryptographic algorithms
• Blockchain security and privacy
• Blockchain-based IoT applications
• Accountability and anonymity
• Proof-of-work
• Proof-of-state