This book presents the best papers from the 1st International Conference on Mathematical Research for Blockchain Economy (MARBLE) 2019, held in Santorini, Greece. 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.
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.

Dr. Panos Pardalos is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Florida, and an affiliated faculty of Biomedical Engineering and Computer Science Information & Engineering departments. In addition, he is the director of the Center for Applied Optimization. Dr. Pardalos is a world renowned leader in Global Optimization, Mathematical Modeling, and Data Sciences. He is a Fellow of AAAS, AIMBE, and INFORMS and was awarded the 2013 Constantin Dr. Panos Pardalos is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Caratheodory Prize of the International Society of Global Optimization. In addition, Dr. Pardalos has been awarded the 2013 EURO Gold Medal prize bestowed by the Association for European Operational Research Societies. This medal is the preeminent European award given to Operations Research (OR) professionals for 'scientific contributions that stand the test of time.' Dr. Pardalos has been awarded a prestigious Humboldt Research Award (2018- 2019). The Humboldt Research Award is granted in recognition of a researcher's entire achievements to date - fundamental discoveries, new theories, insights that have had significant impact on their discipline. Dr. Pardalos is also a Member of several Academies of Sciences, and he holds several honorary PhD degrees and affiliations. He is the Founding Editor of Optimization Letters, Energy Systems, and Co-Founder of the International Journal of Global Optimization, and Computational Management Science. He has published over 500 journal papers, and edited/authored over 200 books. He is one of the most cited authors and has graduated 63 PhD students so far. Details can be found in www.ise.ufl.edu/pardalos.

Ilias S. Kotsireas serves as a full professor of Computer Science at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. In 2002 he founded the CARGO Lab, and serves as its director for more than 15 years. He has over 150 refereed journal and conference publications, chapters in books, edited books and special issues of journals, in the research areas of Computational Algebra, Metaheuristics, High-Performance Computing, Dynamical Systems and Combinatorial Design Theory. He serves on the Editorial Board of 7 international journals. He serves as the Managing Editor of a Springer journal and as the Editor-in-Chief of a Springer journal and a Birkhauser book series. He has organized a very large number of international conferences in Europe, North America and Asia, often serving as a Program Committee Chair or General Chair.



Yike Guo is a Professor of Computing Science in the Department of Computing at Imperial College London. He is the founding Director of the Data Science Institute at Imperial College, as well as leading the Discovery Science Group in the department. Professor Guo also holds the position of CTO of the tranSMART Foundation, a global open source community using and developing data sharing and analytics technology for translational medicine. Professor