Editorial: 1st International Congress on Blockchain and Applications, BLOCKCHAIN 2019

The proceedings contain 21 papers. The special focus in this conference is on Blockchain and Applications. The topics include: Anticipatory policy as a design challenge: Experiments with stakeholders engagement in blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (bdlts); the electronic bill of lading: Challenges of paperless trade; a methodology for a probabilistic security analysis of sharding-based blockchain protocols; the “Tokenization” of the eparticipation in public governance: An opportunity to hack democracy; blockchain approach to solve collective decision making problems for swarm robotics; prediction of transaction confirmation time in ethereum blockchain using machine learning; improving event monitoring in iot network using an integrated blockchain-distributed pattern recognition scheme; on value preservation with distributed ledger technologies, intelligent agents, and digital preservation; blockchain technology: A review of the current challenges of cryptocurrency; lightning network: A comparative review of transaction fees and data analysis; a blockchain- and ai-based platform for global employability; blockchain and biometrics: A first look into opportunities and challenges; do smart contract languages need to be turing complete?; towards integration of blockchain and iot: A bibliometric analysis of state-of-the-art; clinicappchain: A low-cost blockchain hyperledger solution for healthcare; smart contracts are more than objects: Pro-activeness on the blockchain; blockchain based informed consent with reputation support; privacy centric collaborative machine learning model training via blockchain; fuzzy rules based solution for system administration security management via a blockchain.