EDITORIAL - Special Issue on Large Scale Cooperative Virtual Environments

Abstract

The huge diffusion of distributed networked cooperative applications is due to the recent advances in the area of networking. Several novel applications have emerged in this area: social networks, distributed cryptocurrencies, distributed ledgers, collaborative work and many other ones. In particular, an interesting technology recently adopted to handle cryptocurrencies (such as Bitcoin) is the blockchain technology, that has now taken the more general role to handle several distributed applications. Furthermore, peer to peer, Internet of Things, Smartcities, distributed sensing are examples of modern ICT paradigms that aim to describe globally cooperative infrastructures built upon objects’ intelligence and self-configuring capabilities. The definition of these applications requires to afford several challenges, like