Whilst major innovations have been made in blockchain technology in recent years, the area is still very ripe for further research. Some selected research topics are listed as follows with some information about existing challenges and state of the art. Some ideas are also presented on how to address these issues.
Major progress has been made in this area in order to define the key requirements of smart contracts and development of templates. However, further research is required in the area of making smart contracts more secure and safe.
Especially in relation to bitcoin mining centralization, there is a growing concern about how bitcoin can be really decentralized again.