Practical I-Voting on Stellar Blockchain

Stanisław Barański,Andrzej Sobecki,Julian Szymański,David Gil,Higinio Mora

doi:10.3390/app10217606

Stanisław Barański, Andrzej Sobecki + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/app10217606

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Abstract

In this paper, we propose a privacy-preserving i-voting system based on the public Stellar Blockchain network. We argue that the proposed system satisfies all requirements stated for a robust i-voting system including transparency, verifiability, and voter anonymity. The practical architecture of the system abstracts a voter from blockchain technology used underneath. To keep user privacy, we propose a privacy-first protocol that protects voter anonymity. Additionally, high throughput and low transaction fees allow handling large scale voting at low costs. As a result we built an open-source, cheap, and secure system for i-voting that uses public blockchain, where everyone can participate and verify the election process without the need to trust a central authority. The main contribution to the field is a method based on a blind signature used to construct reliable voting protocol. The proposed method fulfills all requirements defined for i-voting systems, which is challenging to achieve altogether.

Highlights

Modern democracy requires effective tools to allow citizens to interact with a government
As Stellar uses a unique consensus protocol, that is a key element of that type of distributed systems, we describe its approach from the perspective of other blockchain systems
The transaction is submitted directly to the public blockchain nodes or nodes hosted by organizers

Summary

Introduction

Modern democracy requires effective tools to allow citizens to interact with a government. Switzerland and Estonia are examples of countries that successfully introduce alternative ways to traditional voting, especially with the usage of the Internet (i-voting). The reasons for slow progress in the introduction of modern tools for democracy can be of a different sort, but the technology behind is still developing and cover wider areas of the functionality. This topic is being researched for many years, especially in domains such as cryptography, which is an inevitable part of system security. Resistance to introducing digital solutions into the voting process lies––among others––in a lack of confidence in the technology

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