invezz.com
Waves Enterprise, a subsidiary of the crypto project Waves, recently announced the release of its blockchain voting system to the public. However, the company is primarily targeting corporate clients, offering them a secure way to conduct the voting process.
Waves to release its blockchain voting platform to the public
The issue of secure voting has been a hot topic recently, particularly due to the US elections. Many have proposed blockchain voting as a solution, which made plenty of projects that were already working on such a solution to speed things up.
Are you looking for fast-news, hot-tips and market analysis? Sign-up for the Invezz newsletter, today.
Waves Enterprise, which already has such a system, decided to release it to the public, with the goal of attracting corporations and board governance.
The system is relying on blockchain at every step of the process, with all votes being recorded and counted with full cryptographic protection. The system is transparent and private at the same time thanks to homomorphic encryption, which allows the system to accurately count votes without revealing the identity of voters.
The platform is not flawless, but it is ready for deployment
Despite the fact that the system is targeting lower-stakes environments, it was recently trialed in Russian local and parliamentary elections, with extremely positive results.
The developers say that the platform is ready for deployment, and that Russian elections have proved it. However, the public system will be different from the one used by the Russians.
Waves Enterprise’s chief product officer, Artem Kalikhov, stated that Brazil is also exploring the potential use of the public system. Waves even estimated the worth of the global voting market, finding it to be worth $100 million.
Of course, the platform still received some criticism, even from the Russians, who blamed it for the inability of external parties to connect and verify nodes. However, according to Kalikhov, that is not an issue but a circumstance, as that version was run on Waves Enterprise Mainnet, which is permissioned despite being public.
Even so, it is still possible to encounter bugs, or even backdoors, as the platform is only as strong as its voter registration process. In other words, election fraud is still not completely eliminated. The project found a way to combat this issue by allowing users to change their vote at any point before the election ends.