Waves Enterprise releases blockchain voting platform to the public

Waves Enterprise, the business-focused spin-off of the Waves project, announced on the public release of its blockchain voting system primarily aimed at corporations and board governance.

The Waves system uses blockchain at every step of the voting process, as votes are recorded and then counted with full cryptographic guarantees.

"Those elections used a voting system developed in cooperation with Rostelekom , which is based on a similar cryptographic protocol but has several important distinctions. For example, it uses Russian cryptography, it has different mechanisms for identification and anonymization, [and] the voting process is changed."

Though Kalikhov said that authorities in Brazil are also exploring a potential implementation of blockchain voting, the current product is meant for corporate settings and board voting - a market estimated by Waves to be worth $100 million globally.

The platform uses a variety of techniques to prevent fraud in the processes of voting and vote tallying.

"The use of homomorphic encryption allows to automatically collect the results of the election without decrypting each individual ballot, guaranteeing the privacy of the vote. Using a distributed key generation protocol and several independent encryption servers excludes the possibility of a single actor with a 'master key' and guarantees that no one is able to decrypt the results or look into single ballots before the vote has ended."

Election fraud often revolves around creating fake or manipulated ballots - for example by casting ballots in the name of dead people, felons, or otherwise ineligible voters; paying or harassing people to vote for a particular candidate; or leaving loopholes that allow for the same person to cast multiple votes.

Smart contracts hold a registry of all valid voters through their public keys, while each private key remains on their personal devices.

To defend against insincere voting, the system allows voters to change their preference at any point before the election is over.

While the voting software is built to ensure the safety of the private keys, users must still "Follow the rules of cyber hygiene - using antivirus software and installing the latest operating system updates."