As Russia is set to pilot a blockchain-based e-voting system, the country’s federal elections authority has provided public access to the platform’s source code. According to an official announcement by Russia’s Central Election Commission, or CEC, the source code for the e-voting system was partly released on GitHub on Sept. 7. The initial release included the source code for smart contracts and front-end elements of the e-voting platform like developer libraries and servers responsible for the vote count. According to the CEC, the internal elements of the e-voting platform are expected to be published on Sept. 10. At the time …

Despite reports of potential security and technical issues, blockchain voting platform Voatz has reportedly been deployed successfully at the Michigan Democratic Party State Nominating Convention. More than 1,900 delegates at the virtual convention, held from Aug. 29-30, were able to nominate candidates using Voatz for the state’s Supreme Court, state Board of Education, and boards at state universities. The event was held online due to restrictions caused by the pandemic. "There were so many unique challenges with this year's convention because of the pandemic, but the Voatz platform eased many of our concerns," said Chrisy Jensen, Executive Director of the …

Russian telecommunication giant Rostelekom, together with the Russian Ministry of Digital Development and Communications, tested a blockchain-based voting system developed in collaboration with Waves Enterprise. As local news outlets reported, the preliminary test involved 30,000 people who were trying out the platform’s functionality and technical capabilities. According to Rostelekom spokespeople, the system worked as intended during the test and did not fail under high load. Votes were reportedly counted in less than one minute through homomorphic encryption systems. This method allows calculations to result in the same output even if the underlying data remains encrypted. Officials noted that the test …

The United States Postal Service, or USPS, recently filed a patent for a mail-in voting system that utilizes Blockchain and other technologies for verification. Responding to an inquiry from Cointelegraph, U.S. Representative for Florida's 9th district, Darren Soto, voiced his excitement about this prospective development. “I think it’s a great idea," Soto told Cointelegraph. "I’m real excited that the post office is working on this issue," he explained. "It’s something that was a pleasant surprise for many in congress," the congressman added, noting the necessity of patent filing in line with governmental technological advancements. Currently a hotly debated topic, mail-in …

Since the advent of blockchain technology in 2008, we have seen an ongoing sense of fortune, and several industries have been, and still are, grateful participants. The enormous boom will undoubtedly cause many other businesses to come aboard this train and completely step up their operations. Food industry Blockchain tech in the food industry will make the process of food production, distribution and storage completely transparent. The decentralized ledger system will provide easy access to vital information about the food product you are buying, from when it was grown to when it reached the market and how long it has …

Russia is set to pilot a national blockchain-based e-voting system in September. The new system was developed in partnership between Rostelecom, Russia’s largest integrated provider, and Waves Enterprise. Another recent blockchain e-voting experiment in Russia ended in fiasco after the system suffered a number of setbacks and attacks. The Russian government used a different blockchain provider of digital services and solutions, Bitfury, for that particular implementation however. Artem Kalikhov, chief product officer of Waves Enterprise, told Cointelegraph that their work with Rostelecom was independent of that previous pilot. Kalikhov said that the system developed by Waves employes zero-knowledge proofs and …

A new patent has been filed by the U.S. Postal Service, or USPS, which appears to use Blockchain technology to make mail-in voting a safe alternative to physical polling stations amid the COVID-19 pandemic. This news follows recent comments from President Donald Trump concerning the mail service's funding as part of his fight against mail-in voting. "This development relates to a voting system that also incorporates the use of cryptographic elements, such as blockchains, as are used with cryptographic currencies, to track and secure the vote by mail system," said a patent filing, dated Aug. 13, 2020. COVID-19 remains a …

The Southern Indian state of Telangana may soon develop and test a blockchain-based electronic voting system to facilitate remote voting. Speaking at a webinar conducted by the Election Commission of India and Tamil Nadu E-Governance Agency, the Principal Secretary of Information Technology Jayesh Ranjan suggested that the state may initially experiment with blockchain e-voting on a small scale and later widen the implementation. Members of the Election Commission of India, Ministry of Electronics and IT, India’s citizen engagement platform MyGov and blockchain industry leaders were also a part of the webinar. The members of the webinar discussed the possible use …

This week’s headlines from Japan included Coincheck readying its digital shareholder meeting solution, GMO Coin announcing negative leverage trading fees, Decurret testing transactions with a power company, Japanese authorities proposing tax changes, and Japanese finance company FISCO developing apps for shareholder voting and staking. Check out some of this week’s crypto and blockchain headlines, originally reported by Cointelegraph Japan. Coincheck setting up for digital shareholder service As Tokyo-based crypto exchange Coincheck readies its new digital meeting avenue, the exchange's co-founder expressed confidence in the project. Known as Sharely, unveiled in June 2020, the digital shareholder gathering solution allows for participant …

Passport data from 1.14 million Russians is now available for sale on underground shops via the dark web. This data was stolen from citizens who voted in the country’s recent constitutional reform referendum, which utilized Blockchain technology. According to Kommersant, quoting information provided by the hackers, illegal sellers have already sold over “30 thousand lines” of a document that contains the leaked data. Lines are listed at a cost of $1.50 each, but the price-per-line goes as low as $1 for parties purchasing the data in bulk. Although passport data cannot necessarily be used for sensitive purposes, the sellers claim …

From June 25 to July 1, the Russian government held a public vote with the goal of finding out whether the country’s constitution should be amended. Part of the vote was held on blockchain to “ensure security and transparency,” according to the government, making it the country’s most extensive DLT project to date. But this didn’t stop independent researchers from registering over 20 million “abnormal” votes and arguing that it was one of the most falsified voting events in the modern history of Russia. So what was blockchain’s role in all of this, exactly? What was the referendum all about? …

Blockchain interoperability protocol Polkadot is planning to run another vote in regard to the denomination of its native token, DOT. Following a similar vote conducted on Polkadot’s “wild cousin” network, Kusama, in May 2020, the creator of Polkadot project, the Web3 Foundation, decided to reconduct the vote on Polkadot with real DOT tokens. Announcing the news on July 13, Polkadot invited community members to participate in the poll, which will finally define whether to redenominate DOTs 1:10, 1:100 or 1:1,000 on Polkadot. According to the blog post, the poll is open now and will last for two weeks. All DOT …