Devcon, a conference for developers of Ethereum, the world’s second-largest blockchain, took place Oct. 11-14.
The event in Colombia included a series of challenges to develop practical solutions using blockchain.
Among the winners of one of the hackathons was NFTFY, a Brazilian startup working in the field of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) with their fractionalization.
The project of NFTFY’s developers is called ZK Vote and offers an alternative to the Brazilian electronic ballot box.
With this solution, elections could be held decentralized via the blockchain.
Through the blockchain, an issuer was created that acts as a kind of voter title. This allowed the voter to connect to the application and cast their vote.
This was made possible by the Polygon ID technology used by the team.
Polygon ID was also responsible for running the challenge, popularly known as a “hackathon.”
“Participation in such competitions is crucial for developing technologies that advance the crypto world. NFTFY itself was born from such a moment,” said Leonardo Carvalho, CEO, and co-founder of NFTFY.
NFTFY’s development team also used Zero Knowledge Proof technology, which allows votes to be verified without specifying who each participant voted for.
Zero-knowledge proof is a method by which one party can prove to the other that a particular statement is true without providing any information beyond that, as NFTFY explained in a statement.
“I believe that the development of a technology that enables decentralized elections is very interesting, as it explores one of several possibilities of blockchain as a tool that goes far beyond cryptocurrencies,” Leonardo Carvalho said.
Amid the election season in Brazil, the project was highlighted because it brings to the forefront the issue of decentralization, which is of great importance for exercising citizenship.
IS THE ELECTRONIC BALLOT BOX RELIABLE?
Although the project presents itself as an alternative to the Brazilian electronic ballot box, it does not represent a criticism of the equipment chosen by the Supreme Electoral Court to calculate Brazilians’ votes.
The electronic voting equipment, which has been used in Brazil since 1996, was developed to meet the needs of Brazilians, according to TSE.
The equipment uses biometric and encrypted data to calculate votes, making it impossible to verify who voted for which candidate, which prevents several electoral crimes.
Although it works digitally, the electronic ballot box is not connected to a computer network and cannot be affected by cyberattacks. According to TSE, the devices have already been tested in several hacking challenges.