Banned Blockchain-Powered Polling App Launches Referendum to Challenge Putin’s Election
The app has faced serious blowback from the Kremlin and retooled to make it easier to use and more secure
The legitimacy of the recent election in Russia, where polls reported President Vladimir Putin won 88 percent of the vote, is being challenged by the blockchain-powered app Russia2024, according to opposition activist Mark Feygin.
The app will allow citizens to cast votes declaring whether the results are legitimate or not, three days after Putin’s inauguration, Feygin, who previously served as the lawyer to the opposition punk band Pussy Riot, Feygin said in a release today.
Russia2024 was built using Rarimo’s Freedom Tool, an anti-surveillance voting service that uses blockchain and zero-knowledge cryptography to ensure citizens can participate in polls, vote and protest without being tracked.
Russia2024 initially launched in March during the presidential election and received 15,000 downloads within the first 12 hours of its release, before being shut down.
“The Kremlin then attempted to tank Russia2024’s rating by paying state-sponsored reviewers to leave negative reviews,” Lasha Antadze, co-founder of Freedom Tool, said via email. “This strategy was, however, exposed by a whistleblower who reached out to express support for the app.”
Over the past two months, Russia 2024 has been re-engineered and stress-tested via audits and white-hat hackers.
“We have removed many of the pain points of the initial release and are ready for its second distribution,” Antadze said. “This time we are not limiting one device to one vote – multiple voters can use and cast votes using the same phone. It is like an ultra-portable, ultra-secure ballot box.”
Russia2024 users prove their citizenship, and therefore their eligibility to vote, by scanning their biometric passports with their phones. The data on the biometric chip inside the passport is verified, and upon confirming authenticity, an anonymous voting pass for polls and protest elections is issued.
The app remains one of the only remaining outlets in Russia for citizens to voice dissent. Antadze wouldn’t comment on the specific strategic and technical differences so as to avoid compromising the success of the referendum.
“The Kremlin will obviously take steps to restrict access to the app when it is relaunched, like they did previously. We will handle this as it comes,” he said.
lead image: Lasha Antadze