Blockchain-Powered Polling App to be Used to Fight Putin in the 2024 Russian Presidential Election
Dissent in Russia can result in years of jail time. Blockchain can anonymize citizens so their voices can be heard without fear of reprisal.
Mark Feygin, the human rights activist and former lawyer for the Russian feminist punk protest band Pussy Riot, is galvanizing opposition forces with the help of blockchain technology. Russia2024, which rolls out today, will allow Russian citizens to politically engage without fear of reprisal as it masks identity using zero-knowledge proofs.
Known as Freedom Tool, it’s first implementation of Rarimo’s open-source anonymity solution. The 2024 Russia presidential election takes place from March 15 to 17. In a country where anti-Putin tweets can result in years of jail time, Russia2024 allows citizens to vote in polls, sign petitions and protest without being tracked and captures public sentiment on-the-ground.
Freedom Tool leverages zero-knowledge cryptography to run anonymized polls. Citizens who scan their biometric passports with their phones are issued an anonymous voting pass. Then, votes are stored on the blockchain and can be viewed once voting ends. Zero-knowledge cryptography severs any link between the pass and passport data.
It’s the first opposition-led voting app in Eastern Europe and represents the potential of blockchain technology to help combat autocracy. According to Rarimo, they built Freedom Tool to give a voice to people living in repressive regimes and restore the original promise of blockchain to return power to the people.
“The release of Russia2024 coincides with the Russian presidential election, which is widely acknowledged to be rigged,” Lasha Antadze, co-founder of Rarilabs, the company advancing Rarimo, said in a recent interview.
Antadze believes the technology can bring significant value to countries where electoral fraud or accusations of electoral fraud have called results into question. “The United States, for example, is one country where this issue caused significant civil unrest,” he said.
There are elections in 64 countries this year, including the U.S. presidential race. Rarimo hopes their technology is used to build voting systems outside of state apparatus, providing safe outlets for silenced people to express dissent.
At ETHDenver 2024, United States independent presidential candidate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he’d promote putting elections on the blockchain.