A Decentralized E-Voting Application Based on the Ethereum Blockchain

Abstract

E-voting is a trending technology. Considerable amount of work based on complex cryptographic algorithm have been introduced to design and implement the e-voting. However, there is always a need of secure, confidential, authentic and easy technology enabled voting process. In 2008, when the digital currency Bitcoin came into existence, since then the underlying technology blockchain became the hot topic. The design of blockchain is robust in such a way that it can bear tamper-resistant data because the voluminous amount of data is increasing day-by-day, which is cryptographically connected. The feature of blockchain technology to provide a database security as a distributed ledger for financial transaction is one of its application. In the blockchain, Ethereum is one of the most popular and emerging blockchain platforms. Ethereum offers protection against the malicious users by charging fees (referred to a gas) for every execution of transaction. This thesis focuses on the design and implementation of decentralized e-voting application using blockchain technology. The proposed application is empowered by Ethereum platform where Smart Contract is written in solidity programming language and then deployed to the local blockchain which allows accounts to vote for their desired candidate. One can interact with the contract on the blockchain through a node.js console as well as through a web page to display the vote count and votes on the page. The advantage of the proposed system over the existing technology is that the blockchain serves as a single entity of having a network and a database all in one. This technology also enables the designer to avoid complex cryptographic algorithms.