Real Talk Case Study: Vocdoni – Empowering Digital Democracy with Blockchain

REAL TALK CASE STUDY

An Interview with Vocdoni

Founded in 2018, Vocdoni is pioneering the future of digital democracy through blockchain technology. Their cutting-edge voting solutions combine advanced cryptography with user-friendly design to make secure, transparent voting accessible to communities worldwide.

Can you describe Vocdoni in a few sentences?

Vocdoni is a cutting-edge digital voting solution built to redefine how communities, organizations, and governments conduct elections and make decisions. Our protocol delivers secure, anonymous, and universally verifiable voting by leveraging blockchain technology, zero-knowledge proofs, and advanced cryptographic mechanisms. We're designed to scale seamlessly, accommodating diverse voting scenarios from small local organizations to national elections and decentralized Web3 communities. It’s an entirely different approach from traditional digital voting. We operate on a transparent, shared infrastructure that eliminates the need for trusted components, offering high levels of security, verifiability and privacy by default. This contrasts with traditional systems, where each voting process requires a custom deployment, reliance on multiple trusted components, reduced privacy, opaque processes and higher costs.

What is the primary mission or goal of your project?

Our mission is to democratize access to secure and transparent decision-making tools, enabling individuals and communities worldwide to actively participate in governance. We focus on several key objectives:

Empowering communities by providing tools that allow every individual to have a voice in collective decision-making, regardless of their geographical, economic, or technological constraints.
Promoting transparency and trust through universally verifiable and tamper-resistant systems, enabling third parties to audit and ensure the proper execution of governance processes.
Enhancing voter privacy using advanced cryptographic techniques.
Advancing open-source collaboration to drive continuous innovation for the public good.
Encouraging participation by reducing barriers to entry for voting.

What are the key social or environmental impacts of your project?

Our platform creates several transformative impacts:

Increased accessibility: On top of our voting protocol, we built a platform that is intuitive for users of varying technological expertise, including those utilizing assistive tools. Its mobile-first, intuitive and easy-to-use design ensures secure voting from any device, bridging digital divides across diverse socio-economic, geographic, and demographic sectors
Strengthened trust in democracy: Through blockchain and zero-knowledge cryptographic solutions, we deliver end-to-end verifiable elections with universal auditability, fostering trust in democratic processes and institutions.
Public good & open source: As a public-good initiative, our fully open-source approach promotes transparency and invites global contributions to continuously improve functionality and security.
Privacy-first approach: We prioritize voter privacy using cutting-edge technologies like zkSNARKs and Homomorphic Encryption. So we can ensure anonymous and receipt-free voting, preventing voter coercion and ensuring confidential participation.
Enhanced community engagement: By enabling frequent and low-barrier democratic processes, including participatory budgeting and real-time policy referenda, we foster sustained community involvement, particularly among historically underrepresented groups.
Cost reduction in civic participation: We've reduced election costs tenfold compared to traditional voting systems, from the market average of 5-7 USD per voter to less than 0.50 USD, making democratic processes more accessible to organizations of all sizes.
Environmental sustainability: By eliminating paper ballots, reducing logistical overhead, and minimizing the need for physical polling stations, we significantly decrease the carbon footprint of traditional electoral systems.

How do you measure the impact of your project?

We track several key metrics to evaluate our success:

Participation growth: We've consistently demonstrated an over 50% increase in voter turnout compared to traditional methods, as validated by case studies like Òmnium Cultural's adoption.
Cost efficiency: Our solution reduces election costs by at least 3x compared to other digital solutions, ensuring sustainable and equitable access to democratic tools.
Environmental sustainability: We measure the reduction in paper usage, logistical overhead, and overall carbon footprint compared to traditional voting methods.

Can you share a success story about how Vocdoni has positively impacted a community?

One of our most significant implementations has been with Òmnium Cultural, one of Europe's largest cultural organizations. They chose Vocdoni to modernize their governance for over 180,000 members.

Why Òmnium Cultural Chose Vocdoni:

Security and trustlessness: Immutable blockchain records ensured that results were tamper-proof and verifiable.
Anonymity and privacy: zkSNARKs guaranteed complete voter anonymity.
Global accessibility and scalability: Members voted seamlessly from anywhere using PCs, tablets, or mobile phones.
Transparency and verifiability: Independent observers could audit results on the blockchain.
Easy to use: Our UI ensures a smooth and easy-to-use interface, increasing turnout, reducing incidences and ensuring everyone can participate.

Òmnium Cultural, shared their experience:

"Commitment to Vocdoni has been clear. At Omnium Cultural, we chose a secure and verifiable voting system that allows us to hold our statutory meetings with full guarantees for the more than 180,000 members of our organization."

This collaboration set a new standard for democratic engagement.

Another great example is the Belarus voting integration.

With the integration of the Vocdoni Protocol into the New Belarus app, all Belarusians can now participate in votes after registering and validating their citizenship. This integration offers verifiability, transparency, censorship resistance, and scalability in governance.

The first vote conducted with our protocol was to elect the Coordination Council, a body representing Belarusian democratic forces and civil society. The voting was a success, with 6,723 votes cast and international observers.

Vocdoni Protocol remains a reliable solution for any entity aiming to enhance democracy and participation in communities, organizations, and governments. Especially when there is a threat to the integrity of the vote and censorship.

You can read more in our blog: https://blog.vocdoni.io/new-belarus-vocdoni

What cool tech does Vocdoni use to power its magic?

We leverage state-of-the-art technologies to deliver secure, scalable, and privacy-preserving voting systems:

Blockchain-based voting: At the heart of our protocol there is the Vochain, a custom-built blockchain designed specifically for secure and scalable voting. It provides high throughput, cost-efficient elections, and the flexibility to integrate advanced cryptographic tools. As technology has evolved, so have we. We’re now building the DAVINCI Protocol, a next-generation zkRollup-based solution that leverages Ethereum security and the latest advancements in cryptography, including zkSNARKs and Homorphic Encryption. This new protocol delivers unprecedented scalability, privacy, and decentralization, empowering us to support even larger and more complex voting scenarios seamlessly.
zkSNARKs (Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Arguments of Knowledge) for ensuring voter privacy by allowing individuals to validate their eligibility and cast ballots without revealing their identities or choices.
Merkle trees for data integrity by using cryptographic proofs to ensure the integrity of voter registries and ballots without exposing sensitive data.
Universal verifiability mechanisms, empowering voters and third-party auditors to independently verify that every vote is counted correctly and securely.

What are the standout features that make Vocdoni unique?

Our platform combines advanced cryptography with user-centric design to create a versatile and powerful voting solution:

1. Gasless voting: We've eliminated on-chain transaction fees to enable cost-effective, environmentally sustainable elections. This ensures accessibility for all users and reduces barriers to participation in high-frequency or low-stakes decision-making processes.

2. Flexible voting configurations: Our protocol is built with a flexible design to support any type of voting methods to accommodate varied governance needs, including some of the most common:

Single and multiple choice voting for selecting one or more winners
Ranked-choice voting for preference-based elections
Quadratic voting to express strength of their preferences proportionally
Weighted voting based on predefined criteria, such as organizational hierarchy or token holdings
Token-based voting that integrates seamlessly with Web3 standards

3. Simplified Web2-like experience: We abstract the complexities of Web3, including wallet sign-ins, token handling, and blockchain transactions, delivering an intuitive interface that requires no prior knowledge of blockchain technologies.

4. Developer integration ready: Our SDK (Software Development Kit) and REST API make it simple to integrate advanced voting mechanisms into existing platforms. Developers can leverage customizable UIs, census integrations, and modular components to create tailored solutions for both traditional organizations and Web3 communities.

What have been the biggest twists and turns in Vocdoni's journey?

One significant challenge has been preserving anonymity in token-based voting. Balancing transparency with voter privacy in token-weighted voting required innovative thinking. We've successfully addressed this through advanced rounding algorithms and zkSNARKs, which allow us to obscure individual token balances while ensuring the integrity of the voting process. These methods maintain privacy even in highly scrutinized token-based governance scenarios.

But one of the most pivotal moments was the decision to transition from our original Vochain architecture to the development of the DAVINCI Protocol, a next-generation zkRollup-based solution that stands for Decentralized Autonomous Voting Infrastructure for Non-Coercive Inclusion. This new protocol can to handle thousands of transactions per second at significantly lower costs, making it ideal for large-scale elections and governance. By leveraging advanced cryptographic techniques, including zkSNARKs, threshold homomorphic encryption (ElGamal), and fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), DAVINCI provides unparalleled scalability, privacy, and trustlessness. It is designed to be fully autonomous, permissionless, unstoppable, and aligned with the core principles of decentralization, empowering secure and efficient voting systems for organizations of any size.

Looking ahead to the coming year, we have several exciting opportunities on the horizon:

Enhance our ecosystem integrations: We plan to deepen partnerships with Web2 and Web3 projects, governance platforms, and DAOs. By providing seamless integration with identity systems, tools like Gitcoin Passport and offering flexible APIs, we aim to become the go-to voting protocol for the World.
DAVINCI Protocol rollout: The upcoming deployment of our next-gen zkRollup-based protocol will revolutionize voting by providing unmatched scalability . This rollout is expected to accelerate adoption across governments, organizations, and Web3 communities.
Global outreach: We're expanding into underserved regions through strategic partnerships and localization efforts, bringing accessible, low-cost, and secure voting solutions to communities where democratic tools are currently limited.

Why did you choose to join Blockchain for Good Alliance?

Joining the Blockchain For Good Alliance (BGA) aligns with our mission to harness technology for social impact. Through this alliance, we collaborate with like-minded organizations to share best practices, co-develop tools, and advocate for digital democracy. This partnership enables us to amplify our reach and contribute to global efforts toward equitable governance.

What advice would you give to someone starting a blockchain project for social good?

We recommend three key principles:

Innovate with purpose: Begin with a clear vision of the real-world problem you aim to solve. Purpose-driven innovation resonates more deeply with users and drives long-term impact.
Build scalable, user-friendly solutions: Design tools that balance complexity with usability. Simplify the user experience to ensure accessibility while retaining the sophistication needed for robust performance.
Focus on transparency and inclusivity: Openness in development processes and inclusivity in design are foundational for building trust with users and collaborators. Whether it’s through open-source contributions or multilingual accessibility, inclusivity strengthens adoption and engagement.

By maintaining these principles, innovators can create technologies that not only solve problems but also inspire trust and drive meaningful change.

How can others get involved or support your mission?

You can join our journey in several ways:

Explore partnerships and services at Vocdoni.io
Contribute to our open-source development on GitHub
Follow our social channels for updates and initiatives

Vocdoni Links

Follow Blockchain For Good Alliance for more inspiring stories of blockchain creating positive change.

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