A privacy preserving ethereum-based E-voting system

Abstract

Both E-Voting and blockchain are popular topics these years. Although a blockchain seems to be a promising surrounding for E-Voting systems, there are only a few E-Voting systems based on Blockchain nowadays. Especially Ethereum, which is famous for its decentralized smart contract execution, provides interesting possibilities if one wants to build up a (partly) decentralized E-Voting system. In this thesis, we propose a new Privacy-preserving Ethereum-based E-Voting System (PEES) that provides accuracy, verifiability and privacy. Not like many other Blockchain based E-Voting systems that only saves encrypted votes on-chain to protect Voter's privacy only against the public, PEES uses Zero-Knowledge Proofs to break the connection between a Voter and his vote, to achieve a stronger privacy protection. With a small precondition, PEES protects Voter's privacy not only against the public but also against potential malicious election organizers --- a group of people who has the decryption keys for the election.