Sierra Leone’s “blockchain vote” sounds neat, but don’t get carried away
Last week, the West African nation became the first to use blockchain technology as part of a presidential election. But contrary to some headlines, the vote wasn’t “blockchain-powered”— it was only blockchain-verified, and only sort of, at that.
The actual news: Agora, a Swiss company with a proprietary blockchain-based voting system, was one of the “accredited observers” providing an independent vote count for comparison to the main tally, according to CoinDesk. And the system only tracked votes cast in the country’s most populous district. But it did generate good press for the company, which is also pitching the software to other countries in Africa and Europe.
Why it matters: Blockchain technology has real potential for elections, since it can be used to create tamper-proof audit trails. Sierra Leone’s test was at least a step in the right direction.
But: How the data is entered in the first place is crucial. In Sierra Leone, 280 designated individuals manually counted votes and wrote the data to a permissioned blockchain—which could in theory allow those humans to tamper with the numbers. Agora’s CEO told CoinDesk that future versions will further reduce openings for fraud.
Keep Reading
Most Popular
Geoffrey Hinton tells us why he’s now scared of the tech he helped build
“I have suddenly switched my views on whether these things are going to be more intelligent than us.”
Meet the people who use Notion to plan their whole lives
The workplace tool’s appeal extends far beyond organizing work projects. Many users find it’s just as useful for managing their free time.
Learning to code isn’t enough
Historically, learn-to-code efforts have provided opportunities for the few, but new efforts are aiming to be inclusive.
Deep learning pioneer Geoffrey Hinton has quit Google
Hinton will be speaking at EmTech Digital on Wednesday.
Stay connected
Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review
Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.