A Fully Anonymous e-Voting Protocol Employing Universal zk-SNARKs and Smart Contracts

Aritra Banerjee

Paper 2021/877

A Fully Anonymous e-Voting Protocol Employing Universal zk-SNARKs and Smart Contracts

Aritra Banerjee

Abstract

The idea of smart contracts has been around for a long time. The introduction of Ethereum has taken the concept of smart contracts to new heights because of its integration with Blockchain technology. As a result, the applications of smart contracts have also surged in areas such as e-Voting, Insurance, Crowdfunding, etc. In this paper, we aim to present the construction of a “Fully Anonymous e-Voting” protocol using the concepts of zkHawk and Zcash. zkHawk is a novel smart contract protocol designed during this Ph.D. that improves upon the Hawk protocol by solving the underlying anonymity problem of a trusted manager. We will leverage the concept of zk-SNARKs in Zcash to carry out the voting phase of the election and the zkHawk smart contract protocol to tally the results of the election. The voting phase employing Zcash will be initially designed with Non-Universal zk-SNARKs and improved upon with Universal zk-SNARKs.

Note: To appear in BLOCKCHAIN'21 Springer Conference Proceedings

Metadata

Available format(s): PDF
Category: Cryptographic protocols
Publication info: Published elsewhere. Springer Nature BLOCKCHAIN'21 Congress
Keywords: Zcash e-Voting Blockchain Hawk Smart Contracts zk-SNARKs
Contact author(s): abanerje @ tcd ie
History: 2021-06-29: received
Short URL: https://ia.cr/2021/877
License: CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2021/877,
      author = {Aritra Banerjee},
      title = {A Fully Anonymous e-Voting Protocol Employing Universal zk-{SNARKs} and Smart Contracts},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2021/877},
      year = {2021},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2021/877}
}