Michael del Castillo at CoinDesk: “Even as Russia stands accused of meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, its national capital is taking a leadership role in making democracy more transparent.
Using an existing program called Active Citizen, the city of Moscow has been allowing residents to cast votes for measures ranging from the name of their new metro train to the color of the seats in a new sports arena. But in an effort to soothe people’s concerns over whether to trust the city in its vote counting, it’s added a private version of the ethereum blockchain to that project’s architecture.
“Of course, sometimes we hear that not all the votes are trusted,” said Andrey Belozerov, the strategy and innovations advisor to the city’s CIO. “So, we decided to use a blockchain for the Active Citizen project, as a platform of electronic trust.”
The ethereum-based platform, which allows anyone to audit the open-source results, has been downloaded by more than 100 node operators since its December launch.
In this way, the city hopes to gain the trust of the citizens of Moscow, but bigger than that, win the trust of state governments around the world.
While a so-called “blockchain cold war” in which nations use the technology to undermine one another’s financial influence is worrying to some, Belozerov hopes blockchain tests like Active Citizen could result in an increased sense of trust between nations….(More)”.
Full Post: Russia Is Leading the Push for Blockchain Democracy