A16z releases anonymous voting system for Ethereum
Venture capital fund Andreessen Horowitz, also known as A16z, has released a Solidity library that can be used for anonymous voting on Ethereum. Called “Cicada,” the library prevents an individual voter’s choice from being known before polling ends. When combined with zero-knowledge group membership systems like Semaphore, it can also make the identity of the voter permanently unknowable, according to a May 24 blog post from A16z engineer Michael Zhu.
Excited to announce Cicada: a new building block for private on-chain voting. https://t.co/hxE4KL4Se6
— moodle zoup (@moodlezoup) May 24, 2023
Cicada relies on time-lock puzzles, a type of cryptography that allows users to encrypt secret values that can only be decrypted after a specific period of time has passed, Zhu stated.
These puzzles have been around since 1996. But before 2019, they would have required users to reveal their secret values once the time period had passed. In voting systems, this could have caused problems with users submitting votes and then going offline, preventing all the votes from being countable.
In 2019, the concept of “homomorphic” time-lock puzzles was proposed by cryptographers Giulio…
Venture capital fund Andreessen Horowitz, also known as A16z, has released a Solidity library that can be used for anonymous voting on Ethereum. Called “Cicada,” the library prevents an individual voter’s choice from being known before polling ends. When combined with zero-knowledge group membership systems like Semaphore, it can also make the identity of the voter permanently unknowable, according to a May 24 blog post from A16z engineer Michael Zhu.
Excited to announce Cicada: a new building block for private on-chain voting. https://t.co/hxE4KL4Se6
— moodle zoup (@moodlezoup) May 24, 2023
Cicada relies on time-lock puzzles, a type of cryptography that allows users to encrypt secret values that can only be decrypted after a specific period of time has passed, Zhu stated.
These puzzles have been around since 1996. But before 2019, they would have required users to reveal their secret values once the time period had passed. In voting systems, this could have caused problems with users submitting votes and then going offline, preventing all the votes from being countable.
In 2019, the concept of “homomorphic” time-lock puzzles was proposed by cryptographers Giulio…
