A South Korean Province Used Blockchain Tech for Resident Voting   

The province of Gyeonggi-do has made use of a voting system based on blockchain technology to gather a vote on community projects by its residents. The voting completed successfully, with 9000 residents placing their votes both online and offline.

Gyeonggi-do, which is notably the most populated province in South Korea, made use of a blockchain platform developed Korean Fintech startup Blocko for the voting process. Local residents took the opportunity to vote for community projects that would see funds awarded by the provincial government as a part of the ‘Ddabok Community Support Project.’

The notable and successful blockchain implementation is among the earliest by a government anywhere in the world. Tellingly, the most prominent government official of the province sang its praises.

Gyeonggi-do Province Nam Kyung-pil stated:

Blockchains will change the world within a few years just as smart-phones did. We can complement the limits of representative democracy with some direct democracy systems by using blockchains, the technology of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

The online voting system, supported by Blocko, made use of smart contracts tech to facilitate the voting process. Blocko claims that the technology, developed in-house, helped register a plethora of information including voters’ information, voting contents and more in a complicated voting process – without need for oversight or management by a central authority – on a blockchain.

In its announcement, the Korean blockchain developer further claimed that the voting process was the first application of blockchain technology on such a scale in the country.

Unlike traditional voting systems where the voting process from the beginning to the end is under the management of a central agency, a blockchain-based vote would see data and results stored on an immutable blockchain that is tamper-resistant.

The success of the blockchain-based vote has already led to interest in the solution from other parties.

“Numerous institutions have contacted us to adopt a blockchain-based voting system after voting in Gyeonggi-do,” said Won-Beom Kim, chief executive at Blocko. “By using blockchain technology in online voting, we can save expenses required to maintain a central management agency and time to collect vote results.”

Meanwhile, Blockco’s ‘Coinstack’ a blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) middleware platform has already been adopted by the Korea Exchange to enable startups to trade equity shares on the open market, last November. The following month, Coinstack received the state accreditation of a ‘First Class Gold Software (GS) Certificate’. The recognition was the first of its kind for a blockchain software solution in South Korea. The benefits of the certificate could mean wider adoption of blockchain-based applications in the public sector.