Blockchain Based Voting System Using Smart Contract

Transparency and security in an electoral process are fundamental to the legitimacy of the results and the confidence of voters. Thus, it is necessary to assess opportunities to improve traditional voting systems. Among the main problems is the lack of transparency, due to the impossibility of a voter checking their vote and the lack of access to the source from which the results are obtained. Another problem is mobility, due to the impossibility of performing remote voting, as traditional voting systems continue to require the physical presence of the voter in an electoral zone. Thus, the objective of this work is to propose a voting system that is functional, transparent, safe, and accessible to everyone. Voters can vote through a mobile application with biometric authentication using fingerprint and password access. In our proposal, votes are registered in an Ethereum Blockchain through a Smart Contract, allowing the voter to check their vote. The results are expected to collaborate with the evolution of studies necessary to improve traditional voting systems, especially in fundamental aspects such as security, transparency, and mobility.

Ensuring the security and trustworthiness of a digitized and automated electoral process remains a significant challenge in democratic systems. As digital voting systems are increasingly being investigated worldwide, ensuring the integrity of the process using robust security measures is of great importance. This paper presents a simplified model to enhance electoral integrity by leveraging Blockchain technology in the context of Oman's digital voting system. The model uses Blockchain technology to create a secure and trustworthy voting environment, addressing key vulnerabilities in digital electoral systems. The research utilized a quantitative approach, employing an experimental design methodology using open-source software to simulate voting systems. Synthetic population data is used to operate these systems, while advanced biometric authentication technologies verify voter identities. Blockchain technology is leveraged to ensure secure vote recording, with smart contracts used to authenticate voters and securely record votes. Additionally, synchronous transactions are executed for both voter registration and voting processes, enhancing the overall security and efficiency of the system. The experimental results show that Blockchain enhances electoral integrity and security in Oman's voting system, improving elections' transparency and reliability. The performance evaluation of the model focuses on efficiency, reliability, and scalability metrics. Asynchronous transactions are utilized to improve processing time for voter registration and voting. Election administrators can manage, monitor, and certify election results, while Ethereum nodes ensure decentralized verification and transparency in the voting process. This research offers insights for policymakers to consider Blockchain for electoral reforms, addressing issues like data integrity, fraud prevention, and transparency to boost voter trust. A strong regulatory framework and public awareness are crucial for successful implementation. Pilot projects are needed to assess Blockchain's practical impact. Oman could lead global innovation in electoral technology, though infrastructure and public resistance challenges must be managed.

The Internet of Things (IOT) is integrated with supply chain management process to track the product. To track the product smart tags is used. The smart tags like QR code and NFC is used. But with the technology enhancement the block chain is introduced into the supply chain management process. The block chain is the great revolution that data in the centralized form is transformed in to a decentralized manner. The distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) is one of the method used in ethereum block chain. The main advantage of using DLT is, it offers decentralized, privacy-preserving and verifiable process in the smart tags. In existing system only single server was used to maintain all the process like supplier, manufacturer and distributor. In this application we are using different server which was more secure than existing system. The proposed solution in this paper is it checks the product evidence during the entire lifecycle of the product by using the smart contract. The data can be immutable by using smart contract with ethereum block chain. The duplication is manipulated by the block chainserver.

Blockchain technology and its applications are gaining popularity day by day. It is a ground-breaking technology that allows users to communicate without the need of a trusted middleman. A smart contract (self-executable code) is deployed on the blockchain and auto executes due to a triggering condition. In a no-trust contracting environment, smart contracts can establish trust among parties. Terms and conditions embedded in smart contracts will be imposed immediately when specified criteria have been fulfilled. Due to this, the malicious assailants have a special interest in smart contracts. Blockchains are immutable means if some transaction is deployed or recorded on the blockchain, it becomes unalterable. Thus, smart contracts must be analyzed to ensure zero security vulnerabilities or flaws before deploying the same on the blockchain because a single vulnerability can lead to the loss of millions. For analyzing the security vulnerabilities of smart contracts, various analysis tools have been developed to create safe and secure smart contracts. This paper presents a systematic review on Ethereum smart contracts analysis tools. Initially, these tools are categorized into static and dynamic analysis tools. Thereafter, different sources code analysis techniques are studied such as taint analysis, symbolic execution, and fuzzing techniques. In total, 86 security analysis tools developed for Ethereum blockchain smart contract are analyzed regardless of tool type and analysis approach. Finally, the paper highlights some challenges and future recommendations in the field of Ethereum smart contracts.

<p>Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) has been a key part of evolving communication systems in the last few years. However, the life-cycle management of Virtual Network Functions (VNF) is still a not trivial task. Blockchains (BC), due to their decentralization and immutability characteristics, together with the automation provided by Smart Contracts (SC), can be employed to enable such automated and trustworthy VNF management.Thus, this paper proposes VeNiCE to automate the deployment and life-cycle management of VNFs using events emitted on SCs. VeNiCE provides automation and auditability by relying on a BC to provide a decentralized approach for VNF management, which performs management actions, such as VNF deployment and deletion, and based on events and communicates with an SC to provide immutable logging of the VNF life-cycle. VeNiCE provides (i) a frontend for user interaction, (ii) a backend implementing the communication with the NFV framework, and (iii) an SC that emits events, stores VNF allocations, and authenticates users. A prototype of VeNiCE was developed and deployed in the Ethereum BC using OpenStack Tacker as an NFV platform. Experiments were conducted in a real-world deployment of such a prototype to analyze the economic costs of using SCs and the time required to process requests by each component of VeNiCE and the BC. Those results obtained show VeNiCE’s feasibility, highlight its benefits achieved with the automation and provide insights on reducing costs by exploring additional BC platforms and different deployment types, which introduce centralization and management concerns.</p>

Blockchain is a peer-to-peer distributed ledger technology, nowadays widely used and a hot topic in the industries. A Smart Contract is a virtual contract based on Blockchain technology which executes and operates between two parties (especially a buyer and a dealer) when a certain condition of the contract is met. The objective of this research is to present a decentralized transaction system based on Blockchain technology implemented using Smart Contract. Blockchain based cryptocurrencies are an evidence for a secure implementation of any currency-based centralized systems put forth in use in a decentralized way. Current transaction systems and payment gateways are centralized systems that need monitoring and verification from a central agency like a bank or a third party organization which are not completely automated as some of the processes are human controlled. Also deposition and withdrawal of money sometimes take a long procedural time. Still these systems are neither completely error free nor secure and time to time certain issues may arise. Even nowadays some payment methods charges transaction fee which is like paying for the money you are paying for. In this research paper we are proposing an automated Ethereum blockchain technology based transactionsystem which will eliminate the bank and third party verification.Each block of the Ethereum blockchain in the system will store the transaction details also linked with all the previous transaction details in the form of a chain. A Smart Contract is used to define the terms and conditions of the transaction which include account creation, ether deposition and withdrawal. This system enables users to carry out transaction without any fraud and losses from anywhere around the globe within split seconds. Keywords: Transaction system ,Blockchain, Smart Contract, decentralized,crypto-currency

The Ethereum blockchain enables executing and recording smart contracts. The smart contracts can facilitate, verify, and implement the negotiation between multiple parties, also guaranteeing transactions without a traditional legal entity. Many tools supporting the smart contracts development in different areas are flourishing because in Ethereum blockchain valuable assets are often involved. Some of the tools help the developer to find security vulnerabilities via static and/or dynamic analysis or to reduce the Gas fees consumption. Despite the plethora of such tools, there is no tool supporting smart contracts evaluation and analysis via a graphical representation for expert developers.The paper embraces this way to facilitate the developers’ analysis activity, by proposing a graphical representation model to visualize smart contract source code. The paper makes available a tool via a web interface, which accepts the smart contract address as an input and produces a graphical representation of the smart contract as an output. The graphical representation can help developers to better understand the structure of smart contracts and share it with other developers. Moreover, some metrics, such as the relations among smart contracts, are easier to be understood via "spatial" than "tabular" representation. Indeed, representing smart contracts’ metrics via visual representation facilitates the developers, who are used to analyse the source code by directly inspecting it or using other tools that provide the metrics in a table format. Finally, the paper provides detailed data regarding a smart contract to the developers and proposes a graphical representation of the smart contracts without obscuration of details, also highlighting areas of the code that are possibly too big in size and/or too complex via a diagram displaying their connections.

Η τεχνολογία Blockchain χρησιμοποιήθηκε αρχικά από τον Shatoshi Nakamoto το 2009 για την δημιουργία της πλατφόρμας bitcoin, ενός ψηφιακού κρυπτονομίσματος που ακόμα και σήμερα θεωρείται το πιο επιτυχημένο κρυπτονόμισμα παγκοσμίως. Η πλατφόρμα του bitcoin χρησιμοποιείται κυρίως για την εκτέλεση ψηφιακών οικονομικών συναλλαγών μεταξύ αγνώστων χωρίς την ύπαρξη μιας οντότητας που μεσολαβεί για την έγκυρη ολοκλήρωση τους. Η δημιουργία του bitcoin άλλαξε ριζικά τον τρόπο που γίνονται οι διαδικτυακές συναλλαγές. Μετά από το bitcoin αναπτύχθηκαν πολλές ακόμα μορφές κρυπτονομισμάτων αλλά οι περισσότερες ακολουθούσαν παρόμοια αρχή λειτουργίας με το bitcoin χωρίς να προσφέρουν κάτι διαφορετικό. Όμως η τεχνολογία blockchain συνέχισε να εξελίσσεται και κατά συνέπεια το φάσμα των εφαρμογών στις οποίες χρησιμοποιείται συνεχώς επεκτείνεται. Πλέον η τεχνολογία αυτή χρησιμοποιείται σε εφαρμογές της βιομηχανίας, της οικονομίας και της απλής καθημερινότητας ενός ατόμου λόγω της ασφάλειας και της εγκυρότητας που προσδίδει. Το 2013 δημιουργήθηκε, από τον Vitalik Buterin, το Ethereum blockchain, μία πλατφόρμα που υποστηρίζει τη δημιουργία κατανεμημένων εφαρμογών γνωστά ως DApps (decentralized applications). Οι κατανεμημένες εφαρμογές που αναπτύσσονται στο ethereum blockchain δεν περιορίζονται μόνο σε οικονομικές συναλλαγές όπως στο bitcoin διότι η πλατφόρμα του ethereum επιτρέπει την δημιουργία ποικίλων ειδών εφαρμογών χρησιμοποιώντας λογική που είναι αποθηκευμένη μέσα στο δίκτυο, τα γνωστά έξυπνα συμβόλαια. Τα έξυπνα συμβόλαια είναι αρχεία κώδικα που εκτελούνται με απολυτότητα και ντετερμινισμό, με αποτέλεσμα η λειτουργικότητα τους να είναι καθολική. Πιθανές εφαρμογές που βασίζονται στη λειτουργικότητα ενός έξυπνου συμβολαίου και δεν αφορούν οικονομικές συναλλαγές είναι η κατοχύρωση δικαιωμάτων, logistics ή ακόμα και εφαρμογές που προσδίδουν μια μορφή ιεραρχίας. Η παρούσα διπλωματική εργασία δημιουργήθηκε με σκοπό να αναδείξει τις δυνατότητες και τα όρια των έξυπνων συμβολαίων καθώς και προβλήματα που μπορεί να υπάρξουν κατά την ανάπτυξη τους και κατά την εφαρμογή τους. Η εφαρμογή αναπτύσσεται σε ένα τοπικό ethereumblockchain δίκτυο και πραγματεύεται την δημιουργία ψηφιακών τεκμηρίων(token). Τα ψηφιακά τεκμήρια είναι γνωστά στη κοινότητα του ethereum σαν άυλα περιουσιακά στοιχεία τα οποία μπορούν να πάρουν τη μορφή κρυπτοοικονομίας ή να έχουν την ιδιότητα της μοναδικότητας, με αποτέλεσμα να είναι ξεχωριστά και να αποκτούν συγκεκριμένα χαρακτηριστικά. Στην συγκεκριμένη εφαρμογή αναπτύσσονται και τα δύο ήδη τεκμηρίων που αναφέρθηκαν με αποτέλεσμα να δημιουργηθεί μία ψηφιακή αγορά με μοναδικά τεκμήρια τα οποία μπορούν να δημιουργηθούν, να αγοραστούν και να πωληθούν με αντάλλαγμα τα τεκμήρια που προσομοιάζουν την κρυπτοοικονομία. Σε κάθε περίπτωση ο κοινός παράγοντας για την δημιουργία των τεκμηρίων είναι η «ιδιότητα της ιδιοκτησίας», δηλαδή ότι ένα τεκμήριο, είτε είναι μοναδικό είτε είναι νόμισμα, ανήκει σε έναν συγκεκριμένο χρήστη που έχει όλες τις δυνατότητες που του προσδίδει αυτό το τεκμήριο και κανείς άλλος χρήστης δε μπορεί να το χρησιμοποιήσει.

The practice of writing smart contracts for the Ethereum blockchain is quite recent and still in development. A blockchain developer should expect constant changes in the security software field, as new bugs and security risks are discovered, and new good practices are developed. Following the security practices accepted in the blockchain community is not enough to ensure the writing of secure smart contracts. The paper aims to study the practice of code cloning among the smart contracts by analyzing two corpora. The first corpus, the "Smart-Corpus", includes smart contracts already deployed in the Ethereum blockchain. The second corpus, the "Open-Zeppelin's Solidity Library", is supervised by a community of developers who constantly take care to increase the security and efficiency of the smart contracts included in the corpus. From the comparative analysis of the corpora, we observe that the smart contracts developers frequently duplicate the code by cloning already existing smart contracts which are not part of the "OpenZeppelin corpus". In particular, we found that 79.1% of smart contracts contain duplicated code and only 18.4% of smart contracts reuse the code by implementing a smart corpus belonging to the OpenZeppelin repository. The paper discusses the advantages and the disadvantages of code duplication in the Ethereum blockchain ecosystem, and suggests to refer to the smart contracts of the OpenZeppelin's Solidity Library. The Ethereum blockchain community can indeed benefit from using the tested code presented in OpenZeppelin's Solidity Library to increase its security.

On the Internet, web applications are served from a centralized location i.e., server, for higher maintainability. However, in the centralized architecture, if there is an occurrence of server failure or crash, the web applications cannot be serve to the end-users until the server goes live again. In addition, in the existing centralized architecture for web hosting services, integrity of the hosted websites entirely relies on the third-party applications which checks for any possible threats in the system. In order to provide data integrity within the system and to overcome the above-mentioned single point of failure, we proposed the decentralized solution for hosting web applications, which provides more data availability to the end-users and maintains the integrity of the data. The proposed model makes use of the Interplanetary File System (IPFS) for storing and retrieving web applications, which provides high availability and reliability. In addition, the proposed model uses the Blockchain Technology for authenticity and confidentiality. The smart contracts are deploy on the Ethereum Block chain, which aids the service provider to manage the hosting service system. The proposed model also comparatively decreases the time taken to transfer the file over the IPFS using optimal path-finding algorithm. The proposed algorithm has a lesser time complexity when compared to the Bitswap protocol used in IPFS. The use of blockchain with IPFS cumulatively provides better authenticity via Ethereum Smart Contracts, which reduces risk and failure.

This, together with the related term Bitcoin, was a revolution in blockchain as envisioned by the mystery character Satoshi Nakamoto up to 2008. All this changes the very way the foundations of digital exchange and storage were thought about: decentralized, transparent, immutable, the very fundamentals of Distributed Ledger Technology enabling safe data exchange without an intermediary. The blockchain is fundamentally a chain of blocks carrying information about transactions, including times and cryptographic hashes, each of these connecting to the previous one in one unbroken chain, for which no modification is viable. The whole design of Blockchain has been to solve a number of issues, including double spending, fraud, and inefficient records, with distributed nodes and consensus mechanisms such as Proof of Work and Proof of Stake, facilitated by cryptographic keys. Other areas beyond cryptocurrency where quite a number of innovative uses are cut across include supply chain, healthcare, financial, and real estate sectors. For example, while the supply chain process is being promoted to become effective and transparent in order to ensure the origin and quality of the product, adding to the guarantee that the user's personal health information will not be accessed and tampered with, blockchain uses smart contracts in automating agreement processes within the contract. All of them are expecting cost reduction, operating efficiencies enhancement, enhanced securities of many industries. Anyhow, there exist quite a number of serious obstacles standing in the way of the wide application of blockchain technology. Firstly, the problem of scalability has still been an issue whereby the network performance tends to be problematic when users are increased. Besides, energy wasting cannot be ignored-apparently mostly a challenge from the PoW kind of system proved to be consuming too much energy, standing big on the road to sustainability. Of course, the mere lack of any kind of international rules and standards is already a complication in making them work. It also underlines failures in the adoption of the system or in decentralizing and is still an open technical and organizational challenge on how to combine blockchain with traditional structures. Their solutions require compounding ideas: sharding of blockchain to make it big, off-chain solutions for the blockchain to be many but thin, and provision of amicable solution consensus mechanisms for environmental conservation. Besides coherent policy vision, in addition to the existing cornerstones of regulation besides well-laid-out standards of interoperability, it is important to create confidence and give a road map across different industries. This paper hereby conceptually reviews the literature with respect to how the blockchain technology was designed to show revolutionary capability in the different fields and what keeps on tormenting it with its future.KEYS: Blockchain technology; Distributed Ledger; Decentralization; Cryptographic keys; Consensus mechanisms; Proof of Work; Proof of Stake; Smart contracts; Supply chain management; Data immutability; Transparency; Scalability; Energy consumption; Challenges to regulatory bodies; Security vulnerability; Sharding; off- chain processing; Interoperability; Applications using blockchain; Architecture of blockchain.

Smart contract (SC) is an extension of BlockChain technology. Ethereum BlockChain was the first to incorporate SC and thus started a new era of crypto-currencies and electronic transactions. Solidity helps to program the SCs. Still, soon after Solidity's emergence in 2014, Solidity-based SCs suffered many attacks that deprived the SC account holders of their precious funds. The main reason for these attacks was the presence of vulnerabilities in SC. This paper discusses SC vulnerabilities and classifies them according to the domain knowledge of the faulty operations. This classification is a source of reminding developers and software engineers that for SC's safety, each SC requires proper testing with effective tools to catch those classes' vulnerabilities.

PurposeThe Green Line, a United Nations (UN)-monitored buffer zone between the ceasefire lines left over from the 1974 partition, continues to separate the island of Cyprus. Although they continue to be a part of the same island and, at the very least, of the same nation, the Greek and Turkish communities in Cyprus behave like de facto independent states. Approved on April 29, 2004, the Green Line Regulation Trade (GLRT) regulates the flow of people and products across the “Green Line” that divides the island’s government-controlled parts from the remainder. The purpose of this study is twofold. Our first goal is to identify the problems related to the GLRT between Northern and Southern Cyprus and provide an alternative solution. The second aim is to propose a model applicable to similar conflicting regions of the world and to suggest an alternative solution that integrates smart contract technologies for the study case.Design/methodology/approachThe study on which this paper is based was performed on trade, called GLRT, from the north to the south part of Cyprus. This study employs a qualitative research method through the use of semi-structured interviews. The study employs a multiple-case design due to the substantial evidence and data sources. We conducted face-to-face interviews using semi-structured interview questions during the data collection process, utilising the in-depth interview method. The researcher used data triangulation to mitigate the risk of systematic errors during the data collection process. The study’s participants comprise 34 individuals.FindingsThis paper presents a proposal addressing the challenges of Green Line Regulation (GLR) in Cyprus. Smart contracts may facilitate untrusted trade by offering a secure and transparent mechanism for recording and verifying transactions. This approach may be helpful in mitigating the risks associated with fraud and misconduct while providing a secure transaction record suitable for auditing and dispute resolution. Smart contracts may be utilised to automatically enforce the terms of a trade agreement, thereby diminishing the necessity for trust among the involved parties.Research limitations/implicationsThe research is limited to the interviews conducted with academics, companies and individuals who implemented GLRT during the investigation. Nevertheless, we refrained from conducting interviews with the government representatives of Northern and Southern Cyprus, nor did we interview the central banks of both nations, which are regulatory bodies. The scope of this study does not encompass the perspectives of these individuals. Furthermore, this investigation does not encompass the conversion of Ethereum tokens acquired through smart contract trading into the currency currently in use.Practical implicationsThe paper includes our proposed blockchain model to trade securely without needing a trusted third party (e.g. bank, chamber of commerce, etc.) via smart contracts written in the Solidity programming language on the Ethereum blockchain. Individuals and companies trading within the scope of GLRT can use the mobile or web applications proposed in this study. All parties can make mutual financial agreements through this application and have a safer trading environment.Originality/valueExisting research on the GLR predominantly focuses on assessing trade volume and capacity rather than addressing the technological and trust-related challenges within this trade framework. While smart contracts have been explored for enhancing efficiency and reducing costs in international trade, their application in conflict-affected trade zones remains largely unexamined. To our knowledge, no prior studies have proposed a technological solution to facilitate trade in politically and legally fragmented regions such as the Green Line. This study fills a critical gap by introducing smart contract technology as a trust-enabling mechanism in GLR trade. Traditional financial instruments such as letters of credit and checks are often unavailable or unsuitable due to the lack of mutual legal recognition between parties. Smart contracts, operating independently of a trusted third-party intermediary, provide a novel enforcement mechanism, ensuring secure and transparent transactions even in an untrusted environment. By demonstrating how smart contracts can address the specific challenges of GLR trade, this study contributes to both academic literature and practical policymaking, offering a scalable and technology-driven approach to cross-border trade in conflict-affected regions.

The world today has realized the vast technological evolution that has greatly shaped the production and management functions of business enterprises. Traditional contracts can take weeks or even months to initiate, and there have been numerous instances of breaches and lack of trust for contracts in both the private and public sector. A smart contract can be defined as a self-executing contract that utilizes blockchain technology to digitally enforce, verify, or facilitate the performance or negotiation of a contract. Owing to the security and decentralized system exhibited by blockchain technology, smart contracts can foster transaction credibility between contracting parties without the necessity of third parties as exhibited in traditional contracts. Any business organization that aims at achieving greater heights in management and production dimensions must consider utilizing robust technologies that are aimed at bolstering its competitive edge. Owing to the newness of smart contracts, characterized by very few studies on the same, this research reviews how smart contracts through blockchain technology can be implemented in an organization to enhance performance and outlines the applications, benefits, and limitations associated with such contracts. Keywords: Blockchain technology; smart contracts; smart contract applications; smart contract benefits; smart contract implementation; cryptography; cryptocurrency DOI : 10.7176/JIEA/9-5-07 Publication date :September 30 th 2019

With the enhanced data amount being created, it is significant to various organizations and their processing, and managing big data becomes a significant challenge for the managers of the data. The development of inexpensive and new computing systems and cloud computing sectors gave qualified industries to gather and retrieve the data very precisely however securely delivering data across the network with fewer overheads is a demanding work. In the decentralized framework, the big data sharing puts a burden on the internal nodes among the receiver and sender and also creates the congestion in network. The internal nodes that exist to redirect information may have inadequate buffer ability to momentarily take the information and again deliver it to the upcoming nodes that may create the occasional fault in the transmission of data and defeat frequently. Hence, the next node selection to deliver the data is tiresome work, thereby resulting in an enhancement in the total receiving period to allocate the information. Blockchain is the primary distributed device with its own approach to trust. It constructs a reliable framework for decentralized control via multi-node data repetition. Blockchain is involved in offering a transparency to the application of transmission. A simultaneous multi-threading framework confirms quick data channeling to various network receivers in a very short time. Therefore, an advanced method to securely store and transfer the big data in a timely manner is developed in this work. A deep learning-based smart contract is initially designed. The dilated weighted recurrent neural network (DW-RNN) is used to design the smart contract for the Ethereum blockchain. With the aid of the DW-RNN model, the authentication of the user is verified before accessing the data in the Ethereum blockchain. If the authentication of the user is verified, then the smart contracts are assigned to the authorized user. The model uses elliptic Curve ElGamal cryptography (EC-EC), which is a combination of elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) and ElGamal encryption for better security, to make sure that big data transfers on the Ethereum blockchain are safe. The modified Al-Biruni earth radius search optimization (MBERSO) algorithm is used to make the best keys for this EC-EC encryption scheme. This algorithm manages keys efficiently and securely, which improves data security during blockchain operations. The processes of encryption facilitate the secure transmission of big data over the Ethereum blockchain. Experimental analysis is carried out to prove the efficacy and security offered by the suggested model in transferring big data over blockchain via smart contracts.