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Smart Contract-Based E-Voting System Using Homomorphic Encryption and Zero-Knowledge Proof

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Applied Cryptography and Network Security Workshops (ACNS 2023)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 13907))

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Abstract

As an indispensable part of establishing modern representative democratic organizations, election is based on a voting process on site or remotely. With the rapid development of information technology, the application of electronic voting systems in practice is significantly increasing in recent years. Consequently, whether an electronic voting system is secure and reliable enough is the most critical factor of the systems. Whereas, most of the existing proposals neglect to confirm the trustworthiness of the administrator, which may impact the security and availability of the system. For this purpose, we propose an up-to-date electronic voting system based on smart contract using additively homomorphic encryption and non-interactive zero-knowledge proof. In our work, we utilize a concise zero-knowledge proof algorithm and an inbound oracle in combination to allow voters to verify the fidelity of the administrator. We prove the feasibility, efficiency, and scalability of our system can satisfy a majority of application scenarios including large-scale voting. In particular, we evaluate the time performance and cost performance and demonstrate its merits including the low cost in many functions and linear performance when generating zero-knowledge proof.

This research was supported in part by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science under Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A) No. 19H01103, and Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Research (Exploratory) No. 22K19776.

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Correspondence to Shoji Kasahara .

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Wu, Y., Kasahara, S. (2023). Smart Contract-Based E-Voting System Using Homomorphic Encryption and Zero-Knowledge Proof. In: Zhou, J., et al. Applied Cryptography and Network Security Workshops. ACNS 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13907. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41181-6_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41181-6_4

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