Design of a secure electronic voting system based on zero-knowledge proof and blockchain technology

Abstract

As the demand for e-voting grows, it has become particularly important to ensure the security and fairness of the voting system. Therefore, an e-voting system is studied and designed to ensure the non-tamperability of voting results. The system utilizes zero-knowledge proof to verify the identity of the voter, while ensuring the tamperability of the voting data through blockchain technology. The experimental results indicated that the system outperformed the existing schemes in terms of processing speed and verification efficiency. Specifically, when the number of voters was 200, the time consuming and single verification time of this system were 3.7 s and 6.4 ms, respectively. When the number of voters increased to 600, the time consuming and single verification time were 8.3 s and 13.3 ms, respectively. In the number of candidates/voters was 5/80, none of the system’s gas consumption exceeded the maximum limit of a single transaction in Ether. Among them, the gas consumption of Vote Control contract was 5577485, and the gas consumption of non-interactive zero knowledge contract was 3826753. Furthermore, the more candidates there were, the longer it took the system to operate, although the number of voters had less of an effect on the cost of operating the voter system. The above outcomes reveal that the e-voting system proposed in the study provides a secure and efficient solution for small-scale voting activities and provides a basis for future optimization of large-scale voting scenarios.