The Association of Cryptocurrency Enterprises and Start-ups, Singapore (ACCESS), today announced it successfully ran an on-premise blockchain-powered vote during its annual general meeting (AGM).

This makes ACCESS the world’s first association to officially implement a blockchain technology solution for on-premise voting beyond a pilot phase, in a live environment for attending members.

Developed by ACCESS member JEDTrade, an enterprise blockchain technology solutions provider, the blockchain voting solution uses the Ethereum blockchain and Metamask as the Ethereum wallet to interact with the blockchain. The solution aims to increase transparency in the voting process, protect member anonymity in vote casting, and prevent double voting.

Blockchain voting during the ACCESS AGM was executed based on the following process: members place their votes for future appointment holders and agenda items on a blockchain, utilizing the advantages of blockchain technology such as immutability, transparency, and traceability. In addition, anonymity is established through the disconnection between members and their vote, hence a vote cannot be traced back to its originator.

A list of voting codes are randomly generated, hashed and stored in a Code Management Smart Contract, before physical copies are printed as a QR code and randomly distributed to members upon registration at the AGM. It is important to emphasize that the codes are linked to neither voters nor their votes, providing anonymity.

Each code status is tracked in the Code Management Smart Contract to ensure voters are only permitted to submit one vote, hence preventing double voting. The Voting Smart Contract is used to initiate and track votes. It will contain the positions, candidates running under each position and the number of seats available for each position. Voters can then send their votes via generic machines (with a fixed blockchain address) to the Voting Smart Contract.

The ability to track the hashed codes on the blockchain helps improve the efficiency in verifying authentic votes based on the voting rights assigned, reducing voting errors and fraud.

“ACCESS is proud to be the first association in the world to carry out the first on-premise blockchain voting with JEDTrade and our members at our AGM. The blockchain voting process helps uphold the true values of democratic voting in ensuring authentic votes are being legitimately accounted for with a transparent audit trail. We are seeing the future of corporate governance through the implementation of blockchain technology starting with our most important corporate governance event, our AGM.”

– Mr. Anson Zeall, Chairman of ACCESS

On-premise blockchain voting presents a secure way in processing member votes with multiple smart contract deployments, which results can be accessed and authenticated by various stakeholders on the blockchain. Further technical documentation on the smart contract deployment can be found here.

“JEDTrade is happy to have supported ACCESS for their AGM. The on-premise requirement meant that we needed an effective approach. We are proud to have successfully deployed this unique use case and provide ACCESS members with a smooth and transparent voting process.”

– Dr. Ernie Teo, Chief Executive Officer of JEDTrade