Tech
Rarimo’s Freedom Tool integrates blockchain technology with voting
In an era where digital innovation intersects with democratic processes, Rarimo’s latest development – the “Freedom Tool” – aims to shake up the landscape of electoral systems.
Rarimo has introduced a digital identity protocol designed to revolutionize the way we think about voting and personal privacy. zero knowledgeThe voting platform enables the creation of secure, tamper-proof voting systems where individuals can freely express their opinions without worrying about privacy violations or authoritarian repercussions.
Unlike traditional voting mechanisms, Freedom Tool leverages blockchain technology and identity management to ensure that every vote is anonymous and verifiable.
Rarimo co-founder Lasha Antadze spoke to crypto.news about the origins of the Freedom Tool, how it fights voter fraud, and the importance of supporting democracy and personal freedom.
The Freedom Tool appears to be an innovative application for anonymous elections and surveys. How did the idea come about and what motivated the Rarimo community to develop this solution?
Antidze: Identity is central to the vast majority of online interactions, but web3 was missing a layer of identity, so we wanted to provide it. However, we also wanted to incorporate privacy into this layer. Identity can’t work without it, and ZKPs have allowed us to overcome the identity limitations of the blockchain, mainly the fact that everything on the chain is visible to anyone and everyone. Voting is a great example of where you need to prove your identity but maintain your privacy, but it’s just one of many such use cases.
With over 64 elections around the world in 2024, how do you envision Freedom Tool addressing issues like voter fraud, voter intimidation, and voter control in various countries?
Freedom Tool enables polling and voting that is not only unsupervised, but also citizen-run. Communities are free to set their own electoral terms, defining which candidates are on the ballot and who can vote. In regions where the opposition is prevented from running and minority groups are systematically excluded from voting, this ability will bring power back to the people. The Freedom Tool represents a class of technology designed not simply as an improvement or fix to the shortcomings of existing systems. It is instead conceived as a parallel solution, fundamentally aimed at guaranteeing the fundamental human right to free speech.
The first field implementation will take place in an Eastern European regime. Can you elaborate on the challenges of implementing the instrument in such regions and the potential impact on opposition and minority groups?
In totalitarian environments, the Freedom Tool enables opposition to survive. In the Eastern European country where the first implementation of the Freedom Tool is being launched, it will provide one of the few safe avenues for dissent. This not only gives dissidents a voice, but also allows them to organize and unite. The polling and voting capabilities can be used for everything from electing an opposition leader to defining the central issues to focus on. Critically, the sentiment it reflects and the number of users it attracts will assure dissidents that they are not alone and encourage them to keep fighting.
How the Freedom Tool aligns with Satoshi Nakamotothe original vision of to empower individuals and decentralize power, extending beyond finance to embrace personal identity and freedom?
Freedom Tool is a continuation of Satoshi’s Goal: Put power in the hands of the people. Blockchain’s journey began with the separation of money and state, and Freedom Tool aims to extend this principle to identity, which is equally essential to individual freedom in the modern era.
Can you elaborate on the key features of Freedom Tool and how it leverages blockchain technology and zero-knowledge identity management for secure and anonymous voting?
With Freedom Tool, citizens prove their eligibility by scanning their biometric passports with their phones. The data on the biometric chip inside the passport is verified, and once authenticity is confirmed, an anonymous voting pass is issued. The citizen then uses this pass to cast their vote. Zero-knowledge encryption is used to sever any link between the voting pass and the passport data so the two cannot be matched. When the ID and voting pass cannot be matched, neither can the citizen and their vote.
Passport data never leaves the mobile device used for scanning. This means that the data never passes through a server and there are no places where it could be intercepted. In addition to protecting citizens from surveillance, Freedom Tool uses blockchain to protect votes from manipulation. All votes are published directly to the blockchain where they are tamper-proof and publicly verifiable.
Ballots run as smart contracts on the blockchain, where the criteria for who can vote and on what topic can be predefined. Cards can be sent by anyone over a network, but require a support threshold to become active. A more detailed technical description can be found in our White paper.
Integrating the Freedom Tool into an Eastern European regime implies direct involvement in political processes. How does the Rarimo community address potential challenges or government opposition in implementing such tools?
A “tool of freedom” is a piece of technology with an open source basis, allowing anyone in the world to use and modify it for various purposes, from political to commercial. There is no mechanism for its contributors or others in the ecosystem to control or stop its evolution.
Incentives for grassroots implementation are driven by actors who discover the tool and, ideally, align with the original vision behind its creation. It is crucial to understand that the developers of this tool are not pursuing any political agenda through their technological contributions. Their core belief is in individual empowerment and a belief in free speech.
RariMe, the MetaMask Snap introduced by Rarimo, focuses on digital identity management. How does this integration align with Rarimo’s broader vision of a decentralized, privacy-focused Internet?
The macro vision is to ensure that users have control over their digital identities. Freedom Tool is just one of many identity solutions built with Rarimo that put privacy and ownership of identity back in the hands of the individual.
MetaMask Snap is another. It integrates self-sovereign identity into the broader web3 ecosystem, allowing users to store their credentials and maintain control over how they are used, generating ZKPs on demand. This contrasts with the current web2 identity model, which forces us to rely on centralized identity providers.
Given the rapidly evolving landscape of blockchain technology and digital identity, what future developments or improvements does Rarimo have in the pipeline to further disrupt the industry?
The main innovation at the heart of Freedom Tool was ZKPs for biometric passports. This introduces a level of privacy to one of the most universal forms of identity: passports.
Voting is just one of many cases where you might want to prove your age or citizenship and know that there is no chance your personal information will be accessed or disclosed. There are several use cases for this technology that the Rarimo community intends to develop.
More generally, Rarimo is a universal access and verification layer digital identities. The protocol provides a structured way for third-party apps to connect and verify information from a variety of issuers. We plan to continue to bring interoperability to the decentralized identity space so users can seamlessly transition their identities across web3.
The Rarimo ecosystem is built on the principles of self-sovereignty and self-managing identities, using blockchain, decentralized identifiers (DIDs), zero-knowledge technology, and various decentralized identity standards to give users control over their online presence.
Its development is highly horizontal and collaborative. This approach excites me personally because I see innovative, non-Defi-related applications arising from the combination of decentralized identity with blockchain technology.