Waves Enterprise partners with Ontology to fix blockchain e-voting

Waves Enterprise, a major technology company specializing in blockchain-based solutions for businesses and governments, has inked a new partner to streamline its e-voting service.

According to a Dec. 16 announcement, Waves Enterprise has signed a memorandum of understanding with blockchain platform Ontology to integrate decentralized identification tools into the Waves Enterprise e-voting system.

As part of the partnership, Waves Enterprise and Ontology aim to solve one of the biggest challenges of digital voting — user authentication and identification. The companies specifically plan to apply Ontology’s new decentralized identity solution known as ONT ID.

Artem Kalikhov, chief product officer at Waves Enterprise, told Cointelegraph Ontology’s DeID technology will replace other traditional methods like email verification. “Right now we rely on traditional web authentication, via registered email approach,” he said.

Li Jun, founder of Ontology, explained that the Ontology-powered e-voting integration will require users to create their ONT ID first to bind their personal data and credentials. “Then their voting records can be traced on a chain which is not erased,” Jun noted.

Jun emphasized that user privacy will not be compromised as ONT ID serves as a decentralized entity. However, data like hashes or transaction numbers can still be tracked, he said. “Users have the right to choose what specific info they would like to share [because] the data is fully owned by themselves,” Jun added.

According to Kalikhov, Waves Enterprise is initially looking to integrate ONT ID as a module. “At the initial stage, our blockchains will most likely operate separately from each other,” Kalikhov said. The companies might make their blockchain networks interoperable in the future.

The news comes shortly after Waves Enterprise publicly released its blockchain voting system in November 2020. Targeting corporations and board governance, the system uses blockchain to securely record each vote without having to reveal the identity of individuals casting ballots.

This system has been previously trialed in Russia during the country’s parliamentary elections in September 2020. Kalikhov said that the newly released platform is somewhat different from the one used in Russia, as the deployment was based on “Russian cryptography” and different mechanisms for identification and anonymization.