Optimizing Gas Costs in Decentralized Voting Systems: A Smart Contract Approach

Abstract

Traditional voting systems face challenges such as centralization, security vulnerabilities, and high costs, which reduce public trust in democratic processes. Blockchain technology offers a decentralized and immutable solution to these issues, but high gas costs form a barrier to wide-spread adoption of the solution. This paper presents a gas-optimized Smart Contract for a decentralized voting system on the Ethereum Blockchain. Key optimizations include the use of optimal data types to improve storage, to reduce computation overhead, and to ease data access. Experimental results shows that a total gas cost reduction of 21.3%, with significant savings of 47.7% for voter registration data and 1.5% for vote casting data. These improvements enhance the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of Blockchain-based voting, making it more viable for large-scale elections.