In 2008, the idea of Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic cash system, was proposed by Satoshi Nakamoto. It describes a distributed system for managing digital transactions. Based on this idea, the blockchain concept has evolved. Blockchain is a distributed ledger. The ledger is immutable and shareable among all the user nodes. The ledger/blockchain contains several blocks chained by hash values. If we try to modify a block, its hash value will change; the hash value is already stored in the neighbor node, so the neighbor node will not allow it to change. Thus, immutability is achieved. The blockchain is worthy because of its good characteristics, such as data decentralization and a high level of trust. This chapter represents a detailed study on blockchain architecture, consensus mechanisms, and their application in digital image watermarking. Digital image watermarking is used for copyright protection, ownership claim, and image tamper detection. If we use blockchain with watermarking, the technique becomes more secure and robust. Though the applications of blockchain technology in image watermarking are in a nascent stage at present, the disruptive and revolutionary nature of the blockchain will make it a significant force shortly.
Open access
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Secure electronic voting (e-voting) systems have become an essential component of modern democratic processes, demanding strong guarantees of privacy, integrity, verifiability, and resistance to coercion. Homomorphic commitment schemes, which integrate the properties of commitment schemes with homomorphic encryption, provide a promising approach to meeting these requirements by enabling computations on encrypted or committed data without revealing the underlying information. This capability allows secure vote tallying while preserving voter anonymity. This paper presents a comprehensive review of homomorphic commitment schemes within secure voting infrastructures, focusing on key security models such as privacy, verifiability, coercion resistance, and robustness against malicious adversaries. It also examines optimization techniques, including batching, threshold cryptography, and blockchain integration, which enhance system efficiency and scalability. Furthermore, emerging paradigms such as post-quantum cryptography and decentralized systems are discussed for their potential impact on voting protocols. The study highlights advancements in cryptographic primitives, zero-knowledge proofs, and distributed ledger technologies, while providing a comparative analysis of multiple research contributions. The findings indicate that although homomorphic commitment schemes significantly enhance transparency and privacy, challenges related to computational complexity, scalability, and real-world implementation persist, suggesting the need for lightweight, quantum-resistant, and hybrid secure voting solutions. , , , ,
Electronic voting is crucial for contemporary democratic processes. However, conventional systems often struggle with a single point of failure and insufficient support for intricate voting semantics, especially in ranked-choice elections requiring distinct ranking constraints. Although blockchain technology enhances fault tolerance and auditability, existing blockchainbased solutions primarily focus on simpler voting schemes, encountering difficulties in effectively verifying privacy-preserving ranked ballots. To address this gap, we propose AranVoting, an innovative blockchain-based ranked-choice voting scheme designed to ensure anonymity and fairness through homomorphic encryption. AranVoting employs a structured matrix ballot format alongside zero-knowledge proof to ensure the correctness of the ballot format. Furthermore, we introduce a smart contractdriven counting mechanism that facilitates the availability and transparency of ballot tallying through gradient incentive and committee election algorithms. Our security and performance evaluations demonstrate that AranVoting provides secure rankedchoice voting, effectively guaranteeing essential security properties such as anonymity, correctness, and verifiability while maintaining practicality and reasonable computational overhead throughout the voting process.
Even in this day and age, when digital technologies are becoming more and more prevalent, it is still extremely important for democratic systems to maintain the honesty and openness of their voting procedures. This article introduces NextGenVote, a decentralised online voting platform developed to address the security, transparency, and confidence issues traditional electronic voting systems face. Automation of election operations, including voter registration, candidate administration, ballot casting, and result computation, is achieved through smart contracts written in the Solidity programming language. The system is built on the Ethereum blockchain. MetaMask is a React-based frontend that uses Web3.js to connect to the blockchain. MetaMask is responsible for ensuring that user authentication and transaction signatures are secure. Therefore, to prevent unauthorised manipulation, the platform utilises a role-based access control approach that clearly distinguishes between administrative capabilities and voter credentials. NextGenVote assures that election results are tamper-proof, traceable, and auditable. It was deployed and tested in a local blockchain environment powered by Ganache. The system provides a solid foundation for scalable, secure, and transparent digital elections by eliminating centralised intermediaries and relying solely on processes executed on the blockchain.
Tengku Mohd Diansyah, Nuraminah Ramli, Muzammil Jusoh
This study addresses the limitations of existing decentralized e-voting systems, particularly their reliance on public distributed infrastructures, limited real-world deployment feasibility, and lack of comprehensive evaluation. Previous studies have demonstrated the potential of distributed ledger-based voting mechanisms; however, most focus on conceptual designs or small-scale prototypes without detailed performance and usability validation. To address this gap, this research proposes and implements a decentralized e-voting system deployed on a local server infrastructure using distributed ledger technology and automated validation mechanisms for vote integrity. The system is designed to reduce dependency on external networks while maintaining transparency, immutability, and operational efficiency. The system was evaluated through functional testing, performance analysis, and user acceptance testing involving 30 participants in a controlled environment with 20 simulated voters. The results show that the system achieved a functional accuracy of 96% across 25 test scenarios. The average transaction response time ranged between 0.6 and 1.6 seconds, indicating efficient processing under moderate load conditions. However, the evaluation is limited to small-scale simulations and does not include stress testing, large-scale scalability analysis, or advanced security validation. Therefore, the findings demonstrate system feasibility rather than fully validated effectiveness. These results suggest that decentralized e-voting systems deployed on local infrastructures can provide a practical and efficient solution for controlled election environments, while further research is required to evaluate scalability, security robustness, and real-world deployment readiness.
Chi Zhang, Fenhua Bai, Xiaohui Zhang, Jinhua Wan · 6 authors
As a middleware technology in distributed computer systems, blockchain systems represent a paradigm for achieving node interconnectivity. Despite this, technical differences between various blockchain networks have led to the emergence of a phenomenon known as multi-chain, where inter-chain communication has become a trust barrier. Cross-chain technology is a powerful tool that allows data to flow between different blockchain networks, breaking down data barriers and enabling seamless data transfer. However, cross-chain identification may lead to potential risks such as the exposure of private information and data loss or tampering. In this brief, we propose Universal Cross-Chain Permissioned Blockchain (UCCPB) architecture, which connects single permissioned chains into a multi-chain system. Based on this, the Cross-Chain Anonymous Identity Authentication (CCAIA) model is proposed, which implements privacy-preserving chain identity registration and verification through zero-knowledge proof without a trusted setup. Furthermore, we propose the Proof of Cross-Chain Invocation (PoCI) mechanism of UCCPB, which consists of a node election and consensus on the invocation result. This mechanism ensures the correctness of the cross-chain invocation results and incentivizes nodes to participate in UCCPB. Our experiments show that the proposed UCCPB achieves a balance between performance and privacy while improving the security of cross-chain invocations.
Abstract A hybrid lattice-based commitment scheme is proposed for anonymous proofs between hidden values. The method is based on a modification of the BDLOP zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) scheme by replacing the learning with errors (LWE) problem with a learning with rounding (LWR) problem, which theoretically makes it possible to reduce the size of the parameters and reduce the complexity of parameter selection. It is shown that the proposed scheme preserves the property of additive homomorphism, which makes it possible to apply it to prove linear relations. The obtained results can be applied to construct electronic voting protocols or conduct anonymous transactions.
One of the most prevalent and harmful forms of cybercrime remains phishing, which is often based on email as its primary avenue of attack. Traditional detection methods apply both rule-based filtering as well as machine learning classifiers, though they often come with large false-positive rates and no defense against message authenticity. To enhance the communication trust and detection accuracy, this paper proposes a hybrid framework integrating blockchain technology with artificial intelligence (AI). The AI module utilizes machine learning models trained with a labeled dataset of phishing, spam, and legitimate emails. The high performance of classification is evidenced by the experimental results, where up to 98.4% accuracy is achieved in binary classification and 97% accuracy for multiclass detection. A Solidity-based smart contract deployed on an Ethereum testnet irrevocably keeps hashed records of authenticated emails to ensure integrity and non-repudiation. This hybrid approach compares favorably with AI-only approaches in that it reduces false positives by as much as 35% and has traceability and tamper-resistant logging that blockchain-only approaches do not have. The results show that the integration of blockchain technology and artificial intelligence (AI) is a feasible method of secure and trustworthy email communication by balancing detection efficiency and protection of privacy.
Denis Wapukha Walumbe, Gabriel Kamau, Jane Wanjiru Njuki
With the rising integration of blockchain in critical domains such as healthcare, designing efficient, lightweight, and privacy-preserving consensus mechanisms remain a significant challenge.Existing Proof-of-Stake (PoS) implementations often incur high computational and communication overhead, making them unsuitable for telemedicine systems.This study proposed LightweightPoS, a novel voting mechanism designed for this environment.The proposed mechanism incorporates a cluster-based voting to minimize message complexity, Byzantine Agreement protocol for robust fault tolerance and cryptographic sortition to ensure fairness and privacy.This implementation slashes global communication, reducing message complexity by over 95% compared to traditional PoS models.The study evaluated the proposed and baseline mechanisms through simulations using real-time telemedicine data sensors.The results demonstrated that the proposed mechanism consistently achieved sub-10ms latency, high transaction throughput (up to 2400 TPS) and low energy consumption (~0.002kWh per round).It significantly outperformed baseline mechanism like Algorand and Ouroboros.Furthermore, the system included an effective Byzantine node detection, ensuring reliability under adversarial conditions.This work contributes a practical consensus voting mechanism that balances privacy and regulatory compliance.It provides a robust foundation for deploying blockchain technology in privacy-sensitive telemedicine applications.
Private BitTorrent trackers enforce upload-to-download ratios to prevent free-riding, but suffer from three critical weaknesses: reputation cannot move between trackers, centralized servers create single points of failure, and upload statistics are self-reported and unverifiable. When a tracker shuts down, users lose their contribution history and cannot prove their standing to new communities. We address these problems by storing reputation in smart contracts and replacing self-reports with cryptographic attestations. Peers sign receipts for received pieces; the tracker aggregates them via BLS signatures and updates reputation. If a tracker is unavailable, peers fall back to an authenticated distributed hash table (DHT): stored reputation acts as a public key infrastructure (PKI), preserving access control without the tracker. Reputation is portable across tracker failures through single-hop migration in factory-deployed contracts. We also address the privacy implications of publishing public keys and reputations tied to private trackers on a public ledger: we propose ephemeral session keys to prevent linking peer identities, zero-knowledge membership proofs for anonymous DHT participation, and confidential reputation using homomorphic commitments. We formalize the security requirements, prove four security properties under standard cryptographic assumptions, and evaluate a prototype. Measurements show that transfer receipts add less than 5\% end-to-end overhead with typical piece sizes. To minimize signing overhead, we adopt a hybrid signature scheme: ECDSA signs individual piece receipts at transfer time for low per-operation latency, while BLS serves as the overarching scheme, enabling compact aggregation of many receipts into a single proof at report time. This design reduces client-side signing cost by an order of magnitude compared to using BLS throughout.
In our Society public opinion surveys are necessary for understanding societal viewpoints, but the conventional polling platforms are at a high risk of forgery, data breaches and manipulation. To ensure the reliability and integrity of polling outcomes, there is a growing need for secure and transparent mechanisms [1]. This paper presents ElectraGuard, a blockchain-based online polling platform designed to deliver trustworthy, tamper-resistant, and user-friendly opinion polling. Built on the Ethereum blockchain using smart contracts, ElectraGuard ensures decentralised execution, voter anonymity, and one-response-per-participant integrity [2]. The system leverages cryptographic hashing and distributed ledger technology to record each submission immutably, preventing result falsification or post-hoc modification. Supporting multiple categories of institutional and organizational polls, the platform features a web-based interface that enables secure participation and real-time result visualization. Testing shows that ElectraGuard greatly improves the security, ability to check results, and trustworthiness of online polling, providing a strong base for clear and checkable digital surveys.
S. Yadav, Jyoshitha Pechetti, G Tarunya, Meena Belwal
The adoption of Electronic voting systems as alternative method suits distributed digital infrastructures since they provide promising voting solutions. The protection of data integrity alongside complete transparency of elections together with assured voter privacy and system defense represent ongoing technical obstacles. A new blockchain-powered electronic voting platform is introduced for running multiple voting levels at both general elections and state elections through four candidates per election. A distributed ledger system enables permanent vote recording while promoting tamper-evidence through auditing capabilities. The system achieves voter authentication through an encrypted HS256 password mechanism which protects users from unauthorized entry and protects password information from theft. Smart contracts process votes which then get attached to the blockchain ledger to ensure transparency and make challenges to vote results impossible. The proposed system operates with distributed architecture to eliminate network threats and develop trust between all system stakeholders. The system passes simulation results because it shows exceptional resistance against security threats while maintaining reliability and scalability for digital national elections.
Mohhammed H. Al-Farouni, Jyotsna Dwivedi, T. Saravanan, Ismatullaeva Yodgora Abduvahobkizi · 8 authors
Online elections (e-voting) are fast and convenient. Still, there is growing concern that the democratic integrity of the election process is under threat due to problems such as cyberattacks, illegal intrusion, vote manipulation, and unclear verification of the results. Actual cases have demonstrated voter fraud, insecure data storage, and unreliable results, undermining the public's confidence in digital voting systems, particularly in primary national elections. Moreover, the traditional auditing system, which relies on paper ballots, manual logistics, and resource-intensive verification, results insignificant operational costs and a negative environmental impact. This paper proposes a solution to these capital challenges by introducing SECURE-VOTE_CHAIN, an open, secure e-voting platform that integrates a certified blockchain network, biometric verification checks, homomorphic encryption, and zero-knowledge public audit records. The blockchain nodes in this system, run by voting bodies and legitimate observers, consistently registered votes and facilitated decentralised consultation. Biometric authentication can exclude identity duplication and voter fraud, and only homomorphic encryption can ensure fair counting without knowing any votes provided by an individual. Zero-knowledge proofs also make public auditability achievable without reducing the anonymity of voters. The application of realistic election parameters in simulations yields an accuracy of 91.88, along with low confirmation latency and high attack resilience probabilities in the presence of insider attacks, replay attacks, and denial-of-service attempts. In addition to security and reliability, the system will eliminate paperwork and manual auditing, significantly reducing the carbon footprint of traditional elections. Altogether, SECURE-VOTE_CHAIN offers an environmentally friendly, secure, and scalable solution that is suitable for regaining voter confidence, ensuring electoral integrity, and creating a future-proof digital governance model. The model can be considered a reasonably helpful standard by which contemporary voting systems operate, as it combines technological benefits with the adequacy of achievements in terms of prospects, providing policymakers with dependable means of security and transparency in election procedures, applicable to both urban and rural settings.
Electronic voting systems have a perpetual dilemma in finding a harmonious balance between security, privacy, and fairness with the transparency and flexibility of modern digital technologies. Traditional voting systems are plagued with concerns of trustworthiness in the presence of centralized architectures, costly infrastructure, and tamperability. This work explains the dilemma of having a cost-effective and transparent voting process without compromising voter anonymity and data integrity. In search of a solution, we examine the use of blockchain as a service (BaaS) for the deployment of a distributed electronic voting system. The aim of this research is to conceptualize a tamperresistant voting infrastructure that is cost-effective and transparent. The proposed system leverages distributed ledger technologies to secure votes recording across decentralized nodes to ensure immutability and transparency. By performing a comparative study of existing blockchain platforms to determine the most suitable platform for large-scale deployment. The novelty of this work is the practical deployment of BaaS for the development of an electronic voting platform that is scalable, secure, and transparent, as demonstrated through a real-world election case study.
Remote Procedure Call (RPC) services have become a primary gateway for users to access public blockchains. While they offer significant convenience, RPC services also introduce critical privacy challenges that remain insufficiently examined. Existing deanonymization attacks either do not apply to blockchain RPC users or incur costs like transaction fees assuming an active network eavesdropper. In this paper, we propose a novel deanonymization attack that can link an IP address of a RPC user to this user's blockchain pseudonym. Our analysis reveals a temporal correlation between the timestamps of transaction confirmations recorded on the public ledger and those of TCP packets sent by the victim when querying transaction status. We assume a strong passive adversary with access to network infrastructure, capable of monitoring traffic at network border routers or Internet exchange points. By monitoring network traffic and analyzing public ledgers, the attacker can link the IP address of the TCP packet to the pseudonym of the transaction initiator by exploiting the temporal correlation. This deanonymization attack incurs zero transaction fee. We mathematically model and analyze the attack method, perform large-scale measurements of blockchain ledgers, and conduct real-world attacks to validate the attack. Our attack achieves a high success rate of over 95% against normal RPC users on various blockchain networks, including Ethereum, Bitcoin and Solana.
Decentralized e-voting enables secure and transparent elections without relying on trusted authorities, with blockchain emerging as a popular platform. It has compelling applications in Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), where governance relies on voting with blockchain-issued tokens. Quadratic voting (QV), a mechanism that mitigates the dominance of large token holders, has been adopted by many DAO elections to enhance fairness. However, current QV systems deployed in practice publish voters' choices in plaintext with digital signatures. The open nature of all ballots comprises voter privacy, potentially affecting voters' honest participation. Prior research proposes using cryptographic techniques to encrypt QV ballots, but they work in a centralized setting, relying on a trusted group of tallying authorities to administrate an election. However, in DAO voting, there is no trusted third party.
Hang Liu, Ming Yang, Aotian Cai, Chenhao Wang · 5 authors
In recent years, with the increasing prevalence of online group chat applications, malicious information has been more easily disseminated on the internet. Asymmetric group message franking (AGMF) allows users to report received malicious messages to moderators, achieving content moderation in large-scale online end-to-end messaging systems. However, the state-of-the-art construction is built upon traditional public key cryptosystems, resulting in the complex certificate management problem. This paper systematically explores identity-based AGMF (IB-AGMF) to resolve this issue. Specifically, we first introduce a novel primitive called hash proof system-based anonymous identity-based key encapsulation mechanism supporting sigma protocol (HPS-AIB-KEMΣ) and present a practical construction based on DBDH assumption. After formalizing the concept and security notions of IB-AGMF, we propose the generic construction of IB-AGMF based on HPS-AIB-KEMΣand non-interactive zero knowledge proof system. Finally, we conduct comprehensive performance evaluations and comparisons to demonstrate the feasibility of IB-AGMF in group communication scenarios.
This paper proposes DAPUR, a decentralized anonymous payment protocol that simultaneously achieves strong transaction privacy and regulatory compliance. Addressing the fundamental tension between confidentiality and oversight in cryptocurrency systems, we develop a novel cryptographic framework combining zero-knowledge proof with access-controlled encryption. The protocol enables end-to-end transaction privacy while permitting authorized regulators to audit transaction details through selective disclosure mechanisms. The system’s security is formally proven through a model establishing ledger indistinguishability, transaction non-malleability, and balance preservation. Experimental results demonstrate practical viability with sub-second verification times. DAPUR represents a significant advance in privacy-preserving payment systems, showing that regulatory compatibility can be achieved without compromising decentralization principles.
Sachin Aralikatti, P. Susheelkumar Sreedharan, Akhila K M, J Mexlin · 6 authors
In contemporary democracies, the security, openness, and confidentiality of electronic voting systems are paramount. Due to concerns with scalability and voter privacy, blockchain technology is not yet ready for usage in national-scale elections, despite its immutability and auditability. Using the State Assembly Election as case study, this paper elaborate a e-voting framework that uses Zero-Knowledge Rollups (zk-Rollups) to guarantee scalable, privacy-preserving, and tamper-evident vote recording on the blockchain. Layer-2 zk-Rollup, which is integrated into the architecture with IoT and embedded systems, generates concise cryptographic proofs of vote validity without disclosing individual choices, offloading computationally intensive voting transactions. By validating these proofs on the blockchain, petrol costs are drastically reduced and throughput is greatly improved. Embedded systems also incorporate cryptographic primitives such as zk-SNARKs, Merkle trees, and homomorphic commitments to safeguard against double-voting, end-to-end verifiability, and voter anonymity. This framework provides a viable, secure, and future-proof solution for transparent and scalable e-voting in civic and organisational contexts, it offers a prototype implementation using Zero-Knowledge Rollups on Blockchain with IoT and embedded system integration.
Fidel T Rorimpandey, Neorafa A Zulkarnaen, Aditya Kurniawan, Chrisando Ryan Pardomuan Siahaan
This paper is focused on Proof of Authority (POA) consensus mechanism in blockchain-based e-voting for student body elections. Exploring a unique take on consensus rather than using the popular consensus like Proof of Stake or Proof of Work. POA, with its reliance on trusted validators, offers a promising solution for low-cost, secure, and transparent voting. We developed a prototype POA-based e-voting model designed for student body elections and get results of its effectiveness in terms of reliability. Our findings indicate that POA helps the security and accessibility of e-voting, making it suitable for voting validity.
Prof. C. V. Nalawade, V. S. Bhosale, S. A. Khetre, K. B. Kadam
In recent years, the convergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blockchain, and Biometric technologies has revolutionized digital identity verification and secure electronic voting systems. The demand for transparent, tamper-proof, and fraud-resistant voting mechanisms has prompted researchers to explore distributed ledgers combined with intelligent authentication systems. This paper presents a comprehensive survey of AI-enabled blockchain voting architectures integrating biometric verification. The study explores technical advancements from 2020 to 2025 in decentralized voting, intelligent fraud detection, and privacy-preserving biometric mechanisms. We classify recent research trends, analyze current methodologies, and identify open challenges and future directions in implementing scalable and trustworthy e-voting frameworks. The analysis concludes that integrating blockchain’s immutability with AI-driven fraud detection and biometric identification ensures high security, transparency, and reliability in modern digital democracies.