Sierra Leone didn’t really use blockchain in their election

Following the presidential elections conducted in Sierra Leone on March 7, it was widely reported in the media that Sierra Leone had become the first country in the world to run blockchain-powered elections.

These reports were based on the claims of a Swiss blockchain company, Agora , where it said that the country had utilized blockchain tech to tally and audit the election results. However, it seems that the company’s claims were entirely false.

The National Election Commission (NEC) of Sierra Leone released an official statement on Twitter on March 18 to set the record straight. The tweet quoted the NEC Chair Mohamed Conteh saying that “the NEC has not used, and is not using blockchain technology in any part of the electoral process.”

Tamba Lamin, a Sierra Leone citizen, pointed out in his medium blog that as per the official handbook of the NEC of Sierra Leone for ‘Polling and Counting Procedures,’ all of the polling and counting is done manually.

The official handbook has illustrations highlighting how the ballot is marked manually without any involvement of technology, with a ‘pen’ or ‘fingerprint.’ Similarly, all the tallying of votes was also done manually, as per the handbook.

In another tweet on March 19, NEC of Sierra Leone clarified the technology they utilized to conduct the elections: C++ and MS SQL, but no blockchain.

Two days following the elections, on March 9, Agora published a blog with the misleading headline “Swiss-based Agora powers world’s first ever blockchain elections in Sierra Leone.” A lot of hype followed after this exaggerated PR stunt managed to get coverage in most of mainstream media, following a chain of citation of unverified claims.

Agora started off its blog about its involvement in the Sierre Leone elections with quite a grand statement: “Our digital voting platform was partially deployed during the March 2018 presidential elections. Votes from the West Districts were recorded on an immutable blockchain ledger.”

The truth, however, was a bit less ‘grand.’ Agora had ‘international observer’ access to 250 polling stations in the Western Area of Sierra Leone (out of the approximately 11,200 in total, i two percent of all polling stations), and counted the results independently, allegedly using blockchain technology. This involvement had no impact on the standard election procedures of the NEC, in any manner.

Also, it’s worth noting that Agora might even have tallied the votes wrong, as the company’s results for the two districts differed considerably from the official results, according to an analysis of the two sets of statistics carried out by RFI .

Following the backlash for the false claims, Agora published an official statement clarifying their stance.  Unlike their last announcement, this time, Agora has focused on facts, and provided accurate information about their ‘partial’ involvement.

The statement however goes on to critisize an organization called Sierra Leone Open Election Data Platform (SLOEDP) and Tamba Lamin, who Agora claims has launched a vendetta against them, and are responsible for all the backlash that Agora is receiving. However, the fact that Agora grossly exaggerated facts can be both verified through the difference of language in their two statements before and after the backlash, and the official statements from the NEC, even if SLOEDP took the efforts to highlight this false claim out of a vested interest.

Chinese internet security firm finds major vulnerabilities in EOS before Mainnet launch

Security researchers are finding loopholes in the security of cryptocurrencies and blockchains one after another. The latest in the series is the blockchain and smart contracts platform EOS .

Qihoo 360, a Chinese internet security company, has discovered a series of high-risk vulnerabilities in the EOS network.

These vulnerabilities allow attackers to gain remote control over any EOS node, construct and publish malicious smart contracts, or become a ‘free miner’ and dig up digital currencies based on the EOS platform.

Since the attacker can gain complete control over an EOS node, they can literally do whatever they want. This includes stealing the key of the EOS super node, controlling the transactions of cryptocurrencies on the EOS network, or acquiring financial and privacy data about the users including their wallet private keys.

EOS was gearing up for the launch of its main network — commonly referred to as Mainnet — which was slated to happen on June 2, 2018. But, the launch might be postponed in light of this discovery.

As per the official statement from Qihoo 360, they have made the person in charge of EOS network aware of the vulnerabilities, who has promised to hold off the Mainnet launch until the bugs are fixed.

Qihoo 360 has stated that the security risks with the EOS network are unprecedented, and the entire blockchain industry and security experts need to pay extra attention towards enhancing the security of blockchain networks.

We have reached out to EOS for a comment. If they respond, we will update the story accordingly.

Update [May 30, 2018 — 8:55 AM GMT] EOS has stated that it’s working to resolve the vulnerabilities, and the Mainnet launch will take place on schedule.

[H/T: cnLedger ]

President of China endorses blockchain technology

Blockchain technology has received an unlikely endorsement from the president of China.

Xi Jinping was speaking at the annual conference of Chinese Academy of Sciences on Monday when he mentioned blockchain among the latest technologies that are making economic breakthroughs. He said:

While blockchain finds only one mention in a larger speech, it further solidifies Chinese government’s approach of ‘ blockchain, not Bitcoin ‘.

China has taken a stringent approach towards regulating cryptocurrencies.

The authorities initially banned initial coin offerings (ICOs) countrywide in September last year, followed by banning both local and foreign cryptocurrency exchanges. Regulatory hurdles in China forced Binance , world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, to move to Malta instead.

China’s decision of throttling cryptocurrency businesses is particularly interesting given that it saw both the highest amount of cryptocurrency mining and trading in the world before the sanctions.

The Chinese government has instead focused on nurturing blockchain technology in the country. China has seen an exponential rise in the number of blockchain startups in the country, with at least 100 startups emerging just in 2017. Nearly half of the country’s publicly listed banks also utilize blockchain technology.

Earlier this month, China’s state council, central administrative branch of the government, ordered the provincial and municipal governments in the country to accelerate implementation of blockchain technology across several sectors.