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zk-vote-hackathon

A quick-and-dirty hackathon project, building a simple voting protocol using zero-knowledge proofs.

The basic protocol is inspired by Zerocoin and works as follows:

  • To cast a vote, a voter with a white-listed public key does the following:
    • It generates a random 128-bit secret
    • It generates a random 128-bit serial_number
    • It choses a boolean vote (yes or no)
    • It computes a commit = Hash(secret, serial_number, vote), and sends it to the voting server, signed with its public key
  • The voting server collects and publishes all commits
  • Then, the voter can reveal the vote, by publishing the serial_number, vote, and a zero-knowledge prove that it knows a secret such that it computes to a commit that is in the public list of all commits. The voting server:
    • Validates the proof
    • Ensures that the same serial number is not used more than once
    • Publishes the voting result

Because the connection between the serial_number and the commit never is revealed, the vote cannot be connected to the voter's public key.

Setup

Via Docker

$ docker build . -t zk-vote-container
$ docker run --rm --name vscode \
  -it -p 8443:8443 -p 5000:5000 \
  -v $(pwd):/code \
  zk-vote-container

Then, connect to http://localhost:8443 for a Visual Studio Code Session. The password necessary to access VS Code will be printed in the console.

Local setup

  • Install Zokrates by running curl -LSfs get.zokrat.es | sh and adding ~/.zokrates/bin to your PATH variable.
  • (Linux: Run apt install libgmp3-dev)
  • Run pip install -r ./requirements.txt
  • Run npm install

Running the server

Make sure all public keys of people with a vote right are included in the accepted_public_keys directory when the server starts.

To run flask app:

$ cd src && FLASK_APP=voting_server FLASK_ENV=development python -m flask run -h 0.0.0.0

Then, navigate to http://localhost:5000/status to see the current state of the server.

Voting (Server implementation)

If you don't have a signing key yet, generate one by running:

$ openssl genrsa -out private_key.pem 1024

This will generate a private_key.pem in your working directory, which should be kept secret.

Extract the public key by running:

openssl rsa -in private_key.pem -outform PEM -pubout -out key.pub

To whitelist the public key, copy key.pub into accepted_public_keys.

Before the first run, compile the proof:

cd zokrates_snark/ && ./compile_programm.sh

To vote, run:

$ python src/vote_cli.py vote <vote>

where <vote> can be yes or no. This will generate a vote.json in your working directory, which should be kept secret.

To reveal the vote, run:

$ python src/vote_cli.py reveal

Finally, navigate to http://localhost:5000/status to see the voting result.

Voting (Ethereum implementation)

To test the solidity contracts locally install hardhat and run your local node

Compile the contracts

npx hardhat compile

Connect to local Hardhat node

Run npx hardhat node to start the local ethereum node. Then, make sure that USE_HARDHAT = True in vote_cli.py.

Connect to Görli test net

Set the GOERLI_ENDPOINT_URL and ETH_PRIVATE_KEY environment variables, and make sure that USE_HARDHAT = False in vote_cli.py.

Setup

To deploy the smart contract, run:

python src/vote_cli.py eth-deploy-voting-contract

Or, to participate in an already deployed vote, run:

python src/vote_cli.py eth-set-deployed-contract <address>

Next, ask the chairperson (the account who deployed the contract) to give you a voting right by running:

python src/vote_cli.py eth-give-right-to-vote <your address>

Vote

The voting consists of two steps: First, you commit to a vote by running:

python src/vote_cli.py eth-vote <yes/no>

This needs to be run using the account that has voting rights. As a result, this transaction can be connected to your identity. However, this will send your vote in encrypted form, so privacy is preserved.

Start the reveal phase

Next, the chairperson has to set the Merkle root to be used for all the reveal proofs:

python src/vote_cli.py eth-set-merkle-root

In the next step, the Merkle root is re-computed by all the voters. If the chairperson sets an incorrect Merkle root, all the reveals fail. So, one has to trust the chairperson not to freeze the election.

Reveal your vote

Next, reveal your vote by running:

python src/vote_cli.py eth-reveal

This will decrypt your vote. This can be run using any account, so use one that cannot be connected to your identity to preserve privacy.

Result

As a last step, get the result by running:

python src/vote_cli.py eth-get-results