Russia: a blockchain-based referendum for Vladimir Putin’s electoral victory

Mark Feygin, leader of the opposition in exile, is launching an anonymous referendum in Russia based on blockchain technology, to verify the legitimacy of Vladimir Putin’s electoral victory. The vote will be conducted through the Russia2024 application, using the Arbitrum blockchain.

Russia: the Blockchain-based referendum to verify the legitimacy of Vladimir Putin’s victory

According to what reported, it seems that Mark Feygin, leader of the Russian opposition in exile, is launching a new anonymous blockchain-based referendum.

The new tool will be powered by Arbitrum and will serve to verify the legitimacy of Vladimir Putin’s electoral victory, in his recently achieved fifth term as President of Russia.  

Specifically, this tool will not have any legal relevance, but will be used to give critical Russians a new anonymous way to record their “protest vote”. 

Actually, it seems that Vladimir Putin’s latest overwhelming electoral victory with 87% of the votes in his favor has been defined by many as preordained, orchestrated and a farce.

Not only that, the new blockchain-based tool also aims to bring together critics in the country where the consequences of dissent can be too high. A bit like what happened to Alexei Navalny, opposition leader, who recently died while imprisoned in an Arctic penal colony.

The vote will be conducted on an application called Russia2024, built using the Freedom Tool by Rarimo.

Russia: the referendum on Arbitrum blockchain against Putin is Bitcoin-proof

Russia2024, the referendum application, will use the Arbitrum blockchain and zero-knowledge cryptography, making voters’ identities untraceable.

In general, users will need to download the Russia2024 application and demonstrate their citizenship by scanning their passport with their phone.

The passports are equipped with a biometric chip that the tool uses to confirm the identity of the voter and facilitate an anonymous vote. If a person does not have a smartphone, a single phone can be used as a shared voting tool.

Not only, the vote will be allowed for about two weeks and the funders of the tool are “confident” that it is a safe way to vote and that voters do not have to fear repercussions.

On this matter, the co-founder of Freedom Tool, Lasha Antadze, stated: 

“Even after Navalny’s death, people came out and protested, so they will vote as a countermeasure to the outcome. Decentralized voting and the Freedom Tool are designed in such a way that there is no single entity to attack, block, or eliminate. It cannot be hacked, just like bitcoin cannot be hacked”.

Arbitrum and the milestone of $150 billion traded on layer2 crypto

Speaking of Arbitrum, recently, the layer-2 crypto of Ethereum has reached a result unmatched by its competitors: 150 billion dollars of volume generated on the chain.

In less than 3 years since its inception, Arbitrum has managed to establish itself as the fifth richest chain of all time, behind Solana, BNB Chain, Tron, and Ethereum. 

Specifically, DefilLama sees Arbitrum as the fifth blockchain by TVL, with a total of 2.6 billion dollars locked in funds. If we also consider the “bridged” funds not committed to dApps, the TVL would rise to 16.35 billion dollars. 

Anyway, this milestone was possible thanks to the contribution of other DeFi protocols. The first of all is Uniswap, followed by Ramses Exchange, Cameleot, TraderJow, Pancakeswap, Hashflow, Sushiswap, Dodo, Vertex, Balancer and GMX.