Sierra Leone Is The First Country To Introduce A Blockchain-Based Presidential Election

The world’s first blockchain-backed presidential election took place  in Sierra Leone this March 7, 2018. The African country witnessed the first blockchain tech votes all thanks to the Swiss blockchain startup – Agora – that was working hard behind the scenes to make this possible and bring such results.

In this election, Agora used a custom-built blockchain technology that it has built over the last two years. Designed as a permissioned blockchain network, it allows the network to appoint to a group of participants who are given the express authority to provide the validation of blocks of transactions or to participate in consensus.

Both Agora and the Sierra Leone officials were proud to introduce such technology where the transfer of information was secure to a verifiable blockchain ledger – with independent node operators including the names of the Red Cross, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the University of Fribourg as the organizations that verified each ballot and the election results.

The CEO of Agora expressed gratitude for the country of Sierra Leone for showing the world how visionary they are in implementing free and transparent elections to the people. The election itself was quite notable since for the first time in years, Sierra Leone had more than two candidates with a significant chance of winning, opening up space for a more diversified parliament.

In the end, this is an important first step towards improving the democratic process in countries that have been significantly impacted by fraud and corruption in the past, all thanks to paper ballots.