The Next Presidential Election Should Be Held on The Blockchain — AAX Academy

With the US election nearing its completion, few would disagree that the manner in which this contentious battle for ballots is playing out has once again cast doubt on the electoral process itself — not just from a legal perspective, but at the level of protocol as well.

Casting doubt on the outcome of an election is a handbook tactic, but it’s only possible when that outcome is rooted in a less-than perfect-protocol.

No doubt, the US has a strong reputation globally for its culture of democratic representation. However, that is not to say the system has no loopholes or weaknesses, and it goes without saying that there are some who may seek to take advantage of that knowledge.

But while most people can see through what is happening in the US today, the lack of trust in society is a problem found across nations and has arguable been made extra apparent in the wake of the Corona Crisis.

Questions around reliability and traceability have arisen, and the sitting US President had previously cast doubt on the US Postal Service (USPS).

Blockchain technology could act as a system that removes the need for trust in one another, but instead brings all participants together in mathematical certainty.

It comes as no surprise that USPS has already patented such a blockchain system. On Aug.13, the US Patent and Trademark Office presented the USPS’ official patent application, dubbed the “Secure Voting System,” which leverages blockchain technology to securitize the voting process and transmit the incoming ballots more efficiently and quickly.

To understand how blockchain technology offers new levels of transparency, traceability and security, we invite you to read more about cryptography and the various protocols/ consensus mechanisms.

But how is this relevant to investors in Bitcoin or crypto traders?

In the first instance, elections on the blockchain are not directly related to any crypto markets. Blockchain technology is not necessarily always used for issuing tokens, although it is often used as part of the economic model to incentivize certain behavior.

But that societies around the world face pressing crises of faith, and that the bonds among urbanites in largely anonymous and increasingly digitized life scapes are threatened by fragmentation, is clear.

Just a few decades ago, when the Internet — meaning, the actual physical infrastructure — opened up for commercial use, many held the expectation that the World Wide Web would provide a new platform for ordinary citizens of the world to freely exchange information, build networks and generate ideas.

We have written more extensively about this in our recent article on the rise of Web 3.0 and also in our post on the production of popular culture.

Back in 2017, during the ICO boom, talk of blockchain was rampant. The word was used a magic spell that yielded some companies — merely on the basis of a whitepaper and blockchain mention — millions of dollars.

But we need to keep talking about it and we should keep driving innovation in this space. Blockchain is about so much more than Bitcoin, but it is all a part of the same endeavour to deliver the promise of a decentralized platform for ordinary netizens and solidify a culture of verifiability, rooted in truth.

As the crypto markets continue to mature, we therefore invite new entrants in the space to investigate crypto assets from this perspective, or at least take such ambitions into account.

From a financial perspective, this may mean looking into Decentralized Finance (DeFi), whereas others might be more interested in Decentralized Web Tokens, or privacy tokens for that matter.

Trading crypto is about more than just speculation, it’s about investing in a set of principles and driving innovation in the right direction.

Whether or not the next presidential election ought to be held on the blockchain is up for debate, but that society would benefit from more robust systems to optimize supply chains, monetary policies, financial services and digital living is something we might not need a blockchain for to agree.

Originally published at https://academy.aaxpro.com on November 10, 2020.