Blockchain Can Expose Fake News and Help Improve Democracies, Says Decred’s Co-Founder

Blockchain can help ensure a fairer, more transparent, more inclusive democratic process. At least that’s the view of Jake Yocom-Piatt, co-founder and project lead of Decred. BeInCrypto spoke to Yocom-Piatt about how Decred aims to promote election integrity, combat lies, and expand the potential for decentralized social media.

How do we know something we see online is real? How do we know it happened, or when? Who is influencing whom? In the digital world of 2023, these are existential questions. Decred, an open-source blockchain, has been working on timestamping and blockchain voting solutions. While probably best well-known for its $DCR cryptocurrency, Decred’s innovations in the public realm have arguably left a deeper mark.

Verifying Donations and Policy Platforms on the Blockchain

In 2020, Decred’s blockchain was used to timestamp and record donations for Brazil’s municipal elections, when electors chose mayors, vice-mayors, and city councilors in all 5,568 cities of the country.

Every blockchain can be understood as a timestamping system for transactions within it, Yocom-Piatt said. Not everyone gets this, but the implications for data verification are immense. He elaborated on the technical aspects:

“It is possible to timestamp data by proxy using a blockchain, where you insert a file hash into a transaction on the blockchain in question. Proof that data existed on or before a given date is generated as a merkle path to a single hash value anchored on-chain every hour.”

The timestamping of millions of documents with each such anchor is not hard to bring off. Hence Decred can offer the service free of charge, explained Yocom-Piatt.

For candidates, blockchain can make donations more public and transparent. A total of 11 mayoral candidates chose to track their campaign donations via the Decred-based Voto Legal platform, including two candidates for mayor of São Paulo, Bruno Covas and Guilherme Boulos.