- Andreessen Horowitz has unveiled a new product called Cicada for anonymous voting on Ethereum.
- The product keeps every vote accounted for throughout the poll.
- Cicada also makes the voter's identity unknowable when combined with zero-knowledge group membership systems.
Ethereum (ETH) has gotten a private on-chain voting tool courtesy of Andreessen Horowitz's Cicada Library. The venture capital fund also known as a16z, has disclosed a Solidity library capable of serving for anonymous voting on Ethereum. Christened 'Cicada,' the library ensures that every voter's choice remains unknown before the polling ends. Details come from a May 24 blog post by Michael Zhu, the company's engineer.
Also Read: a16z votes against proposal to deploy Uniswap v3 on BNB Chain
Ethereum gets Cicada from Andreessen Horowitz
Ethereum (ETH), through Andreessen Horowitz's new Cicada product has another use case beyond preventing an individual voter's choice from being known before the end of a poll. Based on the announcement, it also makes the voter's identity permanently unknowable, although this application hinges entirely on whether it is integrated with zero-knowledge group membership systems like Semaphore.
According to Zhu, the company's Cicada depends on a type of cryptography puzzle that is time sensitive and allows users to encrypt personal values that can only be decrypted after a certain duration. Notably, the time-lock puzzles have existed for the past 27 years (since 1996), although from as early as 2019, they would have required users to reveal their values once the period elapsed.
When applied to the voting systems, the time-lock puzzles would have been troublesome in 2019 with users submitting votes and then going offline as it would prevent all the votes from being countable.
Further, cryptographers Giulio Malavolta and Aravind Thyagarajan proposed the concept of 'homomorphic' time-lock puzzles, allowing the combination of the puzzles to achieve a single final puzzle that is easier to solve compared to the sum of the individual puzzles. In this regard, the solution to the final puzzle only discloses the sum of the individual values while concealing the individual values that make up the sum.
Cicada uses homomorphic puzzles to be counted when users are online or offline
The a16z post also notes that Cicada uses the same homomorphic puzzles to allow the counting of votes whether users are online or not. The venture capital firm's researchers encountered a problem when they tried developing a fair voting system to transfer Malavolta and Thyagarajan's system to the blockchain.
Each choice needed to be encoded as a boolean value of "1" or "0." This meant that attackers could try to increase their voting power by incorrectly encoding the vote — by encoding "100" as their value, for example.
Cicada needs voters to submit a zero-knowledge proof of ballot validity and individual ballots as part of the solution to the above obstacle. The proof, therefore, indicates that the vote was encoded correctly, although without disclosing the contents of the vote.
Cicada only conceals votes while the poll is in session
Once the "poll has closed" or the time-lock period elapses, anyone can determine the contents of a vote by brute-forcing the solution to the puzzle. Nevertheless, a16z highlights that this problem s solvable by merging Cicada with zero-knowledge group membership systems such as Semaphore, Semacaulk, or zero-knowledge state proofs.
In such a case, while brute-forcing the puzzle only reveals that an eligible voter's vote was cast, it would not reveal the details or logins used to prove the voter's eligibility. To put this in perspective, Zhu shared a link to a sample contract produced using Cicada that also hinges on Semaphores to prove the eligibility of individual voters.
Voting systems and DAOs
Based on the report, there appears to be a long-standing relationship between decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), the governing bodies that usually run blockchain apps. In many cases, however, DAOs employ tokens to represent votes, meaning individual users can have enormous influence if they hold many tokens.
Case in point: An attacker commandeered Tornado Cash on May 22 by casting extra votes on a malicious proposal and used it to drain all the funds from governance contracts. The exploiter then offered to give back control to users. According to Waves founder Sasha Ivanov, however, to avoid governance attacks, DAOs must move to a more democratic voting system.
Information on these pages contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Markets and instruments profiled on this page are for informational purposes only and should not in any way come across as a recommendation to buy or sell in these assets. You should do your own thorough research before making any investment decisions. FXStreet does not in any way guarantee that this information is free from mistakes, errors, or material misstatements. It also does not guarantee that this information is of a timely nature. Investing in Open Markets involves a great deal of risk, including the loss of all or a portion of your investment, as well as emotional distress. All risks, losses and costs associated with investing, including total loss of principal, are your responsibility. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of FXStreet nor its advertisers. The author will not be held responsible for information that is found at the end of links posted on this page.
If not otherwise explicitly mentioned in the body of the article, at the time of writing, the author has no position in any stock mentioned in this article and no business relationship with any company mentioned. The author has not received compensation for writing this article, other than from FXStreet.
FXStreet and the author do not provide personalized recommendations. The author makes no representations as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability of this information. FXStreet and the author will not be liable for any errors, omissions or any losses, injuries or damages arising from this information and its display or use. Errors and omissions excepted.
The author and FXStreet are not registered investment advisors and nothing in this article is intended to be investment advice.
Recommended Content
Editors’ Picks
Top 3 Price Prediction Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple: Crypto liquidations hit $311 million, what’s next?

BTC price has suffered a fatal setback after the recent lawsuit that the SEC filed against Binance and its founder, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao. The suit caused the markets to cascade, triggering a massive sell-off and causing roughly $311 million in liquidations across the entire crypto landscape.
Apple staying mum on Metaverse at WWDC wipes out Metaverse tokens’ value by 10%

Apple recently hosted the WWDC, where it was expected to kickstart the Metaverse hype again. However, with the anticipation going through the roof, the opposite happened when the company with the biggest market cap failed to talk about the virtual world.
Dogecoin price crashes by nearly 12% as loyal investors continue to offload their DOGE

Dogecoin price is currently following Bitcoin’s lead, bringing the meme coin down to three-month lows and testing a key support level. The cryptocurrency has been a highly influenced token for a long time now, but with DOGE’s charm fading away.
Is the metaverse hype back in action?

Although there are no major macroeconomic events this week, investors can expect massive volatility on a daily basis. The reasoning behind this outlook is that Apple will be conducting the 2023 Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 5.
Bitcoin: BTC targets $30,000 as short-term bias turns bullish

Bitcoin (BTC) price shows a clear sign of the bulls’ victory. After failing to trigger a steep correction, bears look now out of context, at least in the short term, allowing buyers to restart a minor uptrend.