D-Voting

D-Voting is an e-voting platform based on the Dela blockchain. It uses state-of-the-art protocols that guarantee privacy of votes and a fully decentralized process. This project was born in early 2021 and has been iteratively implemented by EPFL students under the supervision of DEDIS members.

⚠️ This project is still under development and should not be used for real forms.

Main properties of the system are the following:

No single point of failure - The system is supported by a decentralized network of blockchain nodes, making no single party able to break the system without compromising a Byzantine threshold of nodes. Additionally, side-protocols always distribute trust among nodes: The distributed key generation protocol (DKG) ensures that a threshold of honest node is needed to decrypt ballots, and the shuffling protocol needs at least one honest node to ensure privacy of voters. Only the identification and authorization mechanism make use of a central authority, but can accommodate to other solutions.

Privacy - Ballots are cast on the client side using a safely-held distributed key-pair. The private key cannot not be revealed without coercing a threshold of nodes, and voters can retrieve the public key on any node. Ballots are decrypted only once a cryptographic process ensured that cast ballots cannot be linked to the original voter.

Transparency/Verifiability/Auditability - The whole voting process is recorded on the blockchain and signed by a threshold of blockchain nodes. Anyone can read and verify the log of events stored on the blockchain. Malicious behavior can be detected, voters can check that ballots are cast as intended, and auditors can witness the voting process.

🧩 Global architecture

The project has 4 main high-level components:

Proxy - A proxy offers the mean for an external actor such as a website to interact with a blockchain node. It is a component of the blockchain node that exposes HTTP endpoints for external entities to send commands to the node. The proxy is notably used by the web clients to use the voting system.

Web frontend - The web frontend is a web app built with React. It offers a view for end-users to use the D-Voting system. The app is meant to be used by voters and admins. Admins can perform administrative tasks such as creating an form, closing it, or revealing the results. Depending on the task, the web frontend will directly send HTTP requests to the proxy of a blockchain node, or to the web-backend.

Web backend - The web backend handles authentication and authorization. Some requests that need specific authorization are relayed from the web-frontend to the web-backend. The web backend checks the requests and signs messages before relaying them to the blockchain node, which trusts the web-backend. The web-backend has a local database to store configuration data such as authorizations. Admins use the web-frontend to perform updates.

Blockchain node - A blockchain node is the wide definition of the program that runs on a host and participate in the voting logic. The blockchain node is built on top of Dela with an additional d-voting smart contract, proxy, and two services: DKG and verifiable Shuffling. The blockchain node is more accurately a subsystem, as it wraps many other components. Blockchain nodes communicate through gRPC with the minogrpc network overlay. We sometimes refer to the blockchain node simply as a "node".

The following component diagrams summarizes the interaction between those high-level components:

You can find more information about the architecture on the documentation website.

Workflow

A form follows a specific workflow to ensure privacy of votes. Once an form is created and open, there are 4 main steps from the cast of a ballot to getting the result of the form:

1) Create ballot The voter gets the shared public key and encrypts locally its ballot. The shared public key can be retrieved on any node and is associated to a private key that is distributed among the nodes. This process is done on the client's browser using the web-frontend.

2) Cast ballot The voter submits its encrypted ballot as a transaction to one of the blockchain node. This operation is relayed by the web-backend which verifies that the voters has the right to vote. If successful, the encrypted ballot is stored on the blockchain. At this stage each encrypted ballot is associated to its voter on the blockchain.

3) Shuffle ballots Once the form is closed by an admin, ballots are shuffled to ensure privacy of voters. This operation is done by a threshold of node that each perform their own shuffling. Each shuffling guarantees the integrity of ballots while re-encrypting and changing the order of ballots. At this stage encrypted ballots cannot be linked back to their voters.

4) Reveal ballots Once ballots have been shuffled, they are decrypted and revealed. This operation is done only if the previous step is correctly executed. The decryption is done by a threshold of nodes that must each provide a contribution to achieve the decryption. Once done, the result of the form is stored on the blockchain.

For a more formal and in-depth overview of the workflow, see the documentation

Smart contract

A smart contract is a piece of code that runs on a blockchain. It defines a set of operations that act on a global state (think of it as a database) and can be triggered with transactions. What makes a smart contract special is that its executions depends on a consensus among blockchain nodes where operations are successful only if a consensus is reached. Additionally, transactions and their results are permanently recorded and signed on an append-only ledger, making any operations on the blockchain transparent and permanent.

In the D-Voting system a single D-Voting smart contract handles the forms. The smart contract ensures that forms follow a correct workflow to guarantees its desirable properties such as privacy. For example, the smart contract won't allow ballots to be decrypted if they haven't been previously shuffled by a threshold of nodes.

Services

Apart from executing smart contracts, blockchain nodes need additional side services to support a form. Side services can read from the global state and send transactions to write to it via the D-Voting smart contract. They are used to perform specific protocol executions not directly related to blockchain protocols such as the distributed key generation (DKG) and verifiable shuffling protocols.

Distributed Key Generation (DKG)

The DKG service allows the creation of a distributed key-pair among multiple participants. Data encrypted with the key-pair can only be decrypted with the contribution of a threshold of participants. This makes it convenient to distribute trust on encrypted data. In the D-Voting project we use the Pedersen [1] version of DKG.

The DKG service needs to be setup at the beginning of each new form, because we want each form to have its own key-pair. Doing the setup requires two steps: 1) Initialization and 2) Setup. The initialization creates new RPC endpoints on each node, which they can use to communicate with each other. The second step, the setup, must be executed on one of the node. The setup step starts the DKG protocol and generates the key-pair. Once done, the D-Voting smart contract can be called to open the form, which will retrieve the DKG public key and save it on the smart contract.

Verifiable shuffling

The shuffling service ensures that encrypted votes can not be linked to the user who cast them. Once the service is setup, each node can perform what we call a "shuffling step". A shuffling step re-orders an array of elements such that the integrity of the elements is guarantee (i.e no elements have been modified, added, or removed), but one can't trace how elements have been re-ordered.

In D-Voting we use the Neff [2] implementation of verifiable shuffling. Once a form is closed, an admin can trigger the shuffling steps from the nodes. During this phase, every node performs a shuffling on the current list of encrypted ballots and tries to submit it to the D-Voting smart contract. The smart contract will accept only one shuffling step per block in the blockchain. Nodes re-try to shuffle the ballots, using the latest shuffled list in the blockchain, until the result of their shuffling has been committed to the blockchain or a threshold of nodes successfully submitted their own shuffling results.

📁 Folders structure

.
├── cli    
│   ├── cosipbftcontroller  Custom initialization of the blockchain node
│   ├── dvoting             Build the node CLI
│   └── postinstall         Custom node CLI setup
├── contracts           
│   └── evoting             D-Voting smart contract
│       └── controller      CLI commands for the smart contract
├── deb-package             Debian package for deployment
├── docs                    Documentation 
├── integration             Integration tests
├── internal                Internal packages: testing, tooling, tracing
├── metrics             
│   └── controller          CLI commands for Prometheus
├── proxy                   Defines and implements HTTP handlers for the REST API
├── services
│   ├── dkg  
│   │   └── pedersen        Implementation of the DKG service
│   └── shuffle   
│       └── neff            Implementation of the shuffle service
└── web
    ├── backend
    │   └── src             Sources of the web backend (express.js server)
    └── frontend
        └── src             Sources of the web frontend (react app)

👩‍💻👨‍💻 Contributors

Period	Contributors(s)	Activities	Links
Spring 2021	Students: Anas Ibrahim, Vincent Parodi Supervisor: Noémien Kocher	Initial implementation of the smart contract and services	Report
Spring 2021	Student: Sarah Antille Supervisor: Noémien Kocher	Initial implementation of the web frontend in react	Report
Fall 2021	Students: Auguste Baum, Emilien Duc Supervisor: Noémien Kocher	Adds a flexible form structure. Improves robustness and security.	Report, Presentation
Fall 2021	Students: Ambroise Borbely Supervisor: Noémien Kocher	Adds authentication and authorization mechanism on the frontend.	Report
Spring 2022	Students: Guanyu Zhang, Igowa Giovanni Supervisor: Noémien Kocher Assistant: Emilien Duc	Improves production-readiness: deploy a test pipeline and analyze the system's robustness.	Report, Presentation
Spring 2022	Students: Badr Larhdir, Capucine Berger Supervisor: Noémien Kocher	Major iteration over the frontend - design and functionalities: implements a flexible form form, nodes setup, and result page.	Report, Presentation
Fall 2022	Students: Amine Benaziz, Albert Troussard Supervisors: Noémien Kocher, Pierluca Borso Assistant: Emilien Duc	Improves production-readiness: implement a new transaction system, improves the setup script, analyze performance and robustness with improved testing.	Report, Presentation (common)
Fall 2022	Students: Ahmed Elalamy, Ghita Tagemouati, Khadija Tagemouati Supervisor: Noémien Kocher	Implements a policy-based authentication system, i18n of forms, individual results, and other minor improvement on the usability.	Report, Presentation (common)
Fall 2022	Students: Chen Chang Lew Supervisors: Noémien Kocher, Pierluca Borso, Simone Colombo	Threat modelling of the system, security audit: identification of threats and technical debts, design of a vote verifiability feature.	Report, Security audit, Presentation (common)

⚙️ Setup

1: Install Go (at least 1.19).

2: Install the crypto utility from Dela:

git clone https://github.com/dedis/dela.git
cd dela/cli/crypto
go install

Go will install the binaries in $GOPATH/bin, so be sure this it is correctly added to you path (like with export PATH=$PATH:/Users/david/go/bin).

3: Install tmux

4: The authorization are stored in a postgres database. We use Docker-compose to define it easily and allow us to start and stop all the services with a single command. You will then need to install docker compose using the command :

sudo snap install docker

And finish the installation by following the steps depending on your OS.

Setup a simple system with 5 nodes (Linux and MacOS)

If you are using Windows and cannot use tmux, you need to follow the instructions in this section.

1: Only for the first time

cd web/backend
npm install
cp config.env.template config.env
cd ../frontend
npm install
cd ../..

2: In a new window, you will need to start the database:

cd d-voting/web/backend/src
sudo docker-compose up

If you want to stop the services you can use the following command:

sudo docker-compose down

If you want to have a way to check the database you can install pgAdmin.

3: Then run the following script to start and setup the nodes and the web server:

cd d-voting
./runSystems.sh -n 5

This will run 8 terminal sessions. You can navigate by hitting CTRL+B and then S. Use the arrows to select a window.

4: Stop nodes If you want to stop the system, you can use the following command:

(If you forgot, this will be done automatically when you start a new system)

./kill_test.sh

5: Troubleshoot

If while running

./runSystems.sh -n 5

You get this error:

Error: listen EADDRINUSE: address already in use :::5000

then in the file runSystems.sh, replace the line:

tmux send-keys -t $s:{end} "cd web/backend && npm start" C-m

with

tmux send-keys -t $s:{end} "cd web/backend && PORT=4000 npm start" C-m
#or any other available port

And in the web/frontend/src/setupProxy.js file, change :

target: 'http://localhost:5000',

with

target: 'http://localhost:4000',

Setup a simple system with 3 nodes (Windows)

In three different terminal sessions, from the root folder:

pk=adbacd10fdb9822c71025d6d00092b8a4abb5ebcb673d28d863f7c7c5adaddf3

LLVL=info dvoting --config /tmp/node1 start --postinstall \
  --promaddr :9100 --proxyaddr :9080 --proxykey $pk --listen tcp://0.0.0.0:2001 --public //localhost:2001

LLVL=info dvoting --config /tmp/node2 start --postinstall \
  --promaddr :9101 --proxyaddr :9081 --proxykey $pk --listen tcp://0.0.0.0:2002 --public //localhost:2002

LLVL=info dvoting --config /tmp/node3 start --postinstall \
  --promaddr :9102 --proxyaddr :9082 --proxykey $pk --listen tcp://0.0.0.0:2003 --public //localhost:2003

Then you should be able to run the setup script:

./setup.sh

With this other script using tmux you can choose the number of nodes that you want to set up:

./setupnNode.sh -n 3

This script will setup the nodes and services. If you restart do not forget to remove the old state:

rm -rf /tmp/node{1,2,3}

3: Launch the web backend

From a new terminal session, run:

cd web/backend
# if this is the first time, run `npm install` and `cp config.env.template config.env` first
npm start

4: Launch the web frontend

From a new terminal session, run:

cd web/frontend
# if this is the first time, run `npm install` first
REACT_APP_PROXY=http://localhost:9081 REACT_APP_NOMOCK=on npm start

Note that you need to be on EPFL's network to login with Tequila. Additionally, once logged with Tequila, update the redirect URL and replace dvoting-dev.dedis.ch with localhost. Once logged, you can create an form.

Testing

Run the scenario test

If nodes are running and setup.sh or ./runSystem.sh -n 3 --backend false --frontend false (for this test you don't want the user interface so the web components are not needed) has been called, you can run a test scenario:

sk=28912721dfd507e198b31602fb67824856eb5a674c021d49fdccbe52f0234409
LLVL=info dvoting --config /tmp/node1 e-voting scenarioTest --secretkey $sk

You can also run scenario_test.go, by running in the integration folder this command:

NNODES=3 go test -v scenario_test.go

For reference, here is a hex-encoded kyber Ed25519 keypair:

Public key: adbacd10fdb9822c71025d6d00092b8a4abb5ebcb673d28d863f7c7c5adaddf3

Secret key: 28912721dfd507e198b31602fb67824856eb5a674c021d49fdccbe52f0234409

Use the frontend

See README in web/.

Debian deployment

A package registry with debian packages is available at http://apt.dedis.ch. To install a package run the following:

echo "deb http://apt.dedis.ch/ squeeze main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list
wget -q -O- http://apt.dedis.ch/dvoting-release.pgp | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt update
sudo apt install dedis-dvoting

Metrics

A d-Voting node exposes Prometheus metrics. You can start an HTTP server that serves those metrics with:

./dvoting --config /tmp/node1 metrics start --addr 127.0.0.1:9100 --path /metrics

Build info can be added to the binary with the ldflags, at build time. Infos are stored on variables in the root mod.go. For example:

versionFlag="github.com/dedis/d-voting.Version=`git describe --tags`"
timeFlag="github.com/dedis/d-voting.BuildTime=`date +'%d/%m/%y_%H:%M'`"

go build -ldflags="-X $versionFlag -X $timeFlag" ./cli/dvoting

Note that make build will do that for you.

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This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 825377.