I answered this more thoroughly further up, but to put it concisely, NFTs could revolutionize democracy by creating verifiable, tamper-proof systems for identity, voting, and governance. They could enable self-sovereign digital IDs for secure elections, transparent public ledgers that make every ballot and budget auditable, and non-transferable governance tokens that let citizens participate directly in decision-making. Even civic assets could exist as shared NFTs, turning taxpayers into actual stakeholders in their communities. In essence, NFTs could shift democracy from trust in authority to trust in transparency.
No. NFTs are traceable, and key to democratic elections is the anonymity of the vote.
You could screw democracy by relying on this. You cannot anonymise NFTs, because the traceability is a key and defining feature of all things blockchain.
I understand where you’re coming from, but millions this last US election cycle don’t even know if their vote was counted. Transparent voting is the only way to restore confidence in the democratic process and ensure that there’s no tampering on either side.
You are so off. “Transparent Voting” is a tool for autocrats and dictators to pressure people’s votes and punish dissidents.
In Germany, everyone can volunteer as an election worker, votes get counted multiple times etc. We don’t have a problem with lacking confidence in this regard.
What I’m describing isn’t transparency of individual votes, but of systems: a public, auditable record that proves votes were counted correctly without exposing identities.
The goal isn’t to replace systems like Germany’s, but to extend trust where it’s currently broken. Places where citizens can’t volunteer, ballots disappear, or results are unverifiable. It’s not about seeing into votes; it’s about ensuring no one can alter them unseen.
Places where citizens can’t volunteer, ballots disappear, or results are unverifiable.
But NFTs are not going to improve trust in these systems. I don’t know exactly how you picture NFT implementation in election systems, but how I see it the feature that would help like this is the reason it cannot work: the traceability. If you want to ensure that each vote is only used once and counted all the way to the end, you need to link it to indiciduals.
Also, there are easier ways to raise trust in elections. Allow foreign oversight. Allow the populace to volunteer and count etc.
Fair points, and I agree that transparency without privacy is surveillance, not democracy. The version I’m describing wouldn’t track who voted but would use zero-knowledge proofs or one-time identity tokens to confirm that each verified citizen voted once without revealing which vote is theirs. It’s about verifiable integrity rather than traceability.
You’re also right that civic oversight and volunteer counting are the gold standard. That’s how it should work. The technology becomes relevant only where that level of trust or participation isn’t possible. In healthy democracies, NFTs wouldn’t replace human oversight; they’d simply add another layer of cryptographic assurance that no one upstream can quietly change the math.
Who would implement those systems? The same people who do not implement civil oversight and volunteer election work. Why would the same people who block the implementation of the “gold standard” implement your system and why would you trust them with not tampering an electronic system?
They wouldn’t have to. The idea is that such a system wouldn’t rely on any single government to implement or control it. The protocol itself would be public, open source, and globally auditable. Anyone could verify the math, not just the people in power. If an administration tried to tamper with it, that manipulation would be visible to everyone, instantly. The goal isn’t to give them another tool to manage; it’s to make tampering technically impossible rather than politically discouraged.
I answered this more thoroughly further up, but to put it concisely, NFTs could revolutionize democracy by creating verifiable, tamper-proof systems for identity, voting, and governance. They could enable self-sovereign digital IDs for secure elections, transparent public ledgers that make every ballot and budget auditable, and non-transferable governance tokens that let citizens participate directly in decision-making. Even civic assets could exist as shared NFTs, turning taxpayers into actual stakeholders in their communities. In essence, NFTs could shift democracy from trust in authority to trust in transparency.
No. NFTs are traceable, and key to democratic elections is the anonymity of the vote.
You could screw democracy by relying on this. You cannot anonymise NFTs, because the traceability is a key and defining feature of all things blockchain.
I understand where you’re coming from, but millions this last US election cycle don’t even know if their vote was counted. Transparent voting is the only way to restore confidence in the democratic process and ensure that there’s no tampering on either side.
You are so off. “Transparent Voting” is a tool for autocrats and dictators to pressure people’s votes and punish dissidents.
In Germany, everyone can volunteer as an election worker, votes get counted multiple times etc. We don’t have a problem with lacking confidence in this regard.
If you want “transparent voting”, ask Russia.
What I’m describing isn’t transparency of individual votes, but of systems: a public, auditable record that proves votes were counted correctly without exposing identities.
The goal isn’t to replace systems like Germany’s, but to extend trust where it’s currently broken. Places where citizens can’t volunteer, ballots disappear, or results are unverifiable. It’s not about seeing into votes; it’s about ensuring no one can alter them unseen.
But NFTs are not going to improve trust in these systems. I don’t know exactly how you picture NFT implementation in election systems, but how I see it the feature that would help like this is the reason it cannot work: the traceability. If you want to ensure that each vote is only used once and counted all the way to the end, you need to link it to indiciduals.
Also, there are easier ways to raise trust in elections. Allow foreign oversight. Allow the populace to volunteer and count etc.
Fair points, and I agree that transparency without privacy is surveillance, not democracy. The version I’m describing wouldn’t track who voted but would use zero-knowledge proofs or one-time identity tokens to confirm that each verified citizen voted once without revealing which vote is theirs. It’s about verifiable integrity rather than traceability.
You’re also right that civic oversight and volunteer counting are the gold standard. That’s how it should work. The technology becomes relevant only where that level of trust or participation isn’t possible. In healthy democracies, NFTs wouldn’t replace human oversight; they’d simply add another layer of cryptographic assurance that no one upstream can quietly change the math.
Who would implement those systems? The same people who do not implement civil oversight and volunteer election work. Why would the same people who block the implementation of the “gold standard” implement your system and why would you trust them with not tampering an electronic system?
They wouldn’t have to. The idea is that such a system wouldn’t rely on any single government to implement or control it. The protocol itself would be public, open source, and globally auditable. Anyone could verify the math, not just the people in power. If an administration tried to tamper with it, that manipulation would be visible to everyone, instantly. The goal isn’t to give them another tool to manage; it’s to make tampering technically impossible rather than politically discouraged.