BLOCKCHAIN REPORT:CROSS BORDER PAYMENTS& VOTING OCTOBER 22, 2018

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Authors’ details can be found at bottom of their articles

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About Blockchain at McGill

ContentsAbout Blockchain at McGill 1

Cross Border Payments 2 Authors: Michelle Guo, Nikola Nisic, Saad Rasool

Voting & Blockchain 6Authors: Alexandre Monnier, Owain Guinn, Véronique Marquis, Eric Lee

Credits & Contact

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IntroductionBanks and companies depend significantly on cross border payments to generate revenue, but new tech-nology might soon change this. These payments currently represent 20 percent of the total number of transactions in the payments industry and gener-ate 50 percent of transaction-related revenues (1). In 2015, cross border payment flows totaled more than $150 trillion and the payments industry earned over $200 billion in revenue from services provid-ed to payers and payees (2). For decades, banks and companies have employed traditional correspon-dent banking systems such as SWIFT, VISA, and MasterCard as means for international payments. However, the average transaction with one of these banking systems is both expensive and takes three to five business days to process (1). Luckily for cus-tomers, technology, such as mobile banking, dig-ital wallets and e-commerce, have caused radical changes in banks’ products and their systems’ effi-ciencies. The rise of the distributed-ledger system, or Blockchain, upends our understanding of cross border payments and revolutionizes the current system.

Blockchain was developed in 2008 by Satoshi Na-kamoto as a transaction platform for the cryptocur-rency known as Bitcoin. The design of the system removes the need for a central authority while still allowing secure fund transfers. The platform is fast: transactions take minutes, if not seconds. Further-more, records are transparent, permanent, and eas-ily accessible for users. Lastly, the platform costs much less to maintain and operate. These three traits of Blockchain make it an attractive replace-ment for current payment systems. In the next sec-tion, we will look at some examples of companies and banks applying the distributed-ledger system to solve cross border payment problems, and the advantages and disadvantages that come with these solutions.

Ripple One of the leading Blockchain payment systems is Ripple, a US-based public ledger employing XRP as its cryptocurrency. Ripple offers RippleN-et, a blockchain platform that promises custom-ers “the most advanced blockchain technology in global payments...[and] on-demand liquidity in cross-border transactions and operational con-sistency.” Global payments using RippleNet take seconds and have clear fees, payment status, and customer info (3). On October 1, 2018, RippleNet announced that they will be providing on-demand liquidity to financial institutions for cross-border payments using their new product, xRapid. xRap-id eliminates the need for a pre-funded nostro ac-count when executing a cross-border payment and sources liquidity from XRP on exchanges around the world. As a result, cross-border transactions oc-cur in minutes and at a lower cost compared to tra-ditional methods, which take days and incur high foreign exchange fees (4). MercuryFX and Cuallix are two institutions that participated in the xRap-id pilot phase this year, and both companies saw “immediate results in speed and cost savings” (4). According to the CEO and founder of MercuryFX, Alastair Constance, “[MercuryFX is] excited to roll commercial payments out within the quarter. The time to replace slow, expensive payments architec-ture is now because the need for global access to smooth-flowing capital has never been so acute (4).”

JPMorganJP Morgan and the Royal Bank of Canada have been working intensively on developing an Interbank In-formation Network (INN), which now includes over 75 worldwide member banks. These institutions are working on implementing Blockchain technology to create a mutually accessible ledger across banks. This distributed ledger will allow banks to quickly resolve issues such as compliance checks and miss-ing data, both of which can cause payment to be

Cross Border Payments

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held up for weeks (5). This delay is a result of a se-ries of regulations that companies need to process. Banks must form correspondent relationships with their clients and correct missing or faulty informa-tion before approving the transaction. Any mistake can cause inefficiency because banks may need to trace back through the chain to find a solution. The INN eliminates this issue altogether by allowing the information to be accessed instantly and enabling secure messaging between different institutions. Transactions processed through the INN are ex-pected to increase dramatically as the number of member banks increases. JP Morgan plans to con-tinue expanding operations and eventually offer payment in non-US currencies (5).

Goldman Sachs This September, Goldman Sachs led the investment round for the Blockchain startup Veem. The com-pany specializes in cross-border business payments by implementing a ‘multi-rail’ payment platform. This system combines traditional SWIFT technol-ogy with digitized Blockchain technology to find the most practical path for each transfer. Veem has been able to solve the issues businesses face with traditional wire transfers, such as banks consistent-ly being charged fees and loose payments and wire transfers lacking the transparency needed to ensure reliability and safety (6). Goldman Sachs, along with Google Ventures, successfully raised $25 million for Veem in their most recent funding round. This fundraising success represents a huge advancement for the startup, which has already seen a growing customer base of 18,000 in March 2017 to 80,000 across 96 countries 18 months later (6).

Italian, Argentinian, Facebook, and IBM Cross Border Cryptocurrencies14 Italian banks recently underwent a four month test period of R3’s Corda Enterprise Blockchain plat-form. One of those banks was Intesa Sanpaolo, the second largest bank in Italy. They’ve implemented what R3 calls a “Blockchain Application Firewall,” which boasts an ecosystem through which large scale enterprise data centers can interact securely

with any other node in the world while maintaining privacy and confidentiality between those nodes. They intend to use the technology to facilitate in-terbank reconciliations with improved transaction speed, transparency, and auditability (7). In Argentina, Banco Masventas (BMV) has taken Blockchain adoption a step further and partnered with Bitex to provide their customers with the op-tion of implementing Bitcoin-powered internation-al transactions. To avoid confusion and a customer service call center overload, BMV claims their cus-tomers “don’t touch” and “don’t see” the Bitcoin at all. If the customer chooses to send their payment using Bitcoin, BMV simply uses Bitex as the pro-vider and the customer enjoys reduced fees and a faster transaction (8).

Aside from financial institutions, large tech com-panies are developing systems for cross-border payment using cryptocurrencies. Even Facebook, which has become a convenient marketplace for peer-to-peer goods and services, has a team dedi-cated to researching Blockchain and how it can be used for cross-border transactions amongst its 2 billion users (9). IBM has also released Blockchain World Wire, which is a “financial rail that can simul-taneously clear and settle cross-border payments in near real-time” (10).

SWIFT gpi As a Counter Strategy for BlockchainTo counteract the rapid development of Blockchain in cross border payments, SWIFT developed Glob-al Payments Innovation, or gpi, a “cloud solution [that] connects all [clients] in the payment chain to improve the speed, transparency, and traceability of payments” (11). The chart below shows a direct comparison between Blockchain and gpi (11):To deliver transparency and traceability, SWIFT has introduced the SWIFT gpi Tracker. This pay-ment tracker acts like a shipping tracker but for payments (11) and consists of a cloud-based data-base that provides visibility of the payment trans-action from start to finish. SWIFT gpi Tracker also uses the unique end-to-end transaction reference

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(UETR), allowing each party in the payment chain to confirm the payment’s position and identify the status of the payment in the process (11). In June 2017, 6 leading Swiss banks stated their support for SWIFT GPI in an open letter and urged other fi-nancial institutions to use this system. Today, more than 30 banks worldwide have adopted SWIFT gpi (11). See Table 1 on the right.

Advantage of Using Blockchain for Cross-Border PaymentsWe outline the differences between traditional cross border payment methods and Blockchain below. For more information on the cost associated with using Blockchain, RippleNet has a dynamic chart that al-lows financial institutions to input the number of transactions per year and annual transaction value to see the difference between their current method and RippleNet’s technology (12). See Table 2.

Disadvantages of BlockchainDespite the many advantages of Blockchain dis-cussed thus far, there are still a few notable disad-vantages to our current distributed ledger technol-ogy (DLT). Acceptance by banks and companies remains the biggest disadvantage. Although banks and companies are looking into developing DLT, they are slow to adapt and some refuse to adapt at all. According to David Schwartz, the chief cryptog-rapher, banks have acknowledged the potential of Blockchain but believe that the nascent technology is still not entirely capable of catering to their huge needs (13). A second disadvantage of Blockchain is the vast amount of money at stake. According to the 2015 McKinsey Payment Report, the payments industry earned over $200 billion in revenue from cross border payment services (2). If DLT does indeed replace our current payment system, this $200 billion earned in revenue will disappear. The last disadvantage we will discuss here is the lack of governmental approval and regulations for Block-chain. China and Russia have passed legislations that make bank’s use of cryptocurrencies illegal (2). Cryptocurrency is yet to be recognized as a curren-cy that is protected by any legislations.

Table 1 - GPI vs. Blockchain

GPI Blockchain

Speed Funds available the same-day if received before the bank’s cut-off time

Funds available within minutes

Cost Transparent fees for both deductions and exchange rates

Transparent fees at a very low cost

Tracking End-to-end pay-ment tracking and confirmation via the cloud and communication

Unique seri-al number to check each payment

Records Transmission of full and unaltered remittance infor-mation eases the reconciliation of payments

Permanent, unchangeable, and easy to access

Table 2 - Traditional Banking vs. Blockchain

ConclusionDistributed ledger technology, or Blockchain, has lots of interest from banks and companies. Some fi-nancial institutions are already working with Block-chain providers to provide their customers with

Traditional Banking Blockchain Cost High Approx. half

of traditional banking costs

Speed 3 to 5 business days Within minutes

Security Depends on the security system

Very secure

Records Changeable Permanent and difficult to change

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fast and secure transaction services while some are hesitant. Despite the latter, the scale is tipping in favor of Blockchain. As more people are drawn to the speed and reliability of Blockchain, pressure mounts on the current payment system to develop faster and more secure ways for remittance. The in-centive to change will push banks and companies to redefine their international network and revamp current payment system. Inevitably, this will lead to a reduced cost and faster transaction time in cross border payments.

About the Authors

Citations1. Denecker, Olivier, et al. “Rethinking Corre-

spondent Banking.” McKinsey on Payments, vol. 9, no. 23, June 2016.

2. Higginson, Matt. “How Blockchain Could Disrupt Cross-Border Payments.” The Clearing House, Banking Perspectives.

3. Ripple website4. “Ripple Highlights Record Year, XRapid

Now Commercially Available.” Ripple In-sight, 1 Oct. 2018.

5. Noonan, Laura. “JPMorgan Widens Block-chain Payments to More than 75 Banks.” Financial Times, 25 Sept. 2018.

6. “Goldman Invests in Blockchain-Based Cross-Border Payments Startup Veem.” Finextra, 27 Sept. 2018.

7. Hudli, Aditi. “Italian Bank Consortium Trials Interbank Transfers on R3’s Corda.” Coindesk, 5 Oct. 2018.

8. Roh, Chelsea. “Bitcoin Cross-Border Pay-ments Now Made in Argentina.” Crypto-slate, 22 May 2018.

9. “Report: Facebook Is Considering Its Own Cryptocurrency for Cross-Border Pay-ments.” The Daily Hodl, 11 May 2018.

10. IBM Blockchain World-Wide“Deutsche Bank Joins the Group of 30 Banks Actively Using SWIFT Gpi.” SWIFT, 4 Apr. 2018.

11. RippleNet for banks12. Vaskevicius, Andrius. “Banks Unlikely to

Use Blockchain for Cross-Border Payments Anytime Soon, Says Ripple Chief Officer.” Toshi Times, June 2018.

Michelle GuoMicroeconomic Research Analyst

Michelle is a fourth year Pharma-cology undergraduate student at McGill University. Upon discover-ing Blockchain this summer, she

wanted to explore more and better understand Block-chain’s impact in both microeconomic and macroeco-nomic levels.

Nikola NisicBlockchain Research Analyst

Nick is in his final year at McGill studying Computer Science and Biology. He spent the past sum-mer working at a fiat-crypto ex-

change in Vancouver and is currently a research ana-lyst for Blockchain At McGill.

Saad RasoolMacroeconomic Research Analyst

Saad is in his third year at McGill, studying Economics with minors in Finance and Computer Sci-ence. He has a keen interest in the

applications of blockchain technology and is part of the Research Team for Blockchain at McGill.

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IntroductionWith allegations that Russia hacked the United States’ 2016 presidential election in the public at-tention sphere, experts from various academic and professional fields have come together to protect a central tenet of Wwestern society: democracy. As the state’s role in an individual’s life continues to grow and wealth becomes increasingly concentrat-ed in a small fraction of the population, it is easy to understand the rise of distrust and paranoia in governments, and consequently, the security of our voting systems. Unfortunately, the concerns extend beyond trust and security. As industrialized Western states struggle to inspire citizens to vote, voter turn-out, especially youth voter turnout, is at an all-time low. In the age of technology, many find it absurd that one must physically go to the polls to vote and argue that online voting would boost voter turn-out, thus strengthening the democratic principle of representation for the many. Although Estonia and some local governments in Switzerland have imple-mented online voting, recent cybersecurity threats and warnings from cybersecurity experts have led to few advancements in digitized elections overall. To successfully implement secure online voting, the system requires three simultaneous capabili-ties: anonymity, auditability, and immutability. Be-cause these capabilities are all distinctive features of distributed ledger technology (DLT), many have proposed Blockchain voting as the solution to in-creasing voter turnout and securing our elections. For those readers unfamiliar with Blockchain tech-nology, search up Ever wonder how Bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies) actually work on YouTube by 3Blue1Brown, which explains the basics of how Blockchain works.

Blockchain voting successfully solves some of the distrust related to online voting because securi-ty features like end-to-end (E2E) encryption are built into all internet voting platforms. Most people mostly unfamiliar with Blockchain have probably

heard of only public chains, which include Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin. In a public chain, anyone can download the code and run it from a node to start validating transactions. Increased security comes from the maximization of participants ver-ifying transactions. However, the nature of public chains makes it nonsensical for online voting when we think about what our definitions and ideals for voting and democracy are. Voting requires everyone to have one vote (usually through a token system) by getting permissions. This is why voting must be done on private or “permissioned” blockchains. Governments must check voter eligibility and regis-tration and then be able to match votes to this infor-mation for auditing and counting purposes. Private chains, on the other hand, do not offer the decen-tralization of authority that public chains do. Often led by a centralized institution, private chains can restrict access and network permissions, so it comes as no surprise that prominent Blockchain-based voting startups use a type of private chain called a consortium chain to run their algorithms. In con-sortium chains, a group of institutions, groups, or people lead the rest of the group or miners and can vary in size. In an online election, the process would look something like this: multiple parties, interest groups, and election officials would get supervising ability and a certain threshold of votes would be re-quired for data to get stored on the block.

Case Studies

West Virginia Uses Blockchain for Overseas Military Voting

Blockchain voting has already been successfully im-plemented in many elections around the world. In May 2018, West Virginia used Blockchain to record and secure oversea absentee votes in the state’s primary senate election. Voatz, a Blockchain vot-ing startup, provided absentee ballots for military members deployed overseas at the time of the elec-

Voting & Blockchains

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tion. Voatz stated that there have been concerns in the past about votes cast by overseas citizens not being counted in time. Voatz believes that their new system both solves this issue and also provides extra security to the voting system using facial recogni-tion, which is then used to verify the voter’s identity (2). The algorithm compares this biometric scan to the person’s government ID before allowing them to vote. Once their ballot is cast, their vote is en-tered into a block and recorded in Voatz’s private Blockchain. To verify votes on this chain, the com-pany employs between 4 and 16 “nodes,” which work together to ensure that no inconsistencies or mistakes are recorded.

As with any new system, security concerns have aris-en from Voatz’s program. Since the blockchain rests on the security of only eight computer nodes, the potential for a 51% attack is quite high. A 51% attack is when 51% or more of the computing power is tak-en over, allowing hackers to falsify, verify, or change information recorded on the Blockchain. Since Voatz is a private chain, and has only 16 privately controlled nodes, falsifying votes can be achieved by hacking just over half of these nodes (3). In larg-er Blockchains, those that are public, such as those behind Bitcoin or Ethereum, the danger of 51% is much lower since they are verified by tens of thou-sands of other users. Naturally, Voatz assures their users that they protect their system against 51% at-tacks by keeping votes in a digital box stored in 16 different places. Therefore, the hacker would have to hack into every single box to get access to any information. If such blockchains were implement-ed on larger scales, this security flaw would need to be addressed. Nevertheless, four audits have prov-en that there were no security breaches during the West Virginia primary voting, so there is hope for general acceptance of Blockchain voting technolo-gy in the future (4).

Estonia’s “e-government”

In 2001, Estonians elected a coalition government that saw the Internet as a solution to many govern-

mental and public sector problems. Today, a mix of online technologies and innovations have provided Estonia with a fully functioning e-residency and e-governance system that saves Estonia millions of Euros a year. Every Estonian has a mandatory ID card equipped with smart card capability, allow-ing citizens to digitally sign binding documents. As a result, Estonia has been able to make 99% of its services online and available 24/7, excluding only marriage, divorce, and real estate proceedings. Fur-thermore, this smart card capability is particularly helpful for Blockchain governance projects because securing the identification of millions of people is any large Blockchain project’s largest obstacle. Es-tonia’s digital infrastructure also gives its citizens the opportunity to vote online and save working time. Case in point? 30% of Estonians voting online for their last elections saved 11,000 working days alone (5).

Estonia’s “e-residency” system allows anyone in the world to become a virtual resident of Estonia. Esto-nian residency does not apply for physical travel but it does allow people from around the world to open or conduct business in Estonia via the Internet. This then allows Estonia to make a large amount of mon-ey that is involved in its internet services taxable, as well as foster entrepreneurship and investment opportunities (6). NASDAQ took advantage of Esto-nia’s e-residency program to introduce Blockchain voting after repeated issues with low stakeholder participation in votes. Their stakeholder voting tri-al was extremely successful, though it is important to note that the obstacles for applications such as stakeholder voting are much less difficult to over-come compared to those for governmental elec-tions.

Agora Secures Regional Vote Tally Sierra Leone

On March 8th, 2018, Blockchain company Agora claimed that Sierra Leone had held its first Block-chain-based election. It would have been a substan-tial change to how nations view blockchain and vot-ing had it been true. According to Agora, Sierra

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Leone’s presidential elections used the company’s platform in the voting process such as the use of a blockchain-based database and the recording of votes in the election. However, controversy arose when Sierra Leone’s National Electoral Commis-sion (NEC) responded to Agora’s claims by stating that the government had not used Blockchain tech-nology in the election.Agora and the NEC later re-vealed that Agora had been only a minor observer in the voting process. The government stated that Agora had only been involved in verifying votes in certain regions with that of the national count. To their success, Agora was able to use their Block-chain technology to successfully match the official vote. As a result, the company was able to declare that their implementation of Blockchain technol-ogy into Sierra Leone’s election was a success and had begun paving the way for future Blockchain voting (8). Despite the controversy of the event, which stemmed from miswording by Agora and the technology not being a part of the official voting process, the success of the technology accurately matching the conventional voting brings optimism for the future use of blockchain in our elections (even if it is just securing conventional counts).Zug proves success of Blockchain voting in local government.

The city of Zug is currently trying to promote its status as a “capital of Blockchain” by becoming Switzerland’s first municipality to collect votes using Blockchain technology. The technology ac-counts for votes using a digital identification system that works on mobile devices, so citizens can easily cast their votes right on their phones (9). However, the small sample size ofBlockchain-voting in this election run notB continues to expand their use of Blockchain technology, they are considering accep-tance of cryptocurrencies as payment and having Blockchain-friendly regulations for banks and com-panies (9).

Our Verdict

Experts disagree on how long it will take to fix the

remaining issues and turn Blockchain voting into a reality, with others even saying Blockchain may not even be “the” solution to online voting, simply emphasizing an increase in security and proposing to keep current methods due to the unknowns of hacks. The main argument for the internet/block-chain voting skeptics is that when it comes to vot-ing and our democratic system, we have to be more than sure that a security breach cannot possibly oc-cur before we can use it.

Blockchain voting technology most often uses con-sortium or private chains, which have their own vul-nerabilities. While a 51% attack cannot occur simply from outside parties holding more mining power on the network, undetected malware or hacks to the central nodes can still compromise the results. This risk applies to every type of internet or remote vot-ing system due to this same threat being relevant for any voting device, whether it’s a phone, laptop, or tablet. Even though votes are immutable, skeptics of Blockchain voting say that malware might show a user a vote different from their own. Furthermore-penetrative and Denial of Service (DoS) attacks on areOne such critic of Blockchain voting is Michigan professor Alex Halderman, who notoriously hacked a D.C. internet voting trial for a week undetected and calls Blockchain a silver bullet for online elec-tions “hype”, explaining that cybersecurity is far from being 100% sure of anything, especially find-ing an unhackable voting process(10). Many people in favor of Blockchain voting use Estonia to prove online voting can work successfully, but a much higher profile election like a presidential election in a G7 country conducted on the Blockchain would be a much larger target for hackers worldwide than Estonia’s parliamentary elections. Finally, s men-tioned earlier, small Blockchains such as Voatz’s can suffer an attack from malware infecting just half of the nodes.

Blockchain certainly solves the problem of immu-tability, anonymity, and auditability; however, skep-tics disagree on whether auditing by following the vote to the ledger (manually checking that your

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vote is counted in the total) satisfies the conditions for auditability because many say that auditing re-quires credible paper receipts (11). The two main issues facing Blockchain voting is its registration and security capabilities rather than whether or not Blockchain can accurately reflect results. The numbers of people participating in the pilot proj-ects that have worked were small enough to make collecting quality biometric info from participants logistically possible. However, at a larger scale, any verification using IDs, license numbers, or Social Security numbers would exacerbate identity theft and collecting biometric data would be a logistical nightmare. Using Face ID to verify voters for reg-istration is the most common technology used in Blockchain voting apps but is still unpredictable and prone to mistakes, especially among minorities. While Brazil has claimed they want to use Block-chain voting in the next election, getting people to verify themselves will prove to be a daunting task (12)(13).

While we think Blockchain solves many of the ob-stacles facing internet voting, we agree that elec-tion processes should not be changed if fraud and interference are major risks. Internet voting fac-es many security obstacles, and investments favor money-making and optimal financial solutions rather than securing democracy. Furthermore, the bureaucracy of government legislation means that tech solutions are not addressed quickly enough to prevent the consequences of unpredictable tech-nology. Nevertheless, there are two reasons to re-main optimistic about the future of Blockchain voting. The first is that many, if not most, projects and startups in Blockchain voting are Open Source and follow the Open Data philosophy, so develop-ers around the world can constantly work on im-proving the code. The second is US-based financial services company Broadridge’s $95M investment into distributed ledger technologies for proxy vot-ing (14). The CEO of Votem, Pete Martin, claims Blockchain voting is two years away from large-scale implementation (15). We believe that Block-chain voting is ready right now for stockholder

meeting proxy votes, student group elections, and within political parties (for leadership most likely). There are also creative uses of blockchain voting technology that we have seen, such as the platform created by VotoSocial to check vote tallies in the notoriously questionable Honduras elections. Citi-zens can now effectively audit possible fraudulent elections whether the issue is voter fraud or elec-toral fraud (16). Any group that has the participants’ information readily available or accessible, is small enough to easily audit, and will not be a hacker’s tar-get should definitely use Blockchain to make their elections trustless.

There are many projects and startups working on making Blockchain voting a reality. Here are a few that caught our eye: - Voatz - Votem - Agora - FollowMyVote - Democracy Earth Foundation - Democracyos.org - Milvum - VotoSocial - Milvum

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About the Authors Sources1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-

BC-nXj3Ng4&t=116s2. https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/

west-virginia-offer-blockchain-voting-op-tions-midterms/

3. https://voatz.com/faq.html4. https://money.cnn.com/2018/08/06/tech-

nology/mobile-voting-west-virginia-voatz/index.html

5. https://e-estonia.com/solutions/e-gover-nance/i-voting/

6. https://www.coindesk.com/nasdaq-de-clares-blockchain-voting-trial-a-success/

7. https://twitter.com/NECsa-lone?ref_src=twsrc%5Etf-w%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwter-m%5E975455216618360835&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ffuturism.com%2Fsierra-leone-election-block-chain-agora

8. https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/sier-ra-leone-and-blockchain-election-wasnt

9. http://fortune.com/2018/07/03/block-chain-voting-trial-zug/

10. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti-cles/2018-08-10/is-blockchain-technolo-gy-the-future-of-voting

11. https://www.verifiedvoting.org/jefferson_themythof_secure_blockchainvoting/

12. https://www.zdnet.com/article/is-block-chain-voting-on-the-way/

13. https://www.zdnet.com/article/could-block-chain-be-the-missing-link-in-electronic-voting/

14. https://www.coindesk.com/broadridge-in-vesting-blockchain-voting/

15. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2018/05/30/how-block-chain-could-improve-election-transparen-cy/

16. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/poi3.86

Alexandre MonnierPolicy Research Coordinator

I am a U3 student at McGill Uni-versity double majoring in Po-litical Science and Economics. I am Blockchain at McGill’s Policy

Research Coordinator and focus on the intersection of tech, law, and governance.

Owain GuinnPolicy Research Analyst

I am a second year U2 student at McGill University majoring in history and minoring in political science. I am a Policy Research

Analyst at Blockchain at McGill, and focus on block-chains application in law and politics.

Eric LeeMicroeconomic Research Analyst

I am a second year U2 student at McGill University pursuing a Joint Honours in Economics and Finance. I am an Economic

Research Analyst at Blockchain at McGill, and I am focused on the applications of blockchain in terms of commerce.

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Disclaimer: This document has been prepared for informational purposes only and may be subject to change without notice. The information contained herein does not constitute investment or financial advice. Information contained in this document has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but Blockchain at McGill makes no claims to its accuracy and completeness. Readers should obtain independent opinions on all information provided in this document. Copyright © 2018 by Blockchain at McGIll