Back in 2018, we started Vocdoni after identifying some flaws in the way people vote. Traditional paper ballots can be slow to count, hard to audit, and vulnerable to tampering. Onchain voting solves some of those issues but adds new ones, such as high fees, poor privacy, vote buying, “follow-the-crowd” pressure, and limits on how many voters it can handle.

Inspired by how Bitcoin and Ethereum opened finance to anyone with an internet connection, we wondered: why not do the same for democracy? Our first answer was a blockchain designed for voting. Since then, it has powered hundreds of elections for city councils, sports clubs, DAOs, political parties, and more.

But technology never stands still. New cryptographic tools now let us protect privacy and scale to millions of voters at once. So we decided to begin again, designing a voting protocol from scratch that could become the global gold standard for secure, private, and affordable voting.

DAVINCI voting protocol [Decentralized Autonomous Vote Integrity Network with Cryptographic Inference], swaps slow paper counts and pricey blockchain fees for a system that is permissionless, tamper-proof, private, and cheap enough for anyone to use. In short: Decentralized Autonomous keeps the network open, Vote Integrity Network proves every step, and Cryptographic Inference shields each ballot and the final tally.

• Open to all, owned by none. DAVINCI runs on public Ethereum contracts and a decentralized network of Sequencers, so no government or company can pause or censor an election.

• Gasless for voters. Fees are pooled and paid once per batch, letting citizens cast a ballot without spending a cent.

• Unstoppable network. Any operator can step in as a Sequencer (the actor that verifies and aggregate ballots) simply by staking tokens as collateral, keeping the system live even if some nodes disappear. On correct behavior, Sequencers are rewarded.

• End-to-end auditability. Every ballot, tally, and rule lives in an Ethereum smart contract; anyone can replay the proofs to confirm the result.

• Zero-knowledge rollups for scale. Millions of votes are bundled off-chain, then a tiny zk-proof is posted on-chain, cutting costs while keeping the same security.

• Fits any voting style. Ranked-choice, quadratic, single-transferable or any other voting method are possible. DAVINCI’s ballot format is schema-free, so organisers pick the rules that suit them.

• Threshold homomorphic encryption. Every vote is sealed with a key that has been split among several independent tellers, so no single party can view or change a ballot. When the poll closes, only a preset minimum of Sequencers joining their key fragments can unlock the final, aggregated tally—never the individual choices.

• Receipt-free and anti-coercion. Ballots are re-encrypted, voters can silently overwrite their own vote, and private “nullifiers” stop proof-of-vote screenshots—making bribery or intimidation pointless.

• Anonymity without bias.  Every ballot is encrypted and unlikable to its author, so no one can trace a choice back to a person—protecting privacy and shielding voters from pressure or retaliation.

DAVINCI is a zk-SNARK–based state machine run by a decentralized network of offchain Sequencers. At its core are four chained circuits: each one verifies the proof produced by the previous step, then appends its own. Because zk-SNARKs are recursive and succinct, every ballot, rule, and tally ultimately collapses into a single, tiny proof that Ethereum can verify in milliseconds.

1. Ballot Circuit — rule-compliant encryption The voter encrypts their choices with threshold El Gamal and proves, in zero knowledge, that the ballot follows the election rules (e.g., “pick up to two of five”).

2. Eligibility Circuit — signature + Merkle proof A Sequencer proves the voter is authorized by checking an ECDSA signature and a Merkle proof against the published voter list.

3. Aggregation Circuit — many votes, one proof Up to N ballots, are compressed into a single zk-SNARK. Proof size stays almost constant, so millions of votes can ride to Ethereum for the price of one.

4. Tally Circuit — state update The aggregated ciphertexts are homomorphically added to the encrypted tally, and a new state root is proven correct, while embedding the earlier aggregation proof to keep the chain intact.

When the fourth circuit finishes, the final recursive proof (just a few hundred bytes) is sent to an Ethereum smart contract. If the verifier accepts it, the whole election batch becomes immutable; if not, it is rejected. The next Sequencer will start its batch processing starting from the one settled on Ethereum.

Vocdoni is kickstarting the design and development of DAVINCI as a permissionless and unstoppable protocol powered by a native token. Organizers use the token to launch elections, while sequencers stake it as collateral and earn rewards for processing votes. Casting a vote is always free, ensuring that participation remains open and accessible to all.

The protocol is designed to split execution from verification: elections are defined on Ethereum while votes are cast and aggregated offchain by the decentralized network of sequencers, and only verified cryptographic proofs are committed onchain. The result is a system that’s transparent, secure, and scalable by design.

We’ll be running token pre-sales throughout 2025. If you're interested in joining early, reach out to [email protected] to be whitelisted and stay informed.

Vocdoni’s $1 million funding round attracted support from key figures in the blockchain ecosystem, including Jordi Baylina and members from organizations like Ethereum Foundation, Polygon, OpenZeppelin, Giveth and Privado ID.

Their involvement isn't just financial, it signals a need for a better governance technology and their trust in us to lead it.

• June 2025: Public testnet launch with a simple UI + start of token presales

• November 2025: Security audits

• December 2025: Mainnet launch and Token Generation Event

• January 2026: Starts the migration of organizations using Vocdoni Protocol to DAVINCI

📝 Join the waitlist here to stay informed about the upcoming public testnet in June. Early participants will be able to try the protocol, run a sequencer, and may receive exclusive perks for their engagement.