Russia’s Supreme Court Makes ‘Landmark’ Vote With Blockchain System from Kapersky Lab

Russia’s Supreme Court for the first time used a blockchain-based system to record votes in a plenary session on Friday.

According to a press release, judges used the Polys app from Kaspersky Lab to record the results of voting on six issues before the court. The session was the latest to take place as a web video conference as part of Russia’s anti-coronavirus measures.

“This voting system is based on a blockchain and is using transparent encryption,” the press release says, adding that the system received a “high appraisal” from the judges of the Supreme Court in the “landmark” vote. The system has been recommended for use in the next plenary session in July.

The Supreme Court’s press office did not respond to CoinDesk’s request for further information by press time.

Kapersky has been expanding its presence in the blockchain space recently, and is also assisting a project for blockchain-based voting in Moscow. According to a 2017 announcement from the cybersecurity company, Polys is based on Ethereum technology and was developed with the help from Parity, a tech startup founded by the early Ethereum developers.

“Blockchain is increasingly being implemented by a vast number of industries and we believe that decentralising the voting procedure will ensure a fair process and create a high level of trust in the system,” said Parity co-founder Jutta Steiner at the time.

Kaspersky pledged to open source the Polys code back in 2017, however, the project’s GitHub page is still currently empty. Kaspersky did not immediately comment by press time.