VIDEO: Blockchain and Choice | Jake Yocom-Piatt

In the middle of election week in the US, it felt appropriate to look at how technology can potentially affect the process going forward.

Today we vote with pen and paper in most states. “Coming home to vote” is a recurring phrase in my native Ireland, where people have to travel back to their various constituencies to vote. It definitely feels like one of the last remaining industries that has completely resisted the digital revolution of the last few decades.

On the latest episode of the Invezz podcast, I sit down with Jake Yocom-Piatt. He is a project manager at Decred, which recently made headlines for being used by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (known as Lula) to combat misinformation and fake news during his campaign.

This was interesting, given that the Brazilian election was decided by a razor-thin margin. Controversy was feared in the wake of the result, while disinformation was a hot topic before the vote.

In what was quite a novel turn of events, Lula put political documents on the blockchain to help combat misinformation. We chatted about what exactly this meant on the show, and how it helped.

But what does blockchain actually solve here? By putting policy documents on the chain, they can be verified. But can non-blockchain platforms also be used to achieve this? This was one of the main questions I had, as it is often difficult in the cryptocurrency space to determine what the utility of a project is.

Of course, this episode was recorded amidst chaos in the cryptocurrency markets. One of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, FTX, is insolvent – something that developed while we were recording.

We talk about how this latest blow to the reputation of crypto could affect initiatives like this going forward. Who is going to want to put their necks on the line and embrace crypto when everything keeps collapsing around it?

But there is also a deeper discussion here about a topic that has become very alive in the last 10 years: misinformation and electoral justice. Could blockchain be a way to help combat some of the problems, or is it just a gimmick?

Going one step further, is it a world where everyone votes from their smartphone? Can the blockchain be used to verify and instantly calibrate results? Or is this just a dream?

This and more in this week’s episode.

Continue the conversation on Twitter with @InvezzPortal, @DanniiAshmore and @decredproject. Or visit for more information.

Thanks for listening, follow us and subscribe here: