Architect · Oct - Nov 2024
Cardano Constitutional Convention Voting App
A secure voting platform for the ratification of the Cardano constitution — governing a ~$40B network — used by 126 delegates from 63 countries during a high-profile live event.
Visit Live Site →The Challenge
The Cardano Constitutional Convention needed a voting system that could do more than collect button clicks. It had to let organizers create and manage polls, allow only the correct representatives to vote, handle delegate and alternate role changes by workshop, keep results hidden until a poll concluded, and ultimately publish final vote records on-chain for public verification. The system had to work flawlessly during a high-profile live event streamed by thousands worldwide, with simultaneous conventions in Buenos Aires and Nairobi.
What I Built
I built a role-based voting application with the full poll lifecycle: organizers can create polls, start and end voting, manage representatives, and switch active voters per workshop. Delegates and alternates authenticate via wallet, cast signed votes, and observers can browse results without authentication. After a poll concludes, vote data is prepared for blockchain publication so results are traceable on-chain. I implemented challenge-based wallet signature verification — not just wallet connection — to confirm participant identity, with server-side validation of the challenge, signature, and stake address derivation.
Key Decisions
I designed the product around trust boundaries first: who can act, when they can act, and what should remain public versus hidden at each phase of the poll lifecycle. This was not a generic admin-and-users application. Delegates, alternates, organizers, active voters, and observers each had distinct responsibilities that needed to be translated into clean UI and defensible backend behavior. I treated testing and observability as part of the delivery scope — bugs in poll state, voting permissions, or results handling would directly undermine trust in the system.
Impact
The application was used by 126 delegates from 63 countries during the live constitutional convention. I coordinated across three organizations — Intersect, IOG, and DQuadrant — and provided in-person walkthroughs and technical support on-site in Nairobi. The voting records were published on-chain, making the ratification of the Cardano constitution a verifiable public record beyond the application itself.