OP-ED: A Missed Opportunity—but a Spark for the Future of Transparent Elections

As we approach another national election this Monday, I can’t help but reflect on the momentum we’ve started as a community—despite the Tokenized Electoral Framework Protocol not being adopted in time.

About the author: Paul Soliman is the Founder, CEO, and CTO of Hacktiv Colab Inc and Co-Founder, Chairman, and CTO of Bayanichain. In 2023, Soliman presented to COMELEC a proposed solution for utilizing blockchain for transparent and secure elections.

At BayaniChain, we proposed a hybrid blockchain voting architecture that balances auditability and data privacy through the use of both public and private ledgers.

• The concept is simple: while the voter experience remains the same—ballots, shading, vote counting machines—the backend would transmit immutable data through local to national nodes, validated by third-party observers.
• Each vote, encoded as a unique NFT, would add a layer of transparency and digital security never before seen in our elections.

This protocol is powered by Prismo, our advanced blockchain layer using homomorphic encryption to protect sensitive voter data.

Recently, we tested Prismo’s Partial Homomorphic Encryption (PHE) for an election use case—demonstrating that privacy-preserving computation is not only feasible but necessary for trustworthy digital governance. (See Photos Below:)

Unfortunately, implementation lacked the necessary institutional support.

But this does not mean failure—it signals the beginning. And this is still a win for CryptoPH.

• The fact that blockchain for elections is now being discussed at a national level is already a major breakthrough.
• We’ve seen government interest, public awareness, and most importantly, the unrelenting push from our community.
• The idea that blockchain is too complex for older generations is a myth. We designed this protocol to be seamless and invisible to the voter—proving that tech can enhance trust without disrupting tradition.

Thank you to BitPinas for covering this initiative and helping amplify the message that blockchain is not just about tokens—it’s about trust, transparency, and transformation.

So while this year’s elections will proceed without blockchain integration, the conversation has begun. And that matters. To the builders, believers, and advocates in the blockchain space—thank you. Our work continues, and the next election might just be the one where trust is not only promised but cryptographically guaranteed.

This Op-Ed is published on BitPinas: A Missed Opportunity—but a Spark for the Future of Transparent Elections

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