Enhancing transparency, inclusion, and privacy for financial and democratic technologies

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The proposed research program is to study transparency-enhancing technologies with three sub-themes: (1) central bank digital currency (CDBC), (2) decentralized finance (DeFi), and (3) end-to-end verifiable (E2E) voting systems. We seek high impact based on scientific quality, relevance to and enhanced interactions with government and industry, and growth in training capacity. The long-term objective of this program is to produce new technologies that affirm a common set of properties, and to continually analyze other proposed systems (including academic, government, and industry) along the same parameters: Transparency: does the technology demonstrate for itself that it is secure by offering the ability to audit and verify its behaviour? Privacy: does the technology protect personally identifiable information, offer a clear mental model of the information it collects, and obtain meaningful user consent? Inclusion: Does the technology advance the public interest, increase inclusion with disadvantaged groups, and meet accessibility standards for persons with disabilities? Usefullness: Does the technology have a well-thought-out target user group, solve a real problem for them, present an easy-to-use interface, and potentially advance commercial interests? The first sub-theme is central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), which are digital currencies under serious consideration by central banks around the world, including the Bank of Canada (as exemplified by dozens of recent reports on the topic). This research program will examine the design landscape of CBDCs, designs to advance financial inclusion to the unbanked, and balancing the conflicting requirements of user privacy and traceability by law enforcement through cryptographic techniques. Somewhat quietly, entrepreneurs have been reinventing financial services on the public blockchain Ethereum. The second sub-theme 2 examines security evaluation of these tools, increasing financial inclusion, modelling consumer risk for individual DeFi services and compositions, and redesigning these services with privacy-by-design. We have expertise in understanding how low-level blockchain details can filter up and impact the design in adverse ways, and how we can design around these limitations while preserving the financial requirements of the targeted service. Finally our research program will also design new verifiable voting systems, including online voting. While at first glance, this subject might seem disjointed, elections are another balancing act between privacy and third party verification. In fact, the history of applying cryptography to digital cash and to voting starts with the same researcher four decades ago (David Chaum) and the research has been intertwined since with many overlapping primitives and protocols. The program considers questions of accessibility to persons with disabilities and resolving issues of coercion when votes are cast online.