Doubts arise over auditor of Russia2024 blockchain voting campaign
Russian exiled anti-Putin activist and former Pussy Riot lawyer Mark Feygin says his new blockchain app made to challenge Putin’s legitimacy was audited by Halborn, but a lack of evidence shows that may not be the case.
Mark Feygin, a Russian human rights activist and former lawyer who represented a Russian feminist protest and performance art group Pussy Riot, is rolling out his new venture dubbed Russia2024 set to challenge the legitimacy of the recent Russian elections.
As per a press release shared with crypto.news, Fegyin wants to launch a “referendum challenging the legitimacy of the Russian elections” in order to allow Russians to “cast votes declaring whether the results are illegitimate or not.”
“The referendum will be the first protest vote to go live on Russia2024. The app was built using Rarimo’s Freedom Tool, a surveillance-free voting solution. Freedom Tool leverages blockchain and zero-knowledge cryptography to ensure citizens can poll, vote and protest without being tracked.”
Rarimo director Kitty Horlick
The initiative website’s FAQ says those interested in participation would have to scan their passports through a mobile app developed for Android and iOS devices (as of press time, the iOS version appears to be delisted from the App Store), reassuring that when scanning “personal data does not leave your phone, ensuring complete confidentiality.”
The press release shared with crypto.news claims that Russia2024 “has been publicly stress-tested via audits and white hackers for two months.”
In a Telegram post on his channel, Mark Feygin implied in early April that Russia2024 was audited by Halborn, an international blockchain securit firm that conducted audits for THORSwap, Polygon, and blockchain projects.
However, crypto.news could not find any indications on Halborn’s website that the firm actually conducted any audits for Russia2024, raising concerns on the app’s transparency and data handling processes.
In his Telegram channel, Feygin refers to a Notion document written in Russian as a proof of Halborn’s audit of Russia2024 with attached PDF file that contains what appears to be a draft audit, but rather for Rarimo itself, rather than the Russia2024 campaign.
The Russia2024 official website also implies that Halborn did in fact audit the application, although it does not explicitly say that the blockchain firm audited Russia2024.
Rarimo’s official website also claims that the project was audited by Halborn and Ambisafe. In an email to crypto.news, Rarilabs director Kitty Horlick confirmed that “Rarimo and Freedom Tool was audited by Halborn. I have no idea why we aren’t listed on the [Halborn] site.” To back up the statement, Horlick also included several links that lead to PDF versions of audits conducted by Halborn on Rarimo’s Github.
Despite Rarimo’s insistence that the project has been audited, thus far there is no proof on X that either Rarimo or Russia2024 were actually audited by Halborn.
