Two DSU students presented blockchain research at state capitol
April 9, 2025
Two Dakota State University students presented their research project, “Evaluating the feasibility of blockchain technology for secure voting system: a systemic mapping,” at the state capitol earlier this semester.
Dijesh Shrestha and Shishir Poudel are both international students majoring in computer science. They are from Nepal, a country relatively new to democratic values, so they were interested in exploring whether blockchain-based voting systems could provide a secure voting system.
“Research is one of the best ways to explore a field you want to learn more about,” Poudel said.
Shrestha shared that vote tampering and voter fraud have previously occurred in their home country, so he was interested in exploring a secure solution through blockchain.
The team felt that the decentralization and immutable ledger of blockchain might present a solution to providing transparency, security, and enhancing trust in the voting process.
“We explored different papers related to blockchain technology and blockchain technology used for voting systems and other applications,” Poudel said.
During the development portion of the research, Shrestha and Poudel met with their advisor, Dr. Yenling Chang, associate professor in the College of Business & Information Systems, on a weekly basis to receive guidance and feedback on their findings.
Through their research, they found that the application of blockchain in voting systems is still in the development phase, which can present challenges with scalability and potential future threats such as quantum computing attacks.
However, they found positive instances of blockchain-based voting in controlled, small-scale settings, like boardrooms. They also found use cases in Switzerland and Estonia. This shows promise that in the future the technology could provide security and transparency in voting systems.
When presenting their findings at the South Dakota State Capitol, several representatives were interested in learning more about blockchain voting systems, Poudel said. This helped them realize the impact of their work.
“It motivated us to continue work on our project,” Shrestha said. They also found that watching bills being discussed in the capitol was very exciting to witness in real life.
They also shared their findings during Research Week at Dakota State and were invited to present at the 2025 Upper Midwest Honors Conference at the end of March.
Both Shrestha and Poudel plan to continue conducting research in the future.