A blockchain-powered e-cognocracy model for democratic decision making

Electronic governance is used to empower citizens and help governments and organizations with strategic decision-making or policy-making. E-democracy and e-participation methods are essential tools used to engage citizens in decision-making. One of the recent e-democracy models is known as e-cognocracy. While having advantages relative to traditional e-democracy models, e-cognocracy still faces challenges such as fraud, centralization, information failure (voting paradox), and participation rate. This paper aims to design a blockchain-based electronic democracy model on a smart contract using e-cognocracy as the base model and the concept of futarchy and prediction markets. Using the design science research methodology, a three-stage blockchain-powered e-cognocracy method for democratic decision-making is developed. The proposed method of research includes three main stages: (1) Setting the problem, (2) the voting process, and (3) knowledge diffusion and evaluation, and the stage are done through several activities. This method is implemented as a smart contract on the Ethereum platform. Using the power of blockchain technology and the economic incentive model of futarchy, this method overcomes three main challenges for e-cognocracy. To demonstrate the methodology, it was applied in a real-case experience.