Ukraine might be better known as an Eastern European country that has been partially invaded by Russia, but it also wants to be known for another reason, and that’s its full embrace of blockchain technologies.

At a conference in the country on Thursday Ukraine’s Minister of Finance, Oleksandr Danilyuk announced that his Ministry will start using eAuction, the blockchain-based auction platform from Distributed Lab, in order to sell Government assets and curtail corruption that is endemic in the existing system.

The Minister explained that the blockchain-based system completely eliminates the possibility of administrative interference during bidding, implying that corrupt Government officials were manipulating existing Government auctions.

According to Brave New Coin, the first online auctions using the blockchain will be from the Deposit Guarantee Fund of Individuals, which is said to manage some $18 billion in Government assets including real estate and state property.

“We would like Ukraine to be the first country in the world that use the blockchain in selling state assets: to sell them transparently at the highest price and to make sure that there’s no place for corruption. And I believe that the blockchain offers such opportunities,” Danilyuk added.

Distributed Lab explained in a separate blog post that their eAuction platform was built using modules of their own blockchain system based on the Stellar open source blockchain code.

“Its basic feature is support of multiple blockchains capable of interaction, as well as various kinds of local consensus,” Distributed Lab developer Dr. Pavel Kravchenko explained. “In addition, it contains no built-in currencies. Thus, it is a selection of protocols and libraries for creation of financial web, i.e. an environment for settlement of transactions.”

The first trial of the system has already taken place, remarkably it was to sell tickets to the conference Danilyuk made the announcement at.

Blockchain solutions

This isn’t the first time Ukraine has talked about using the blockchain for running various aspects of Government, with a group of Ukrainian officials signing a memorandum in February to move multiple levels of elections onto the Ethereum blockchain using E-vox, a platform designed by Ambisafe, Distributed Lab, and Kitsoft.

According to reports at the time the memorandum sort to create” a decentralized, transparent and accessible system for group decisions making [sic] via blockchain-based instruments” for political primaries, elections, and online petitions or referenda.

It’s not clear at the time of writing how far the development of that platform has progressed.

More details on the eAuction platform can be found here.

Image credit: oxlaey/Flickr/CC by 2.0