Blockchain Based Verification of Educational and Professional Certificates

Abstract

Educational Documents and Certificates are a proof of professional achievements for anyone. Without these documents, it is not possible to start your career and hence play a very important role in everyone's professional life. Till date, Colleges, Universities and various educational institutes issue paper based degrees and certificates which are prone to get damaged or may be lost. The other drawback is that this process of issuing of degrees and manual process of verification of those documents by third parties is a time taking and cumbersome process. The employers take a lot of time for verifying these paper based degrees and certificates before they give the job offer. Forgery of paper based documents is also easier and has led to many educational scams. This paper aims to give the solution to the problems mentioned above through Blockchain Implementation. Block chain technology is not only limited to crypto currencies but is also of great applications in various fields like health, supply chain management, finance, etc. It has disrupted the traditional education system. This paper highlights as to how the educational certificates can be verified using the Ethereum platform and smart contracts. The traditional paper certificates would be converted to digital certificates on student's request, their hash value would be calculated using cryptographic hash functions and stored on Blockchain. A unique certificate ID and transaction hash value would be generated which would then be used to verify the certificates through a common platform.