Detection of Fake Physical Certificates using a Blockchain-Based Certificate Verification and Issuer Validation System

Abstract

Fraudulent educational degree certificates can have a catastrophic impact on employers. This can also cause serious problems for educational institutions during admission into higher-degree programmes. Although some research has been done to validate the authenticity of certificates, the challenge persists in having a tamper-proof and low-cost solution where the certificate issuer and the certificates are validated in a single integrated platform. This paper proposes an integrated blockchain-based decentralized model for certificate verification and issuer validation. Along with this, it will protect the certificates from being tampered with. The proposed solution is tested by creating an Ethereum-like transparent blockchain. The performance of the proposed solution is measured by the execution and transaction cost in terms of Gas consumption and a comparison of the proposed approach against existing methods is provided. It is observed that the cost of adding a certificate is the lowest in the case of the proposed system.