A Blockchain-Enabled and Privacy-Preserving Framework for Student Archive Transfer: An Empirical Performance Evaluation

Abstract

The management and transfer of student archives in China constitute are mission-critical administrative processes governed by strict custodial regulations. However, the traditional paper-based "sealed-transfer" model is characterized by significant inefficiencies, risk of data loss, and limited mechanisms for verifying the data integrity during cross-institutional transitions. Although blockchain technology offers potential advantages in auditability and immutability, existing solutions often fail to balance privacy protection with high-performance requirements for large-scale archival data. This study proposes a decentralized, privacy-preserving framework that integrates the FISCO BCOS consortium blockchain, the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), and Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP). The system employs a multi-group architecture, leveraging IPFS for encrypted off-chain storage and zk-SNARKs generated via Circom to enable integrity verification without exposing sensitive data. Empirical evaluation was conducted using 30 archival samples ranging from 82 KB to 3.1 MB. Results indicate that the Paillier cryptosystem introduces significant performance bottleneck, with encryption latency exceeding one hour for files large than 2.3 MB. In contrast, a hybrid RSA+AES encryption scheme combined with ZKP archives stable, size-agnostic proof generation latency of approximately 850 ms and end-to-end transfer times under 3 seconds. These findings demonstrates that the proposed framework effectively replicates the traditional “sealed-transfer” mechanism through cryptographic means, providing a scalable and regulatory-compliant solution that aligns with the Archives Law of the People’s Republic of China and the Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL). This study provides a visible technical pathway for the digital transformation of national-level educational archive systems.