A Survey on Blockchain-Based Certificate Authentication System: From Traditional to Digital

Abstract

This research study pertains to the essential problems of certificate authentication within academic organizations. It concentrates on the major issues of forgery and inefficiencies as well as administrative bottlenecks that arise in conventional systems. The usual ways, which are based on one authority organization, are likely to be compromised, move slowly on verification, and have increased overhead costs. Blockchain technology is a distributed way of doing things without a middleman, and thus it is able to improve security, transparency, and the immutability of educational records. The article identifies the shortcomings of the present blockchain-based implementations with the focus on scalability, interoperability with legacy infrastructure, and high transaction costs. In the paper, an experiment on Ethereum-based smart contracts as well as the Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA-256) and InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) technologies shows the potential of these technologies to a certificate validation system by providing cryptographic integrity and, therefore, data storage that cannot be altered. The proposed work introduces a decentralized architecture that uses smart contracts for certificate issuing and verification to some extent. By integrating cryptographic hashing mechanisms, the system provides real-time, verifiable, and immutable credential records, addressing both fraud prevention and operational inefficiencies.