A blockchain-based digital educational certificate verification system

Abstract

The reliance on paper-based educational certificates and the lack of a robust and tamper-proof system for verifying academic credentials in the Nigerian education system make them vulnerable to forgery and alterations. The situation poses challenges in guaranteeing the legitimacy of such qualifications, and a need arises for a secure system to verify academic credentials. The proposed solution is a blockchain-based digital certificate verification system (BCVS) that utilizes the Celo blockchain as the underlying blockchain platform to store each digital certificate hash and meta-data, which is unique, secure, and permanently recorded on the blockchain. The system also includes a QR code feature to verify the certificate's authenticity instantly. Ten users evaluated the system, and the average scores are as follows: the user interface had 78%, the application database security scored 66%, the blockchain data security achieved 82%, the revocation mechanism achieved a score of 67%, and the maintainability achieved a score of 46%. While the system is designed to cater to university requirements and can revoke certificates if needed, it represents an advancement in certificate verification, thereby simplifying the process and improving the overall experience for everyone involved, with the potential to be scaled and customized for other universities, institutions, and use cases.