DEGREE VERIFICATION SYSTEM IN BLOCK CHAIN

Credential fraud is a widespread practice that undermines investment and confidence in higher education systems and bears significant economic and social costs. Conventional credential verification systems are typically time-consuming, costly, and bureaucratic, and struggle against certain classes o

Project Title

DEGREE VERIFICATION SYSTEM IN BLOCK CHAIN

Project Area of Specialization

Blockchain

Project Summary

Credential fraud is a widespread practice that undermines investment and confidence in higher education systems and bears significant economic and social costs. Conventional credential verification systems are typically time-consuming, costly, and bureaucratic, and struggle against certain classes of credential fraud. In this Degree Verification System, we propose a comprehensive blockchain-based credential verification solution, which is considerably more efficient, easy, and intuitive to use, and effectively mitigates widespread manifestations of credential fraud. DVS also improves significantly upon other blockchain-based solutions in the research literature: it adheres closely to the existing credential verification ecosystem; it addresses a threat model informed by real-world fraud scenarios. Moreover, DVS uses on-chain smart contracts for credential revocation, and it does not entail students or employers to manage digital identities or cryptographic credentials to use the system. We prototype our solution and describe our attempt to design an online verification service with a rich feature set, including data privacy, transcript verification, and selective disclosure of data. We hope this effort contributes positively to towards alleviating the problem of fake credentials

Project Objectives

There is widespread recognition that the blockchain can effectively combat the problem of fake credentials and significantly improve the credential verification process. There are several efforts underway in this domain, both in industry and ideas proposed in the research literature. However, to the best of our knowledge, what is most lacking is a rigorous effort to tailor these solutions to existing practices of credential fraud, and to mitigate usability issues on the part of users. Our system will enable practitioners (universities, accreditation bodies, employers) to undertake the following: 1) to concretely visualize the workings and benefits of such a system and work towards integrating it into existing credential verification ecosystems, and 2) to adapt and customize the rich feature set of our solution to cater to their own requirements.

Project Implementation Method

When a student, Habiba, graduates, the university issues her a physical certificate of her academic degree and her transcript. 
The university administration also creates a transaction containing a digital fingerprint of Habiba’s credential details (alongside that of other graduating students). 
This transaction is digitally signed by the university registrar and propagated on the Degree Verification System, where it is verified by nodes belonging to the University body, mined into a block, and added to the blockchain. This step corresponds to the issuance and accreditation of a credential. 
The physical degree certificate issued to Habiba by the university incorporates a QR code, for credential verification, printed on the front which facilitates verification of the information on her certificate.
If an employer, American National Employees, wants to check if Habiba’s degree is genuine, he can scan the code with a smartphone app or use a web portal. These services retrieve validating information from the Cerberus network in real-time, verify the code, and inform American National Employees of the degree’s authenticity.
Habiba can also print the credential verification code on her resume alongside her educational details so that any third party can verify her degree independently of the physical certificate.
If the university were to revoke Habiba’s degree, it would circulate a revocation transaction which the accreditation body would verify and add to the blockchain. 
Any party that checks Habiba’s credential verification code subsequently would be informed that the degree has been revoked.

Benefits of the Project

In our system the first benefit is that the problem of Institutional Fraud which refers to the case where staff within institutions are compromised. Such fraud may involve the university registrar or other officials who create an illegitimate credential which is retroactively appended in the official record of the university. This tactic is more reliable than document fraud because the credential itself is authentic and can usually withstand and cursory scrutiny because it is backed by university records. And there is no solution implemented to this problem till yet, but our DVS provides the solution to this.

Another benefit of our DVS is that it also solves the Document Fraud which typically involves illegal counterfeits, deceitful alteration of legitimate credentials (modification of name, signatures, degree, details, etc.), or complete fabrications (using fake logos, seals, and serial numbers).

Another major benefit of our DVS is that is has the solution to the Accreditation Fraud which refers to the case where the accreditation body that validates a credential as authentic may itself be compromised or fictitious.

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

The University body is responsible for initial configuration of the network and to maintain the blockchain and update the network as participants change over time. The university body must deploy multiple nodes itself to distribute and secure the network.
The university body also manages how students access and use the network. When a new degree is listed, the university body adds it to the network and certifies its cryptographic keys.
A degree may also be removed from the network for various reasons (e.g. in case of fraud or if quality standards are not met) in which case it’s address and keys are added to a blacklist. Keys that have been lost or compromised are also added to the blacklist and new keys are generated to replace them. 
The university body also provides access to third party observers to audit the network.

THE WORKING OF THE SYSTEM
When an academic session concludes, the university prepares degree certificates for students in the graduating batch.
Issuing the credential comprises three key steps as follows:

Preparing the degree: This starts when the student enrols him/herself in the degree program, the university mines a transaction in the network with all the credentials that will be mentioned in the degree that he will get after the degree is completed.
Updating the records: Then the semester wise results are updated according to the customized way guided by the university. 
Issuing the Degree: If the results are clear and all the requirements are also cleared, that will be guided by the university then the degree will be allowed to issue which then the university decides either to issue it or not.

Final Deliverable of the Project

Software System

Core Industry

Education

Other Industries

IT

Core Technology

Blockchain

Other Technologies

Others

Sustainable Development Goals

Quality Education, Decent Work and Economic Growth, Reduced Inequality, Peace and Justice Strong Institutions

Required Resources

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