Development of a Blockchain-Based Application for Digital Certificates in Education

Abstract

Traditional academic certificates have mostly been issued in paper or other physical format and maintained in a registry or a database for a long period of time by a certification authority. The blockchain technology has enabled creation of a decentralized, transaction-based systems, where any transaction ever completed is recorded in a verifiable and permanent way. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based school management system, named "Ethernal Digital Certificate". Its main purpose is maintaining the data considering summer school events and its participants, as well as issuing certificates for those events. The data is stored on Polygon Supernets blockchain platform. The certificates are issued in the form of NFTs for students who have successfully completed all the courses on an event and they are kept on students' wallets. Once issued, the certificates can't be sold and transferred from one wallet to another. Since the system is based on the blockchain technology and therefore decentralized, there is no need for any third-party organization to verify the certificates.