Verification of Identity and Educational Certificates of Students Using Biometric and Blockchain

Abstract

Blockchain technology is being adopted in various areas like finance, healthcare, and trade. It is adding value to the existing business methods with its features like transparency, security, and decentralization. It can also transform the working of education systems. In the current education systems, students identify themselves through multiple government-authorized identity proofs. Additionally, their previous degree certificates are manually verified by college authorities during the admission process. This requires lots of time and manpower. A blockchain-based system can offer more security, transparency and efficiency than the existing system. The proposed solution is the use of biometric to access all the previous degree certificates of a student using blockchain. The students will submit the hash of their biometric and a unique phrase. This hash will be stored on the blockchain. The degree certificate for a student will be issued by the college authorities. They will upload the hash of digitally signed certificate on the blockchain. For admission into higher studies, college authorities can fetch a student’s previous certificates from the blockchain using the hash of his/her biometric and a unique phrase. This concept can be extended to verify any documents by linking them to a person’s identity without involving a third party.