Paper #3

Development and Evaluation of Blockchain based Secure Application for Verification and Validation of Academic Certificates

Elva Leka and Besnik Selimi

Abstract: Academic degrees are subject to corruptions, system flaws, forgeries, and imitations. In this paper we propose to develop a blockchain smart contract-based application using Ethereum Platform, to store, distribute and verify academic certificates. It constitutes a trusted, decentralized certificate’s management system that can offer a unified viewpoint for students, academic institutions, as well as for other potential stakeholders such as employers. The article describes the implementation of three main parts of our proposed solution that includes: verification application, university interface and accreditor interface. This application avoids administrative barriers, makes the process of deployment, verification, and validation of certificates faster, efficient, and more secure. Additionally, it offers confidentiality of the data by using AES encryption algorithm before creating transactions and allows bulk submission of multiple academic certificates.

Keywords: Blockchain; Ethereum; Smart Contract; Test Environment; Verification Application.