Greek graduates could soon prove their qualifications thanks to the blockchain. GRNET, Greece's national research and education network, is working on a pilot project with the blockchain company IOHK to verify student diplomas on Cardano, a blockchain launched last September.
The project is important for the blockchain ecosystem because it is the first case of official use of Cardano
The GRNET application will be built on Enterprise Cardano, a private version of Cardano. Unlike a public blockchain, where anyone can participate and participate, a private blockchain allows a restricted set of users to validate block transactions.
So far, three Greek universities are participating in the project. While IOHK provides the decentralized database, GRNET provides the interface and web support and will bring together other universities in the future.
Part of the project's funding comes from Horizon 2020, a European program for research and innovation. The development of the prototype is already underway, said Aggelos Kiayias, chief scientist of IOHK, Bitcoin Magazine.
Why diplomas?
Given IOHK's historical ties to academia, it is not surprising to see the company working on a pilot project involving universities. Registering degrees on a blockchain eliminates paperwork and makes it easy to check if someone actually holds a degree.
Generally, when a student graduates, he receives a hard copy of a diploma signed by the Dean and co-signs the University Registrar. All transcripts and student records are stored in the university's centralized database.
To confirm that a graduate has the diploma he claims to have, an employer must verify the official diploma or call the university. Since the process is long and tedious, it is too easy for fraudulent candidates to falsify their qualifications.
The availability of documents and diplomas on blockchain eliminates the risk of fraud as it allows graduates and universities to "provide evidence that there is undeniable qualification," Kiayias said. "It's a point of reference that can be accepted by everyone. "
Cryptographic evidence
In order to protect the privacy of students, GRNET plans to put only a cryptographic hash of a diploma on the blockchain. This will avoid publishing an entire degree on the blockchain.
Digital documents are easy to modify in an undetectable way for the human eye. But as long as the digital version shown to an employer has the same result as what is stored on the blockchain, that proves that the document is the original, unmodified version.
"We can not put plain text on the blockchain, because diplomas and transcripts are personal information. We only put hashes; we can put entire diplomas and transcripts, but they will still be encrypted, "said Panos Louridas, GRNET consultant and associate professor at the University of Economics and Business Athens, in an email to Bitcoin Magazine.
This project is not the first experience of storing diplomas on the blockchain. In October, MIT announced its own pilot project for verification of digital diplomas using blockchain technology.
Mr Louridas claims, however, that the GRNET pilot project is different from previous projects in that it stores the entire chain of verification steps on the blockchain. Each step would indeed be recorded as an immutable transaction on a block separate from the blockchain.
"You do not really need a chain of blocks to store diplomas: a simple system with digital signatures from the host institution would do the trick," he said. "We want to be able to record that someone has requested proof of graduation, that the evidence has been given, that the evidence has been passed on to an auditor, and that the verifier can verify that the diploma is valid, and that no one can dispute any of the above steps. "