A Soulbound Token Certificate Verification System (SBTCert): Design and Implementation

Certificate authentication is considered to be one of the most tedious and complex processes. Moreover, different types of documents like banking documents, education certificates, and government documents might need a specific type of authentication and verification. For example, the process of verifying the authenticity of education certificates with conclusive evidence can take up to months and consume a lot of human effort. Hence, universities and colleges have no option but to consider the documents submitted by students, even if they might be fabricated. Sometimes an artfully generated forged certificate is almost impossible to detect and can be treated as the original. With the increase of forged documents, the credibility of both the document holder and the issuing authority is jeopardized. On the other hand, when students go through multiple phases of education, they are compelled to submit several documents to secure admission to universities or colleges, or sometimes even more frequently for scholarships and tuition concessions. Therefore, hosting these certificates in a secure and tamper-proof manner on a decentralized blockchain only allows participating parties to read or verify data to reduce errors and make it more transparent. In this paper, we proposed and implemented a Soulbound Token Certification (SBTCert) Verification System, a blockchain-based digital certificate platform, that aims to enhance the verification model without compromising security, authentication, decentralization, and confidentiality. The system provides a secure and reliable platform for universities, students, and staff to manage, issue, and verify educational certificates.