EduCredPH: Towards a Permissioned Blockchain Network for Educational Credentials Verification System

Education is an important component of society and most times, the main evidence of undergoing learning a topic or acquiring a degree is through a paper-based certificate, sometimes called educational or academic credentials. With the challenges faced by the Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) relating to security, privacy, and authenticity of their records, utilizing the upcoming technology to digitalize records is a good solution. Specifically, blockchain can provide a decentralized network with tamper-proof and non-repudiation characteristics. In this paper, Hyperledger Fabric was used to create a permissioned network that served as the backend for an educational credential verification system to assist the HEIs and third-party verifiers, and students/alumni to view educational credentials. The system architecture and implementation discussed may be used to implement an innovative approach to managing academic credentials. The performance of the chaincode deployed in the blockchain network was evaluated by having its endpoints tested as Application Programming Interfaces (API) for this system using Insomnia. The result of the evaluation showed that retrieving a credential runs with the average of 181.5 milliseconds (ms) while carrying 628 bytes of data. Overall, this paper has shown that a centralized system can be connected to a blockchain network while developing a new system to facilitate a smooth exchange of information.