Hyperledger Fabric Blockchain Framework: Efficient Solution for Academic Certificate Decentralized Repository

During the past few decades, the number of forgery of government-issued certificates has increased dramatically, causing considerable economic and reputational damage to the test centers involved. Traditional verification methods involve the use of e-mail, telephone, and proxy for background checks. This may require more cost, safety and time. Blockchain technology can solve this problem. Blockchain based solutions have underlying features like security, tamper proof, transparency and consensus. In addition, the data history can be managed on a blockchain network that can be accessed anytime and anywhere. The purpose of this article is to analyze blockchain technology and establish a permissioned blockchain-based academic certificate verification system HLFeCERT for issuing and verifying certificates using the SHA256 hash algorithm and digital watermarking technology for encryption and decryption of academic certificates to prevent tampering. This means that students do not need to share all their certificates publically, but only share whichever they want to. This is made possible using private blockchain.