Academic document verification using SSI and blockchain technology

Abstract

Academic certificates are evidence of qualification for their recipients. Although academic data is regularly transmitted by institutes, the procedure of transferring and verifying this data is usually tiring and time-consuming. This has resulted in certificate verification being unduly complex in the practices that have been traditionally implemented. These credentials are susceptible to manipulation and counterfeiting. Certificate forgery and fabrication are getting more and more difficult to catch as days pass with the customary techniques that are being adopted. More userfriendly and privacy-conscious than previous methods of storing and disseminating ID data, SSI is the latest innovation in this area by offering secure document verification methods and serving as a vital tool against document fraud and abuse. The documentation and verification process for academic certificates may be made safe, seamless, transparent, and immutable by integrating SSI with blockchain technology. Not only physical certificates, as everything is being digitized, online courses are also becoming very popular, but the legitimacy of their certificates can still be questioned. With our system, we try to contribute to SSI core motivation of building a trust layer on the internet. In this work, we offer an SSI system that uses educational institutions to give certificates to their students, who then act as holders of the certificates, keeping them safe in a wallet and being presented whenever needed. The legitimacy of the certificates in the wallet can be verified by the organizations, who are third parties. We plan to construct our system in a way that allows it to accommodate the requirement of selective information disclosure, providing us with increased total control over the verification process. Additionally, this system ensures that there are no intermediary parties which helps us to address the drawbacks of the traditional approaches to an extent. We present its design, go into the specifics of its implementation, point out its advantages and limitations, and most importantly compare it with the methods that are currently in use.