Blockchain in Education

Nowadays, there are various kind of certificates can get from various universities in person as
well as online. Sometimes, we may not know that the certificates are real or fake. And hence, the
validity and integrity of the certificates become important in this time. Also, if the person wants to
prove his/her canonical certificates and graduations as follows:
1. High school diplomas
2. College degrees (associate, bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate)
3. Continuing education units (CEUs)
4. Certificates from continuing education departments at colleges and universities
5. Certificates from private education providers
6. Alternative digital credentials (a.k.a. badges)
Even in this certification, the canonical chain of the certifications as well as the integrity and
validity of them are important. The need of this can be solve by using Blockchain technology as
Blockchain can guarantee the integrity of the transactions history by using cryptographic hash
functions.

When verifying the student’s educational accomplishments, the reference header should
include the offered university code and the student’s educational certification identity number are
applying with hash function. Then it will get the new block header reference to link another
certificate.

In each transaction block, the verification number, the student registration number for the
course or degree, the year of accomplishment, the student’s grades should include in the content.
For every block header of the blockchain-data-structure, it must include the root of a Merkle tree
containing transaction data, a hash reference to the header of the preceding block, the difficulty
level of the hash puzzle, the time when solving the hash puzzle started, the nonce that solves the
hash puzzle.

The educational institutions need to be involved in validating degrees and transcripts as they
are certification authorities. In a distributed, blockchain environment, every block header must
fulfill following validation rules and it works as follows:
1. It check whether the block header contain a valid hash reference to a previous block or not.
2. It check whether the block header contain a valid root of a Merkle tree containing transaction
data or not.
3. It check whether the block header contain a correct difficulty level or not.
4. Check whether its time stamp is after the time stamp of its preceding block header.
5. Check whether It contain a nonce or not.
6. Check whether the hash value of all the five pieces of data combined together fulfills the
difficulty level.
 The validation rules ensure that only those blocks are added to the blockchain-data-structure
for which the hash puzzle was solved and the computational costs were paid. Then the process
ensures that the blocks and the transaction data are indeed ordered according to the time being
added.

As the blockchain-data-structure is same concepts as public ledger, the other people from the
public can read that transaction history but they are not allowed to modify and write without the
permission of the ownership. So, the student can show his/her educational certifications blockchain
to the prospective employers as an evidence of his/her education. How cool the blockchain
technology is? Great!