Educational Certificate Verification System: Enhancing Security and Authenticity using Ethereum Blockchain and IPFS

Abstract

Educational certificate counterfeiting is a major global challenge. There is no doubt that addressing both the problem of forgery and the verification of academic certificates is a fundamental issue that deserves research, development, and support at the highest levels. This paper presents a decentralized educational certificate verification system leveraging the Ethereum blockchain and the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) to combat counterfeiting. Ropsten is used as a real-life Ethereum test network to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed system. IPFS is used to store educational certificate files on a decentralised file system. The smart contract is built in the Solidity language, compiled, and deployed using the online Remix IDE. The verification process is supported by scanning a QR code, which retrieves the validating certificate’s information from the Ethereum network in real-time.