Blockchain is rapidly changing every corner of our lives, and it appears that universities are no exception. In fact, last year, MIT delivered its first blockchain diplomas to graduates on their smartphones, and it stands as so more than just a digitized certificate. Unlike a paper diploma, which could be easily lost or falsified, blockchain ensures that this crucial piece of information is never lost. As a result, students have direct access to their educational records right on their phones. No matter what happens, whether their house floods or their mom throws out all their possesions, their qualification is secure.
In addition to this, TrustED announces the launch of its blockchain-based platform set to revolutionize the process of how academic credentials are verified. By leveraging blockchain technology TrustED offers the ability to verify academic credentials securely and instantly. The implementation of the scalable blockchain-based platform will enable leading educational institutions and its graduates to both store and authenticate grades, credentials, or certificates for employers.
The platform has already signed a partnership with universities and schools based in Australia, India, and Cyprus. With TrustED, students, educational and training institutions will have the ability to upload their accreditation to the platform and get verified to help employers migrate away from the lengthy, expensive and manual verification processes. The platform open beta started on November 15th and full-scale release is planned for Q3 2019.
The verification process on TrustED will initially remain free. However, this will change to a payment model once the mainnet launches as per the current roadmap.
“There are many examples where even the C-level staff were not completely honest about their diplomas. These and other unpleasant stories lead to the excessive bureaucratization of verification processes. The project TrustED uses advanced solutions in the field of blockchain. Our main task is to increase trust between the academic community, business, and common people. Simplifying the process of verifying educational documents will allow teams to focus on more important tasks than paperwork.” – TrustED, Co-Founder, Kosta Batzavalis.
For developing TrustED ’s distributed network, Hyperledger Fabric has implemented specifically smart contracts that also provide functions with common building blocks to be reused via its modular architectural framework.
The TrustED Token (TED) will be based on the ERC20 standard13. The motive behind utilizing this standard is due to its wide acceptance and interoperability as well as its ability be implemented into other services. Considering TrustED ’s use of a native token to facilitate transactions in the platform, the application would be a hybrid system with interoperability between Hyperledger and Ethereum.
With nine partnerships already in place, the academic credential verification service is already bringing legitimacy and convenience to the human resources industry. For example, PDM University is benefiting from the fundamentals that TrustED will bring towards their current issuing and verification ecosystem. The private university has over ten different faculties and is home to over 8000 graduating students per year.
“Pursuing innovations is an integral part of how we see the educational process in PDM. While it’s crucial for us to provide our students with a decent level of training, PDM team do their best ensuring that in the future graduates not encounter obstacles in realizing gained potential. TrustED is a great example of technology being a perfect complement to education as a guarantee of a successful career.” – PDM University, Chitresh Lather, CEO.
The TrustED platform’s support is not limited just to higher education diplomas, but also allows verification of training certificates, ensuring qualification in specialized fields (i.e. business administration or company management). Theo Mourouzis, Course Coordinator at Cyprus International Institute of Management, European business-school established in 1990:
“CIIM focuses on training top-level business professionals. We pay close attention to the accuracy of information that potential employers can get about our graduates. That is why the TrustED project fits perfectly into our vision of how information should flow between all parties of the educational process in the new century.”
Blockchain technology enables TrustED to offer immutability, meaning third parties cannot make any edits, changes or removals to the data. When an institution uploads the academic credentials of a student onto the platform, the verifying parties are ensured of the legitimacy.
“The EdWay Training project became one of the first TrustED platform partners. We train specialists in areas that require special knowledge and skills, and the TrustED solution helps both graduates and the employer to speed up the credentials verification process. This is one of those applications of blockchain technologies, that will simplify many complex processes in the life of society over time.” – EdWay Training, Founder, Sergei Sergienko.
The credentials issued by verified institutions will be cryptographically secured and stored on TrustED’s distributed network. Additionally, credential holders will also be allowed to upload their credentials to the platform, but these credentials will remain unverified until validated by the respective credential issuer.
Credential holders and graduates will be able to create an account on the platform and have access to their verified credentials at all times, while having complete control over the distribution of these credentials within the system. Those looking to verify credentials of an individual can do so in a matter of minutes by creating an account on the platform and requesting the same on the platform.
Disclosure: This article includes a client of an Espacio portfolio company
