Educert-chain: a secure and notarized educational certificate authentication and verification system using permissioned blockchain

Blockchain technology has gained significant attention and widespread adoption due to several key factors, such as immutability, higher security, decentralization, transparency, smart contracts and automation, efficiency and cost savings, and the potential for innovation in numerous industries, including finance, healthcare, supply chain, real estate, education sector, and many more. Nowadays, the forgery of educational certificates is a concerning issue that poses significant challenges to academic institutions, employers, and individuals seeking authentic qualifications. Here, we propose a secure and notarized educational certificate authentication and verification framework named EduCert-Chain using Hyperledger Fabric to overcome concerns. EduCert-Chain uses ECDSA (Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm) for digital signature and verification, the SHA-256 algorithm for cryptographic hashing, and the raft consensus mechanism for validating network transactions. We have used the Hyperledger Caliper tool to conduct an extensive set of experiments to evaluate the performance of the proposed framework in terms of throughput and latency. We have considered two HEIs (Higher Education Institutions) organizations for the experimental evaluations, and the transaction ranges between 50-500. We have used CouchDB as a state database and the Docker container to handle highly portable workloads. Our framework achieves an average throughput for the query function, which is 34.95 TPS, and for the open function, it is 32.23 TPS. Additionally, it achieves an average latency of 4.21 s for the query function and 2.05 s for the open function. We also have conducted a comparative analysis to assess security features and limitations between the proposed framework and related work. Our observation reveals that the proposed EduCert-Chain framework has better features. This initiative will positively contribute towards addressing the issues of fraudulent credentials and forgery.