Blockchain-based Platform for Secure Sharing and Validation of Vaccination Certificates

TL;DR

This paper proposes a blockchain-based platform utilizing smart contracts, IPFS, and SSI to securely share and verify vaccination certificates, addressing privacy concerns and enhancing trust without third-party reliance.

Contribution

It introduces a hybrid blockchain architecture with verifiable credentials and on-chain access control for secure vaccination certificate management, improving privacy and trust.

Findings

The approach satisfies security requirements for vaccination certificates.

Performance analysis shows the system is efficient and secure.

The method enhances privacy by eliminating third-party reliance.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has recently emerged as a worldwide health emergency that necessitates coordinated international measures. To contain the virus's spread, governments and health organisations raced to develop vaccines that would lower Covid-19 morbidity, relieve pressure on healthcare systems, and allow economies to open. As a way forward after the COVID-19 vaccination, the Vaccination certificate has been adopted to help the authorities formulate policies by controlling cross-border travelling. To resolve significant privacy concerns and remove the need for relying on third parties to maintain trust and control the user's data, in this paper, we leverage blockchain technologies in developing a secure and verifiable vaccination certificate. Our approach has the advantage of utilising a hybrid architecture that implements different advanced technologies, such as smart contracts, interPlanetary File System (IPFS), and Self-sovereign Identity (SSI). We will rely on verifiable credentials paired with smart contracts to implement on-chain access control decisions and provide on-chain verification and validation of the user and issuer DIDs. The usability of this approach was further analysed, particularly concerning performance and security. Our analysis proved that our approach satisfies vaccination certificate security requirements.