Certifying Digitally Issued Diplomas

TL;DR

This paper proposes a protocol for issuing, updating, and revoking digital diplomas using distributed ledgers to ensure their integrity and verifiability independently of the issuing institution.

Contribution

It introduces a novel protocol leveraging distributed ledger technology for secure, self-maintaining digital diplomas with capabilities for verification and state management.

Findings

Digital diplomas can be verified without contacting the issuer

The protocol supports updating and revoking diplomas securely

Integrity persists even if the issuing institution is unavailable

Abstract

We describe a protocol for creating, updating, and revoking digital diplomas that we anticipate would make use of the protocol for transferring digital assets elaborated by Goodell, Toliver, and Nakib. Digital diplomas would maintain their own state, and make use a distributed ledger as a mechanism for verifying their integrity. The use of a distributed ledger enables verification of the state of an asset without the need to contact the issuing institution, and we describe how the integrity of a diploma issued in this way can persist even in the absence of the issuing institution.