ParikkhaChain: Blockchain-Based Result Processing and Privacy-Preserving Academic Record Management for the Complete Examination Lifecycle

TL;DR

ParikkhaChain is a comprehensive blockchain framework for secure, transparent, and privacy-preserving management of the entire onsite examination process, from conducting exams to re-evaluation.

Contribution

It introduces the first blockchain-based system supporting physical exams, anonymous marking, and transparent re-evaluation workflows, with a prototype demonstrating scalability and efficiency.

Findings

Successfully simulated full exam cycles with hundreds of courses and participants.

Achieved efficient management with high throughput, low storage, and transaction costs.

Demonstrated privacy-preserving verification using zero-knowledge proofs.

Abstract

Academic examination systems worldwide continue to rely on centralised, opaque record-keeping that is often vulnerable to credential forgery, result tampering, examiner bias, and the absence of transparent re-evaluation pathways. Existing blockchain-based approaches in education focus predominantly on post-hoc certificate storage or online-only examination portals, leaving the complete onsite examination lifecycle, from conducting exams through scrutiny, largely unaddressed. This paper proposes ParikkhaChain, a blockchain-based framework that covers the entire examination lifecycle of an onsite examination system with three distinguishing contributions: (i) anonymous script evaluation through cryptographic hashing of answer scripts before examiner access, thereby eliminating identity-based bias; (ii) a transparent evaluation and scrutiny workflow backed by an immutable on-chain audit trail that records every mark submission and grade revision; and (iii) inclusion of privacy-preserving verification using zero-knowledge proofs and off-chain storage mechanisms. The system is architected around four Solidity smart contracts deployed on the Ethereum blockchain. The proposed architecture is the first initiative to our knowledge to support physical examination process, anonymous marking, and re-evaluation transparency. We successfully simulate full exam cycles of an onsite exam to grade-sheet generation using a working prototype on a large scale of 100 courses and hundreds of teachers and students. The experimental results show that the system can manage online examinations of hundreds of courses, students and faculties efficiently with great throughput, low storage, and transaction cost. Our codebase is available in open source form at https://github.com/AhmedRumi/CSE6608-ParikkhaChain