Although much fanfare has been made about the potential of blockchain for finance, on the ground in Singapore, one innovative polytechnic has found an immediate use case- issuing digital versions of their diplomas onto the blockchain.
In a pilot with the blockchain technology company Attores, Ngee Ann Polytechnic will be the first educational institution in Singapore to issue blockchain diplomas, commonly referred to as e-certs, with a public facing front end to validate the e-certs issued on the blockchain. The technology powering the project a private version of the Ethereum Blockchain, using the client software built by Parity Technologies. Attores’ front end deployment engine is used to securely create, deploy and verify the certificates.
By issuing the certificates onto the blockchain, potential employers can verify authenticity and origination of the e-cert.
Attores CEO David Moskowitz said, “Digitization also removes the costs associated with verifying the authenticity of the diploma if an employer needs to check on a potential candidate. We eliminate a large chunk of the costs associated with issuing and verifying certificates. This is at least a 75% cost savings compared with traditional issuance.”
The Attores ‘Open Certificates’ platform enables the polytechnic to quickly create new e-certs for their students using an intuitive interface. The blockchain provides a tamper proof mechanism to prove who digitally signed the certificates. If the final certificate is altered in any way, or is fraudulent, it won’t match the data stored on the blockchain.
Attores CTO Gaurang Torvekar said, “It’s been a pleasure working with the Ngee Ann Polytechnic Computer Center staff to put this next generation technology in place. We’re excited to continue to help them learn and utilize blockchain technology to make their processes more efficient and as an educational tool for their students.”
“We issue over 4000 diploma certs and other kinds of certificates every year. The process of verifying the authenticity of certificates can be very manual. With blockchain, we can simplify this process, make it user-driven, and boost productivity. Not only will this help students effectively kickstart their career, employers also get them onboard with minimal hassle,” said Mr Clarence Ti, Principal of Ngee Ann Polytechnic.
”We’re really happy to see Attores use Parity to demonstrate the strength of blockchain in lowering the costs in certification”, said Dr. Gavin Wood, founder of Parity Technologies. “We hope that this will be a first step toward getting the world’s certification information into a fraud-resistant, open and ubiquitous platform.”
Attores offers a consumer version of their certificate issuance platform, free to try out at
https://opencertificates.coPress release here:
http://attores.com/news/first-singapore-public-facing-blockchain-application-pilot-ngee-ann-polytechnic/
