India to use Ethereum Blockchain to verify Diploma Certificates
India is one of the first countries to deploy an e-governance system for higher education, thanks to a new cooperation with LegitDoc.
Maharashtra’s government recently announced a partnership with LegitDoc, an Indian blockchain firm, to create a credentialing system based on Ethereum that will provide tamper-proof diploma certificates.
To combat the growth in document fraud, the Maharashtra State Board of Skill Development uses Ethereum-based public blockchain, which goes against India’s crypto prohibition narrative. While certificates are currently confirmed using traditional manual methods, MSBSD will begin recommending exclusively the digital verification approach for all manual verification requests beginning next year, according to LegitDoc CEO Neil Martis in an exclusive statement to Cointelegraph.
Martis went on to say that additional local government authorities were interested:
“We have an active work order from the Govt of Karnataka (Dept of Information Technology and Biotechnology). We are in talks with the Government of Telangana and Higher & Technical education dept of Maharashtra to implement LegitDoc for their student community.”
According to Martis, mainstream institutions such as the National Institute of Technology and Ashoka University are in talks to deploy a similar technique to combat document fabrication.
With the partnership with LegitDoc, India joins the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Malta, and Singapore as early users of an e-governance system for education.
Dr. Anil Jadhao, Chairman of MSBSD, highlighted blockchain’s ability to combat frauds linked to document forgery:
“In the last 10 years, there has been a rampant increase in forgery of government-issued documents which have caused huge financial & reputational losses to the stakeholders involved.”
As a word of caution, Madnick opined,
“The bottom line is that while the blockchain system represents advances in encryption and security, it is vulnerable in some of the same ways as other technology, as well as having new vulnerabilities unique to blockchain. In fact, human actions or inactions still have significant consequences for blockchain security.”
Sources:
https://cointelegraph.com/news/india-to-use-ethereum-blockchain-to-verify-diploma-certificates
