Adoption of Blockchain for Academic Document Fraud Detection, Verification and Locker for Ethiopia

Abstract

An academic certificate is given to a person who has completed a certain course of study. In many countries, this academic certificate or degree can be used as verification of an applicant's qualification for a job. Despite the fact that it is not exhaustive, it is a great initial step in the selection of candidates for organizations during recruiting. While certificate ownership has many advantages, not everyone is willing or able to get them through legal means. The phenomenon of fraudulent degrees affects every field of endeavor. In 2017, for example, it was revealed that 40,000 persons in a single city had entered the Indian work force with forged documents. In addition, a survey conducted in Ethiopia over the last six years revealed that 3,200 civil servants with falsified academic credentials were hired in government organizations in Ethiopia's southern region. Prioritizing these degree fraud issues and updating the underlying systems is one way to approach them. The blockchain distributed architecture, which allows for the immutable and secure storing of academic credentials, appears to be a suitable solution. This could be a useful technique to obtain document traceability, possibly leading to the verification becoming totally digital and automated. The goal of this study is to determine the scope of academic document difficulties in Ethiopia and whether blockchain technology may help solve them. As a result, the premise is that blockchain systems could be a good fit for Ethiopian Academic Document Verification. A survey and interview were done to validate the concerns with academic documents and elicit requirements for a document verification system. It was able to propose and develop a prototype implementation of a blockchain architectural solution utilizing these criteria, with the goal of determining whether the gathered needs are practical to achieve.Hyperledger Fabric Blochchain framework is used for building a network. The proposed system contains mainly two parts, Front End (Web Application Layer) and Backend (Blockchain Layer).The Web Application gives universities, and potential employers an interface to accomplish tasks like issue academic documents, exchange transcripts and verifying certificates.This study was limited to the verification of academic certificates. Further research, particularly in nations like Ethiopia, is required, including the verification of passports, house blueprints, bank statements, and birth certificates.