Design framework for higher education certificates using blockchain technology

Digital academic credentials face persistent threats from credential fraud, while traditional centralized verification systems suffer from single points of failure and administrative delays. Although blockchain technology offers immutability and trust, existing solutions present significant research gaps: (1) direct on-chain storage violates data protection regulations; (2) a lack of decentralized identity governance leaves networks vulnerable to unauthorized; and (3) existing literature lacks formal operational algorithms and empirical benchmarking under scalable workloads. To resolve these gaps, this paper proposes a multi-tiered design framework for higher education certificates anchored in design science research (DSR) methodology. The proposed solution bridges these limitations by implementing a privacy-preserving hybrid architecture that combines off-chain encrypted File System storage with on-chain SHA-256 hash anchoring. To address governance vulnerabilities, W3C Decentralized Identifiers are integrated with a smart-contract Issuer Registry and a global revocation list to enforce strict issuer access control. Furthermore, formal algorithmic protocols are established for system enrollment, issuance, and off-chain encryption. Empirical evaluations conducted using Hyperledger Caliper demonstrate a 100% transaction success rate, a stable throughput of 17.7 TPS, and sub-second verification latencies (10.53 ms), validating the framework’s privacy compliance, security, and performance scalability for global academic verification.