Secure Academic Credential Management using Blockchain-Based Self-Sovereign Identity

Digital identity management and verification of educational credentials have grown increasingly difficult in today's times. Conventional practices tend to include centralized systems that are vulnerable to breaches and inefficiencies. Realizing the existing difficulties in identity management, we suggest a decentralized SSI-enabled model to overcome these difficulties. The model facilitates SSI-enabled operations such as user sign-up, issuing decentralized identifiers (DIDs) with public/private keys created upon sign-up, issuing and creation of verifiable credentials (VCs) in the form of digital certificates of student information, academic records, and issuer signatures and credential validation facilitated by decentralized blockchain-based ledger. Educational institutions issue and create verifiable credentials associated with students ID. The system enables learners to obtain and hold verifiable credentials (VCs) for their digital proof of certificate. The issued credentials would be retained offchain and hash value of the credential would be maintained in blockchain ledger. The model uses cryptography such as hashing and digital signature to check data integrity and authenticity and issuance of the credential, storing and verifying will be handled by Smart Contract. An easy-to-use interface that provides management, request, and document verification. An integrated system based on blockchain, decentralized storage, and cryptographic algorithms ensures a privacy-oriented and consistent system for handling academic documents.