ABSTRACT Although blockchain technology offers a promising solution for issuing secure and verifiable academic micro‐credentials (MCs), its widespread adoption in academic institutions faces scalability limitations. This scalability issue creates a significant bottleneck, as traditional one‐credential‐per‐transaction models become economically unviable for organisations that need to issue thousands of credentials simultaneously. However, effective solutions for mass issuance remain to be explored. To address this gap, this study proposes an approach, implements it and evaluates a novel framework that integrates batching strategies with Merkle trees and off‐chain storage using the interplanetary file system (IPFS). The experimental evaluation was conducted on Sepolia (Ethereum test network) using metrics such as gas usage, throughput and execution time. The experimental results showed stable gas consumption at approximately 90,487 units, throughput improvements from 0.31–13.77 transactions per second (TPS) and consistent execution times of approximately 32 s. This study contributes a scalable and economically viable system architecture that decouples credential metadata from its on‐chain proof, providing a clear pathway for institutions to adopt blockchain technology for large‐scale credential management and advancing the practical implementation of verifiable digital credentials in education.
Andrian et al. (Thu,) studied this question.