Ritesh Ishwar Patil,
Kalpesh Prabhakar Khairnar,
Harshal Suresh Patil,
Swapnil Hemant Chavhan,
Prof. G. P. Mohole,
- Student, Department of Computer Engineering Jawahar Education Society’s Institute of Technology, Management and Research, Maharashtra, India
- Student, Department of Computer Engineering Jawahar Education Society’s Institute of Technology, Management and Research, Maharashtra, India
- Student, Department of Computer Engineering Jawahar Education Society’s Institute of Technology, Management and Research, Maharashtra, India
- Student, Department of Computer Engineering Jawahar Education Society’s Institute of Technology, Management and Research, Maharashtra, India
- HoD, Department of Computer Engineering Jawahar Education Society’s Institute of Technology, Management and Research, Maharashtra, India
Abstract
The proliferation of fraudulent academic and professional credentials has become a critical challenge for educational institutions, employers, and regulatory bodies worldwide. Conventional certificate verification approaches, including paper-based records and centralized digital repositories, remain inherently vulnerable to insider manipulation, unauthorized alteration, and document forgery. These limitations necessitate a fundamentally more secure and trustless verification infrastructure. This paper introduces BlockCertify, a decentralized certificate issuance and verification platform built upon Ethereum blockchain technology. The system leverages the immutable and distributed nature of blockchain to create tamper-evident credential records that any party can independently authenticate without requiring intermediary involvement. Upon issuance, each certificate undergoes SHA-256 cryptographic hashing, and the resulting digest is permanently recorded on-chain via a custom Solidity smart contract. To maintain economic feasibility, the actual certificate documents are stored off-chain using MongoDB and the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), while only the hash fingerprint resides on the blockchain. The user-facing application is developed with Next.js, providing a responsive interface for administrators, students, and verifiers. Authentication is enforced through JSON Web Tokens (JWT) with bcrypt password hashing, ensuring that only authorized institutions can issue or revoke credentials. Verification is performed by recomputing the hash of an uploaded certificate and comparing it against the on-chain record — any discrepancy immediately flags the document as invalid. Comprehensive performance evaluation conducted on the Ethereum Ganache testnet demonstrated that BlockCertify achieves verification speeds approximately 87% faster than traditional manual processes for individual certificates, with the gap widening significantly at scale. Across 200 structured test cases encompassing valid, tampered, forged, and revoked certificates, the system achieved 100% detection accuracy. The average gas cost for certificate issuance was 0.0021 ETH, representing a cost-effective alternative to conventional third-party verification services. These results validate BlockCertify as a robust, scalable, and economically viable solution for next-generation digital credentialing
Keywords: Blockchain · Certificate Verification · Fake Certificate Detection · Smart Contracts · Digital Credentialing · Next.js · MongoDB · Cryptographic Security · Immutable Ledger
[This article belongs to Journal Of Network security ]
References
[1] Chowdhury MJ, Colman A, Kabir MA, Han J, Sarda P. Blockchain versus database: A critical analysis. In2018 17th IEEE International conference on trust, security and privacy in computing and communications/12th IEEE international conference on big data science and engineering (TrustCom/BigDataSE) 2018 Aug 1 (pp. 1348-1353). IEEE.
[2] Sree TR. Decentralized certificate issuance and verification system using Ethereum blockchain technology. Journal of Network and Computer Applications. 2025 Oct 1;242:104190.
[3] Gangwar S, Chaurasia A. Blockchain-based authentication and verification system for academic certificate using QR code and decentralized applications. International Journal of Computer Applications. 2024 Jul 1;186(26):1-0.
[4] Kaur B, Jindal PK, Gill R, Sharma P, Kaur M. Facial recognition system using convolutional neural networks (CNN). In2023 International Conference on Research Methodologies in Knowledge Management, Artificial Intelligence and Telecommunication Engineering (RMKMATE) 2023 Nov 1 (pp. 1-6). IEEE.
[5] Khati P, Shrestha AK, Vassileva J. Student certificate sharing system using blockchain and nfts. InInternational Congress on Blockchain and Applications 2023 Jul 12 (pp. 61-70). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland.
[6] Malik S, Dedeoglu V, Kanhere SS, Jurdak R. Trustchain: Trust management in blockchain and iot supported supply chains. In2019 IEEE international conference on blockchain (Blockchain) 2019 Jul 14 (pp. 184-193). IEEE.
[7] Zhang L, Xie Y, Zheng Y, Xue W, Zheng X, Xu X. The challenges and countermeasures of blockchain in finance and economics. Systems Research and Behavioral Science. 2020 Jul;37(4):691-8.
[8] Rahman MM, Tonmoy MT, Shihab SR, Farhana R. Blockchain-based certificate authentication system with enabling correction. arXiv preprint arXiv:2302.03877. 2023 Feb 8.
[9] Ifeyemi T, Oyedeji AO, Adebiyi F. A Blockchain-Based Digital educational certificate verification system. ITEGAM-JETIA. 2024 Sep 25;10(49):35-41.
[10] Singh M, Kim S. Branch based blockchain technology in intelligent vehicle. Computer Networks. 2018 Nov 9;145:219-31.
[11] Gill SS, Tuli S, Xu M, Singh I, Singh KV, Lindsay D, Tuli S, Smirnova D, Singh M, Jain U, Pervaiz H. Transformative effects of IoT, Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence on cloud computing: Evolution, vision, trends and open challenges. Internet of Things. 2019 Dec 1;8:100118.
[12] Pokhrel SR, Choi J. Federated learning with blockchain for autonomous vehicles: Analysis and design challenges. IEEE Transactions on Communications. 2020 Apr 27;68(8):4734-46.
[13] Alammary A, Alhazmi S, Almasri M, Gillani S. Blockchain-based applications in education: A systematic review. Applied Sciences. 2019 Jun 13;9(12):2400.
[14] Li H, Han D. EduRSS: A blockchain-based educational records secure storage and sharing scheme. IEEE access. 2019 Nov 28;7:179273-89.
[15] Turkanović M, Hölbl M, Košič K, Heričko M, Kamišalić A. EduCTX: A blockchain-based higher education credit platform. IEEE access. 2018 Jan 5;6:5112-27.
[16] Gräther W, Kolvenbach S, Ruland R, Schütte J, Torres C, Wendland F. Blockchain for education: lifelong learning passport. InProceedings of 1st ERCIM Blockchain workshop 2018 2018. European Society for Socially Embedded Technologies (EUSSET).
[17] Lycklama à Nijeholt H, Oudejans J, Erkin Z. Decreg: A framework for preventing double-financing using blockchain technology. InProceedings of the ACM Workshop on Blockchain, Cryptocurrencies and Contracts 2017 Apr 2 (pp. 29-34).
Journal Of Network security
| Volume | 14 | |
| Issue | 03 | |
| Received | 29/05/2026 | |
| Accepted | 27/06/2026 | |
| Published | 10/08/2026 | |
| Publication Time | 73 Days |