India to use Ethereum blockchain to verify diploma certificates

The Government of Maharashtra recently announced a partnership with Indian blockchain startup LegitDoc to implement a credentialing system powered by Ethereum to provide tamper-proof diploma certificates. 

To counter the rise in document forgery, the Maharashtra State Board of Skill Development (MSBSD) opposes India’s crypto ban narrative of using Ethereum-based public blockchains. In an exclusive statement with Cointelegraph, LegitDoc CEO Neil Martis highlighted that while the certificates are verified using traditional manual methods, MSBSD will start advocating only the digital verification method for all the manual verification requests starting next year.

Showcasing interest from other local government authorities, Martis added:

“We have an active work order from the Government of Karnataka (Department of Information Technology and Biotechnology). We are in talks with the Government of Telangana (school education department) and the Higher & Technical education department of Maharashtra to implement LegitDoc for their student community.”

Mainstream institutions such as the National Institute of Technology (Surathkal) and Ashoka University are in talks to implement a similar solution for countering the ongoing forgery of documents, Martis said.

The partnership with LegitDoc places India among early adopters to implement an e-governance system for education with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Malta and Singapore.

Citing blockchain’s capability in curbing fraud related to document forgery, Anil Jadhao, chairman of MSBSD, pointed out:

“In the last 10 years, there has been a rampant increase in forgery of government-issued documents which have caused huge financial and reputational losses to the stakeholders involved.”

Related: Indian IT giant Tech Mahindra partners on blockchain system for vaccine tracing

Following up on MIT’s implementation of the tamper-proof blockchain diploma, Cointelegraph reported Stuart Madnick’s point of view that blockchain comes with its unique set of challenges. 

As a word of caution, Madnick opined:

“The bottom line is that while the blockchain system represents advances in encryption and security, it is vulnerable in some of the same ways as other technology, as well as having new vulnerabilities unique to blockchain. In fact, human actions or inactions still have significant consequences for blockchain security.”