Stephen Downes

This article brings readers up-to-date with developments in blockchain-based academic certificates and provides a detailed framework for degree management using Ethereum (which may become more important as Ethereum migrates to proof-of-stake). The paper credits the University of Nicosia as "the first university in the world to issue academic certificates whose authenticity can be verified through the Bitcoin blockchain" and references João Santos's Hypercerts, a non-siloed blockchain-based certification service combining the Ethereum smart contracts and the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) (unpublished, but I found the GitHub reference) as well as pseudocode for core algorithms in the proposed framework.