Holberton School announced it has become the world’s first school to deliver academic certificates secured and accessible via the blockchain, the technology behind bitcoins, ensuring a high-quality certificate recognition for Holberton School students and tackling the threats of false resumes and fake certificates.
The school also announced a partnership with Bitproof, a startup specialized in documents certification in the blockchain.
According to HireRight, a leading provider of on-demand employment background checks, drug testing, Form I-9 and employment and education verifications, 86% of the employers surveyed said that screening had exposed a candidate who lied on their resume. Employers need to make sure candidates actually graduated from the institutions that are mentioned on their resume.
“Lying about education credentials is a common problem, and today it is very easy to counterfeit academic diplomas and certificates,” said Blake Haggerty, recruiter at CoreOS. “In addition, the process to check someone’s degree is quite laborious, as you need to get the school’s contact information, reach the right person and do it again for every candidate. Medium and big companies often delegate this task to third parties as it’s very time and money consuming.”
Holberton School and Bitproof are simplifying this verification process, and adding a new layer of security by using the blockchain.
“The blockchain is well known for storing bitcoins transactions because it’s a decentralized, authenticated and hardened against tampering storage systems,” said Louison Dumont, blockchain expert and founder of Bitproof. “Naturally, it also makes a perfect place to store academic certificates.”
By having students’ certificates available in a public blockchain, Holberton School makes it easier for employers to check if a candidate is truly a graduate from the school. Using any free blockchain explorer available online, such as Merkle, employers can get the answer in seconds.
“The blockchain is the future of certification, and we believe that in the following years, more schools will use the public blockchain to secure their certificates and diplomas,” said Sylvain Kalache, co-founder of Holberton School. “It is much more efficient, secure, and simple than what you can find today in the industry. We think first about our students — we want to make sure that our certificates will always remain valid and verifiable by employers. It will also keep them safe and impossible to copy or hack.”
