MIT plans to issue blockchain-based digital diplomas

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) will issue digital diplomas to 111 graduates using Bitcoin’s blockchain as part of a pilot project.

The certificates will be issued via “Blockcerts Wallet”, which is an app that can facilitate the issuance of a verifiable and tamper-proof version of the certification. The diplomas can be shared with potential employers free of charge, and their legitimacy can be easily verified without having to contact the Registrar’s Office. The institution’s sign-on web authentication service, Touchstone, has also been integrated with the program.

“From the beginning, one of our primary motivations has been to empower students to be the curators of their own credentials. This pilot makes it possible for them to have ownership of their records and be able to share them in a secure way, with whomever they choose.” says Mary Callahan, Sr. Associate Dean and Registrar.

MIT’s Learning Machine partnered with MIT Media Lab’s Philipp Schmidt in 2016 to design “an open-source toolkit called Blockcerts, which any of the schools can use to issue and verify blockchain-based educational credentials.” According to the institution, any school or employer can verify the certification right away by uploading a student’s digital diploma file via a portal.

MIT further clarified that the diploma information will not be not shared on any network and only the time-stamped transaction goes into the blockchain network. The digital record is created by the university itself and the privacy of its peers are protected before anything else.

Dean Callahan revealed, “We’ve just begun to scratch the surface of where this will lead. It’s an exciting time.” MIT has been receiving a lot of inquiries relating to this new program. In fact, many other international universities, and well as the European Commission, are interested in the potential of Blockcerts.

The institution is assured to be one of the first few universities that have "issued official records in a format that can exist even if the institution goes away,” by Chris Jagers, CEO and co-founder of Learning Machine.  The institution says that the program is groundbreaking as any academic certification that is blockchain-issued gives the student an autonomy over their academic records that is currently unmatched by any other institution. "People can own and use their official records, which is a fundamental shift," Jagers commented.

Jagers reported the program as transformative, saying that “it could be as big as the web, because it affects every sector. It’s not just academic records. It’s being able to passively know that digital things are true. That creates a whole new reality across every sector.”