CollegeBloc: secure document storage for

educational institutes and recruiter system using

blockchain

XXX-X-XXXX-XXXX-X/XX/$XX.00 ©20XX IEEE

 Abstract— A student, whether in high school, pursuing
undergraduate, or postgraduate studies, generates numerous
certificates like results, diplomas, and transcripts throughout their
educational journey. These certificates are vital for admissions
into educational institutions or employment in companies.
However, manually tracking and verifying the authenticity of
these certificates can be a cumbersome task. Without a reliable
anti-forgery system in place, there is a risk of encountering
counterfeit graduation certificates. To enhance the security and
integrity of this data, there is a need for digitization guided by the
principles of Confidentiality, Reliability, and Availability. This
objective can be effectively achieved through the application of
blockchain technology. In a nutshell, our system's workflow will
involve a Certificate Issuer responsible for creating certificates.
Before these certificates are issued to students, they will undergo
validation by a panel within the issuing organization. Each
certificate will be associated with a unique hash key, which serves
as a means for any organization to easily verify the certificate's
authenticity through a dedicated portal. The advantages of such a
system are manifold. Students face reduced risks of losing or
damaging their certificates, and the process of verifying these
certificates becomes significantly streamlined for organizations.
Keywords— Digital Certificates, Blockchain,
IPFS, Certificate Generation and Verification
I. INTRODUCTION
In India, the typical student journey involves admission in
kindergarten, followed by transitions between primary,
secondary, and high schools. Upon completing high school,
admission to a junior college is sought, and for graduation,
another change of college is often required. This repetitive cycle
is the norm for students. Given the vast population, nearly 26.3
million students graduate annually. Managing and verifying
such a vast volume of records poses significant challenges.
Unfortunately, this also creates an unwanted scenario where
fraudulent certificates are produced and tampered with by
concealed agencies. Our goal is to address these issues using
cutting-edge technologies. The fundamental student lifecycle
presents specific issues that warrant solutions. The primary
problem is that at each stage, students must present their
certificates for validation. This poses risks of certificate loss or
damage and places a substantial burden on validators who must
authenticate numerous certificates. With technological
advancements, distinguishing between counterfeit and genuine
certificates demands substantial time and concentration. To
overcome these drawbacks, blockchain technology emerges as a
savior. Why choose blockchain? Data within a blockchain
remains unaltered under realistic conditions, and any changes
are instantly detected, eliminating tampering concerns.
Validation in a blockchain relies on approval from multiple
parties, always ensuring reliability and authentication. This
effectively resolves tampering issues. The next challenge is the
time-consuming validation process. The system we are
developing not only validates certificates but also generates
them. This dual functionality streamlines the process, taking
mere seconds for document validation. Since everything is
digitally stored, students need not worry about certificate loss or
damage during validation. In conclusion, our innovative system
not only addresses the flaws in the current process but also
provides an automated, reliable, and secure solution that benefits
both students and organizations. This proposed system Fig.1. not
only removes the loopholes in our current system but also gives
us an effective and concrete solution.
II. LITERATURE SURVEY
Centralized storage and management mode is usually
adopted, which makes systems that use this mode vulnerable to
various attacks as cited in the EduRSS by Li, Hongzhi & Han,
Dezhi & Li, Kuan-Ching & Castiglione, Arcangelo [1]. Besides,
the records of different educational stages are stored in separate
storage servers of education institutions and these storage
servers are usually designed to allow access only by internal staff,
without any form of interoperability. To protect personal information,
institutions usually adopt security policies to restrict the access and
sharing of records. A novel scheme is proposed, which integrates
educational records storage and sharing among education institutions
enabled by blockchain, storage servers and smart contracts. A
consortium blockchain is constructed, which is formed by institutions
to record educational data in a verifiable and immutable ledger to
guarantee data auditability. Multiple institutes can participate in the
blockchain. The storage process is based on blockchain techniques
and storage servers which are secure. The sharing scheme of
educational records proposed in this work refers to achieving a state
of secure and reliable sharing of educational records, and this sharing
operation usually takes place between nodes on the blockchain. Anti-
tampering inspection based on blockchain. Collusion, Tamper Attack
(could be achieved when the number of member nodes is small) and
Replay Attack. Aiming at the need for protection and sharing of
educational records, a secure storage and sharing scheme based on the
blockchain, referred to as EduRSS by Li, Hongzhi & Han, Dezhi &
Li, Kuan-Ching & Castiglione, Arcangelo [1]. The integrity and
security of the data can be ensured by the consortium chain between
Fig. 1 Architecture diagram of the proposed system.
institutions. A distributed institution authentication mechanism is
proposed to ensure the security of blockchain nodes. Due to
digitalization, most of all records including student records have been
digitized. However, currently different digital profiles of a student are
still stored dispersedly in multiple databases, which results in
information silos and vulnerability to security and privacy threats.
Aiming at these deficiencies, this paper by Zhang, Xiaofei & Du,
Haiping & Jia, Zhijuan & Cui, Chi & Yang, Yanyan [2] proposes a
secure storage and sharing scheme of student digital profiles based on
blockchain technology. With the characteristics of decentralization,
security, credibility, and tamper-resistance of the blockchain, the
consensus of network nodes is achieved through the Delegated
Byzantine Fault Tolerance (DBFT) protocol, and the sharing of
student digital profile information is achieved through the access
control mechanism. The public information of educational digital
information is preserved on the blockchain, and the student profiles
are encrypted and stored in a database or cloud, which facilitates the
effective storage of personal digital profiles and information sharing
among various systems. This paper [3] is focused on finding the
potential applications of blockchain technology in solving
educational problems. It provides the core features and advantages of
blockchain technology followed by a few of the current blockchain
applications for education. The benefits and challenges are also
discussed. As of the present application in education most universities
and institutes use blockchain technology to support academic degree
management and summative evaluation for learning outcomes. It can
formulate the whole transcript, which includes learning contents and
outcomes as well as student’s achievements and academic
certificates. It also includes information about research and strongly typed languages. It is primarily used for scripting smart
experience, skills, online learning experience as well as contracts. An integral part of these contracts is the IPFS hash,
individual interests. These data can be safely stored as described specifically a byte32 IPFS hash, intricately linked to the generated
in the paper [4] and accessed on a blockchain network in document, as comprehensively detailed [7]. This hash serves as a
appropriate ways. This contributes to reducing degree fraud pivotal tool for verifying the document's authenticity. Additionally,
significantly. The proposed ideas for future implementation are various other details are essential
carrying out instructing and learning activities for teachers and
students which facilitates the effective storage of personal digital
profiles and information sharing among various systems. This
paper [3] is focused on finding the potential applications of
blockchain technology in solving educational problems. It
provides the core features and advantages of blockchain
technology followed by a few of the current blockchain
applications for education. The benefits and challenges are also
discussed. As of the present application in education most
universities and institutes use blockchain technology to support
academic degree management and summative evaluation for
learning outcomes. It can formulate the whole transcript, which
includes learning contents and outcomes as well as student’s
achievements and academic certificates. It also includes
information about research experience, skills, online learning
experience as well as individual interests. These data can be
safely stored as described in the paper [4] and accessed on a
blockchain network in appropriate ways. This contributes to
reducing degree fraud significantly. The proposed ideas for
future implementation are carrying out instructing and learning
activities for teachers and students.

III. TECHNOLOGIES USED

• React: We use react for building interactive user
interfaces and web applications quickly and efficiently.
• Solidity [9]: Solidity is a statically typed programming
language designed for developing smart contracts that
run on Ethereum. We use solidity for the core smart
contracts of our project.
• Node JS: Node JS is used to write backends and is
responsible for serving frontend pages, assets and
managing authentication using JWT (Json Web Token).
It also has web3 as a dependency which allows us to run
solidity code on frontend.
• IPFS: The Inter Planetary File System is a peer-to-peer
network for storing and sharing data in a distributed file
system. IPFS uses content-addressing to uniquely
identify each file in a global namespace connecting all
computing devices.
• MetaMask: MetaMask is an extension for accessing
Ethereum enabled distributed applications or ”Dapps” in
your browser. The extension injects the Ethereum web3
API into every website’s JavaScript context so that
Dapps can read from the blockchain.
• Ganache: Ganache is used for testing Solidity contracts
on a personal Ethereum Blockchain. It by default
provides an easy setup for spinning up a network with
around ten users with each having 100 eths on their
account. These accounts can be used to mimic the
transactions between the users.
• Truffle [8]: It provides easy compilation, linking,
deployment and binary management of smart contracts
written in solidity language.
IV. IMPLEMENTATION DETAILS
A. Smart Contract for certificate storage and getting the hash
The foundation of any blockchain project rests on its
contract, a crucial component that operates on any node within
the network. These contracts are written in the Solidity
language, a high-level coding language derived from JavaScript
for inclusion in the Certificate. These Solidity files that are
associated with IPFS are managed by platforms such as Pinata
and Infura. They contain the machine code of the Solidity
functions, which is crucial for the proper functioning of the
contracts. IPFS, being a decentralized and distributed system,
ensures the security and accessibility of uploaded documents.
These documents are safeguarded by the network and can be
retrieved using their respective hashes. Due to its distributed
nature, no single user has sole control over a document, as
each node in the IPFS system holds a portion of the file. This
design ensures that no one can modify or deny access to a
document single-handedly.
Fig. 2 Flow diagram of the implemented project
B. FrontEnd
Tailwind CSS serves as the cornerstone of our Frontend
development. It's renowned for being a "utility-first CSS
framework," facilitating the rapid creation of bespoke user
interfaces. Tailwind CSS boasts a vast library of pre-made
utility classes, offering developers the ability to construct
responsive and adaptable UIs. Its gentle learning curve makes
it particularly accessible to those already versed in CSS.
Scalability is one of its core strengths, making it suitable for
projects of any size, from small-scale applications to
enterprise-level endeavors. Its Just-In-Time (JIT) mode
accelerates build times, while smaller file sizes are achieved
through style reusability and predefined design systems.
Moreover, styling is seamlessly integrated into our markup,
eliminating the need to navigate external files.
C. Proposed System
Our proposed MERN (MongoDB, Express, React,
Node.js) application is divided into three distinct modules:
College, Student, and Recruiter. The College module's
primary responsibilities encompass managing student data,
generating credentials, student registration, and uploading
semester certificates. Student access includes viewing their
semester certificates and receiving interview invitations from
recruiters. The Recruiter module offers recruiters the
capability to view student profiles, assess their certificates,
and extend invitations for interviews or coding rounds.
a) MERN Stack: Our application leverages the MERN
stack, which comprises MongoDB for data storage, Express
for API development, React for the front end, and Node.js for
server-side development. This stack enables seamless
communication between the front end and back end.
b) College Module: Within the College module, we
automate credential generation upon student registration.
Randomly generated passwords are sent to students via email,
with the option for them to change these credentials.
Registration can be completed individually through a form or
in bulk via an Excel file, which is processed in Express
and its data stored in MongoDB. To ensure certificate
integrity, students can upload their semester
certificates (up to 8 semesters) to IPFS storage using
Pinata, with the associated hash stored in MongoDB.
The College module offers two methods for uploading
certificates: single student uploads or bulk uploads via
an Excel file. The latter process involves iterating
through each row of the Excel file and converting data
into certificates using OpenCV and a Python script
connected to Express through the child_process
library. The College module also provides access to
student and recruiter lists, with sorting capabilities.
c) Student Module: In the Student module, students
can access their semester certificates upon login.
Additionally, this module allows students to receive and
respond to interview invitations from recruiters. Notifications
are triggered upon invitation receipt, giving students the
option to accept or decline the invitations.
d) The Recruiter module: The Recruiter module
empowers recruiters to review student profiles, assess
certificates, and send interview or coding round invitations.
Recruiters can browse and sort student profiles based on
various criteria, streamlining the selection process. When an
invitation is extended, students receive notifications to accept
or decline the invitation.
Fig. 3 Architecture diagram of the implemented system.
V. CONCLUSION
In conclusion, the integration of a blockchain-based
system for secure document storage within educational
institutions holds immense potential for enhancing the
efficiency, security, and dependability of the recruitment
process. Through the utilization of decentralized storage and
smart contracts, educational institutions can safeguard critical
documents, shielding them from tampering or unauthorized
access. Simultaneously, this technology enables the
automation of document verification and authentication,
significantly mitigating the risks of errors or delays in the
recruitment cycle and bolstering trust and transparency in the
process. One of the paramount advantages of adopting
blockchain technology for document storage in educational
institutions is the heightened level of security it provides,
along with robust protection against tampering or
unauthorized alterations. By dispersing important documents
across multiple nodes within a decentralized storage system,
it becomes nearly impossible for any single entity to
manipulate or erase them. This ensures the documents' [2]
integrity remains intact, and any tampering attempts are
swiftly identified and rectified.
Another pivotal benefit lies in the automation of the [3]
verification and authentication process. Through the
implementation of smart contracts, educational institutions
can establish automated rules and protocols that validate and [4]
authenticate documents automatically. This substantially
diminishes the necessity for manual interventions and the
associated risks of human error, simultaneously accelerating
the pace of the recruitment cycle. The adoption of blockchain [5]
technology for document storage in educational institutions
stands as a strategic investment with the potential to yield
[6]
numerous advantages. These institutions can fortify their
[7]
reputation, safeguard their students' interests, streamline the
recruitment cycle, and diminish the likelihood of errors or
[8]
delays. In doing so, they can cultivate an environment of trust,
reliability, and efficiency within their recruitment processes. [9]
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