Certifying Digitally Issued Diplomas

TL;DR

The paper addresses the challenge of certifying diplomas digitally in a way that remains verifiable even if the issuing institution is unavailable. It proposes a ledger-backed protocol where a signed datagram and a sequence of updates ( secured by per-diploma one-time keys) are anchored to a public ledger via an integrity provider, with proofs of provenance used for independent verification by validators. It contributes a concrete data model for certificates and updates, a governance framework with clearly defined roles (holder, issuer, integrity provider, validators), and a comprehensive discussion of privacy, security, and archival considerations. This approach enables durable, cross-institutional verification of diplomas, supports revocation and key rotation, and addresses long-term storage and privacy challenges inherent to digital credential ecosystems.

Abstract

We describe a protocol for creating, updating, and revoking digital diplomas that we anticipate would make use of the protocol for transferring digital assets elaborated by Goodell, Toliver, and Nakib. Digital diplomas would maintain their own state, and make use a distributed ledger as a mechanism for verifying their integrity. The use of a distributed ledger enables verification of the state of an asset without the need to contact the issuing institution, and we describe how the integrity of a diploma issued in this way can persist even in the absence of the issuing institution.