Deqree: Certificate Validation 🎓

Develop a cost effective dApp platform to issue and validate certificate credentials using transaction metadata and a native token.

We are a team of Undergrad students experienced in Python, C++, SQL, React.js and scripting. We run a Stake Pool and part of Plutus Pioneer.

In India, cases of fake degrees and forged certificates have been rising rapidly in recent years. When that is coupled with increasing unemployment rates, it results in a significant number of candidates applying for every single job position available on the market.

This means for recruiters it becomes an uphill battle to verify the credibility of each applicant's credentials reliably.

We are thus proposing a solution to use the metadata feature of Cardano Blockchain to create a platform that helps Universities, Ed-tech platforms, Recruiters, and degree holders alike to authorize, validate and securely store their certificate records in an easily accessible manner.

https://youtu.be/GazDTaRKpjQ

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Detailed Problem Statement:

In India and many other developing countries, The process of checking these degree certificates generates a lot of documentation, and storing them digitally necessitates a central authority in charge of managing the records, which opens the door to tampering and data loss. Some academic institutions make it simple and quick to check the validity of their qualifications online, without even asking who needs the information. Others assign the responsibility to third parties (by design or regulation), while others market the service. Finally, there are times when there is no other option but to contact the academic secretary's office at the educational institution to validate the legitimacy of a credential or qualification. Academic degree fraud, on the other hand, is a reality that arises with the involvement of authorities and institutional employees.

India, as a populous country with a large youth population and a gateway to numerous educational opportunities, lacks a consistent, stable, reliable, and tamper-proof method of verifying credentials. This is a significant disadvantage since there are a large number of fraud cases, which slows down the growth of our education sector and job markets. The existing tools available are insufficiently safe to keep fraud to a bare minimum. They, sadly, have numerous flaws and, on top of that, are ineffective in terms of cost.

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What we're trying to achieve. (Project Description)

• To develop a decentralized application on the top of Cardano's blockchain to combat this serious problem.
• Since blockchain technology is resistant to data manipulation, it makes the validation of academic qualifications tamper-proof.
• The date (Timestamp) from which a piece of data is recorded cannot be changed and is publicly verifiable which is very crucial to verify the date on which a particular degree is being issued to a student.
• There's no need for a central authority.
• We will also be deploying smart contracts for special use cases such as degree revocation.

The use of Metadata:

• Client (Universities) will upload the content metadata from the digital degree and our platform will encode the metadata and assign it a unique key for each student.
• The metadata will then be attached to the transaction as Cardano gives us the ability to add metadata to blockchain transactions and the encoded information will be stamped onto Cardano's blockchain.
• Each transaction will use our private native token which will help us with traceability and accountability.
• The stamped information will be easily verifiable with our Deqree platform.

We also are working on our prototype that is featured in the given demo. We are adding new functionality everyday and refining our UI/UX. We are welcome to any feedback or suggestions regarding the prototype and also do contact us if you would like to test our product independently. We are also contacting different universities to test our prototype.

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Some Guiding questions

• Why does the target audience care about the solution?
  Our solution makes the process of authorizing and validating certificates an easy-to-use and straightforward process.

• Does the solution need hardware components?
  The user can access our services via a smartphone or PC.

• How does this create value for Cardano?
  Our project has the potential to bring in thousands of new users to the Cardano Ecosystem as India's higher education market is estimated to be over 37 million students and currently facing this serious issue.

Several other such questions have been addressed in the attached white paper.

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FAQs

1. As the Indian government has a National Academic Depository, will you need to change the whole system at the government level?

A. No, as Deqree can act along with the conventional government system. There is no restriction to that. Also, NAD requires the candidate to provide a set of private information to the verifier and also needs to be pre-registered for that service to work. On top of that, the NAD is slow, time-taking and costly for the end-user while our system is quick and completely free for the end-users.

2. Is your product only restricted to universities?

A. No, as we are also looking forward to bringing Ed-Tech platforms onboard for issuing their online course-based certificates through Deqree.

3. How will you convince any universities to come on board?
A. We have applied to several universities' Incubation cells. We are currently in talks with India's top technical institute and have received positive feedback from them. We are also initially focusing on Ed-tech startups and we will work with them to gain customer feedback, refine our product and improve our services.

4. Do you store private customer data?
A. No, our platform doesn't store anything but generates a unique hash for each certificate and then stamps it via transaction metadata. Since we don't store any private data, we don't need any approval from government bodies under data regulations. 

6. Will you use Atala PRISM?

A. Yes, we will look to integrate it once its SDK becomes publicly available.

5. Do you plan to open-source the project in the future?
A. Yes, after Mainnet launch and a security assessment we will open-source our project. 

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Expenses:

We will be requesting funds in two batches.

Fund 6-

• Software Development and hiring-  $18000
• Server, Software, and Hardware Acquisition costs- $4000 

Fund 7-

• Software Development and hiring- $18000
• Customer outreach and support- $4000

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Timeline:

• August 2021- Prototype (Launched)
• (1-3 month) December 2021- Testnet and Native token Launch (Beta)
• (4-6 month) February 2021- Mainnet Launch 
• (6-12 month) April 2022- Integrate Smart Contract functionality and gain clients

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Future Plans:

We plan to integrate smart contracts, will also explore Atala Prism integration when the required tools become available and expand it to more countries worldwide.