Academic and Skills Credentialing Using Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) and W3C Standards: Technology Assessment

Abstract

The ongoing push for the 4th industrial  revolution is setting the stage to digitise, persist  and verify identity along with credentials.  Academic and skills credentials are currently 

verified manually and have much scope for automation using cryptographic techniques but requires standardisation to facilitate future  systems interoperability. The Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) and World Wide Web  Consortium (W3C) Verifiable Credentials (VC)  standards presents the possibility to achieve this  credential verification automation. To  accomplish this, an understanding of various  DLTs and requirements for a viable skills tracking system is important. Therefore, this  research aims to access the selected DLTs against the assessment criterion presented and an  analysis has been completed to determine which  DLT is suitable for the proposed system. The  DLTs are assessed in terms of their ability to  support the rapid prototyping of such a system  and provide recommendations to guide a future  development path from the perspective of  standards compliance. We conclude that few  DLTs possess the maturity to provide proper  requirements coverage due to the emergent  nature of the DLT space. Additionally, this paper  presents the high-level requirements to achieve a  minimally viable solution that can demonstrate  such digital credential verification in the  academic and skills tracking context. 

https://doi.org/10.59200/ICONIC.2022.019