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Chapter 4 A critical review on using blockchain technology in education domain 111

accountability of information in registries. Existing systems use
Web 2.0-based solutions for e-governance in educational sys-
tems. Web 3.0 solutions based on AI and DLT are highly suitable
for offering EG 3.0 solutions. Ripple’s University Blockchain
Research Initiative (UBRI), University of Nicosia (Cyprus), Ox-
ford’s Blockchain University (Woolf Development), Massachu-
setts Institute of Technology’s Blockcert project [20,22], Open
University’s Knowledge Media Institute use Bitcoin, Ethereum,
and Exonum BC.
Whether BC is necessary in education domain and can be
decided by considering the following factors:
• Necessity for a shared, consistent data store
• Multiple entities (writers) operate on the data store
• Data records once written cannot be updated as hash values
cannot be changed; otherwise, modified data can be main-
tained in databases, and their hashes can be maintained in
the BC
• Absence of trust
• Personal/sensitive identifiers cannot be maintained in the BC
• No centralized control over the data store.
• Asset store
• Maintain a tamperproof audit of all logs to datastore
The major stakeholders of a university system include
learners/students, teachers/professors, content providers,
employer, validators, and administration departments. All trans-
actions associated with a student are signed and timestamped.
Fake identity and fraud can be avoided as the transactional
record is visible to all and immutable. A student can enroll for
courses offered by a college, online courses offered by higher
engineering institutions as well as MOOCs. Course materials
need not be stored in BC. They can be stored offline in cloud.
Details regarding group projects and participation of team mem-
bers in the project can also be maintained and monitored. Profes-
sors teach and assess the students. These credits can be
maintained in the BC (Fig. 4.7).
Blocks can maintain details of students, credit details, courses
registered, rating given by students to courses, and links to course
details maintained in cloud. Smart contracts can be written to give
course recommendations to students, grades earned by the stu-
dents, accredit courses undertaken by the students, recommend
job opportunities for students, network employers, and students,
and manage payments.
When certification/credits/graduation is done by a student,
these transcripts are verified and encrypted using public key by
the validators. These certificates can be stored in a block by the