OpenCerts: A case study in using blockchain
Blockchain technology has mostly created harms in society so far. It has only a mimetic reality to it, fueled by people speculating and getting overly-excited. The vast majority of crypto speculators lose money.
For blockchain to find success it has to find its killer applications, and also become more widely adopted as a medium of exchange. Every time we hear of a genuine application of blockchain we should get excited and give it a lot of attention. I think OpenAttestation and OpenCerts by Singapore’s GovTech deserve some appreciation.
Problem: Degree attestation. You apply for a job (or visa or post-grad programme) and you are asked to prove that you really got your degree.
Paper solution: You pay your university a small fee to chop and attest a copy of your degree and send it to the employer. It costs you some money, it costs the university some administrative overhead and it takes a couple of days.
Fully public ledger solution: Everyone knows what degree each person has because it is put on a public record. Major data privacy violation.
Fully public hash solution: The hash of everyone’s degree is put on a public record. You can send the digital copy of your degree to your employer and they can check it against the public record of hashes.
Where should we keep this list of hashes?
Centralised storage: The government (e.g. Ministry of Education) maintains a database of hash values that can be queried to check that someone’s digital degree is authentic. Downsides: trust in database management, no audit history of data, unclear who gets to be the world authority on degrees.
Decentralised storage: Upload the hashes onto a decentralised blockchain
Why blockchain?
- Always up, no single point of failure
- Tamper-resistant: changes leave a public audit trail
- Prevents some bad actor in the database management from giving themselves a PhD
- Open-source frameworks and decentralised global computers get along well
- Isn’t it so neat to use a technology that is free software and also have the confidence that it runs on the distributed global computer.
- Can be used by other countries or new organisations without relying on trusting any particular Singaporean entity
- Other countries would definitely not want to join this technology if it was just a database in Singapore, but this decentralised solution makes it live in a neutral space.