First anti-fraud plataform for the registration and certification of diplomas and academic certificates based in blockchain

Project Information

SmartDegrees

Grant agreement ID: 887349

DOI

10.3030/887349

Project closed

EC signature date 19 December 2019

Start date 1 January 2020

End date 30 June 2020

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Innovation In SMEs

Total cost

€ 71 429,00

EU contribution

€ 50 000,00

Coordinated by

SMART DEGREES SL
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SmartDegrees (First anti-fraud plataform for the registration and certification of diplomas and academic certificates based in blockchain)

Reporting period: 2020-01-01 to 2020-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Fraud in degrees is a global and very significant social problem that is rising. 84% of hiring managers have found some misrepresentation in the resumes that they reviewed , being education one of the most common averaging 23% (affects 30% of profiles in LinkedIn).
This huge problem causes pains for the value chain players:

1) For universities: Causes loss of university’s reputation and damages the value of university studies.
2) For companies: Hiring under-educated professionals for a job might cause important damages, for example impacting on health of users, in the case of medical certificates frauds.
3) For professionals: Benefits scammers who take on jobs and wages that do not deserve.
SmartDegrees wants to become a gold standard in the education degrees sector with a blockchain based-solution that enables the decentralised authentication and verification of credentials, allowing academic institutions to provide a secure service, facilitating graduates self-sovereign ownership and portability of its credentials, and recruiters access to immutable degrees, all in a seamless process.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During Phase 1’s six-month period we have performed the following tasks:
1) Market analysis, customer acceptance and risk assessment:
o Tested and identified the acceptance and willingness to pay in the market to this innovative product.
o Identified additional segments to expand, geography priorities and, additional lever to shorten the access to early-adopters.
o Analysed in detail the value proposition of potential competitors.
2) Stakeholder engagement: Identified potential stakeholders to foster the acceptance and commercialization.
3) Technological roadmap and innovation strategy: Short term and medium-term roadmaps, identifying developments, and IP improvements to protect the activity.
4) Operational, technological and financial requirements analysis for a successful market launch.
The work performed has confirmed the high potential interest, competitiveness and growth of SmartDegrees. It has also allowed to recognize the slow acceptance of the market to this new product. As a result, some changes (pivots) have been introduced:
1) Prioritized new segments (language accreditation institutions) and geographies (development countries) as easier early adopters willing to pay.
2) New attributes to the product (self-sovereign identity, SSI), with strong synergies to provide more strength as a SaaS provider.
3) New activity of consultancy, to overcome the barriers associated to the acceptance of the product (new market).

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The technology blockchain experiences positive traction in the market, benefitting from the European Commission (EC)’s initiatives, as European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI), to which other worldwide stakeholders converge. These EC’s initiatives drive:
1. Credentials, through standardization (W3C Verifiable Credentials)
2. Self-sovereign identity (SSI), as a base to support other applications
During Phase 1, SmartDegrees has taken advantage of this drive, including them in its offer, to make it more solid and better attend the market, leveraging its hybrid blockchain platform (private& public), as the existing trend in the state of the art, advancing over its application in degrees accreditation.

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