The Maharashtra State Board of Skill Development (MSBSD) has issued nearly 100,000 verifiable digital diplomas embedded in the Polygon blockchain using the LegitDoc platform. “This project aims to digitize the diplomas and transcripts that are provided annually to almost 100,000 students per year by MSBSD. This is done by creating a clear digital diploma PDF embedded in the Polygon Blockchain,” said Neil Martis, founder of LegitDoc. indianexpress.com.
The project was created with the joint efforts of MSBSD and Maharashtra State Innovation Society (MSINS) enabled by LegitDoc. It is a blockchain-based system for publishing and verifying digital documents.
According to Martis, the Blockchain anchored diploma provides the highest level of data security, privacy, transparency and cost reduction compared to regular online certificates.
Notably, the previous board had no provision for issuing diplomas online. This is the first attempt to digitize the certificate by the board. “However, instead of switching to traditional centralized digital methods, the board has made the decision to leap-frog to direct chain-based digital certificates,” Martis said.
The diploma certificate can be verified in the Dapp distributed by Polygon on the board’s website. (Photo: LegitDoc)
Previously, MSBSD only issued hardcopy mark sheets and diploma certificates. “…issuing hardcopy certificates for students usually requires the involvement of more than 1000 personnel in the chain of training institutes and departments, which usually takes a month,” he said.
He explained that diploma verification is also a manual process where a typical verification request has to be processed by almost 3 board officials with a typical cycle time of 30 days. “Therefore, this project was carried out to automate the entire process by digitizing the issuance of diplomas and verification through blockchain technology and eliminating all types of manual intervention and inefficiencies.”
Blockchain has been adopted by Maharashtra for use cases such as caste certificates and COVID certificates. “Given MSBSD’s requirement to digitize the credentialing system and the past success in implementing cases using blockchain, the Maharashtra government decided to issue blockchain-based diploma certificates,” said Mithun John, Joint CEO of MSINS.
Meanwhile, the government has previously tested this solution on the Ethereum blockchain for history student credentials. “However, due to the scalability and high gas costs associated with Ethereum, the board has made a full-scale deployment on Polygon,” added Martis.
