German Frankfurt School to Issue Blockchain-Based Course Certificates

The Frankfurt School of Finance & Management (FS) in Germany will now offer students the ability to prove their qualifications using blockchain technology, Cointelegraph auf Deutsch reported September 17.

As part of a pilot program, graduates of one of FS’ courses on blockchain technology — based on the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain — will be able to prove their successful completion of the course with a certification stored on a blockchain itself.

For the pilot project, FS has partnered with the leading blockchain-related software supplier Consensys, and Ethense, a decentralized credentialing platform. Consensys has developed a decentralized app (DApp) for so-called self-sovereign identities, wherein certificates are not necessarily published on a blockchain, but only copied to the computers of numerous network participants.

The copies can be encrypted so that the owner of a particular node in the respective network can decide on a case-by-case basis which certificates he or she makes visible to other network participants. Thus, the blockchain actually makes credentials physically portable for the students.

Veronika Kütt, Research Associate at the FS Blockchain Center and Head of the pilot project, finds the opportunity to digitally present certificates "fascinating":

"We are doing pioneer work here [...] Our students find it a privilege to be involved in new technology at an early stage. It's a bit like the programming of the first public Internet sites in the mid-'90s."

Professor Philipp Sandner, Head of the FS Blockchain Center, added:

"With the blockchain you can store personal data, such as a CV or identity card, as in a picture book. With our project we show how easy and comfortable that can be for the user. "

This makes the FS the first educational institution in Germany to offer its students blockchain-based certificates. The new technology is also being used in Switzerland at the University of Basel. At the end of April, the Center for Innovative Finance (CIF) introduced course certificates registered on the Ethereum blockchain.