• The contract will see OIO provide blockchain consulting and development services to Indocyber Global Teknologi to implement blockchain solutions for authenticating academic certificates.

• The solution will reduce the burden of authentication on employers, and deny forgers the chance to crowd-out employment and education opportunities for legitimate students.

Singapore / 11 February 2021 – Singapore Exchange-listed company OIO Holdings Limited (“OIO”) is pleased to announce a new project with Indocyber Global Teknologi (“Indocyber”) to digitize academic certificates in Indonesia on the blockchain. Under the 6-month consulting contract with Indocyber, OIO will work on enabling users to authenticate their academic track record such as educational transcripts, or professional qualifications. The tamper-resistance of blockchain technology can help to counter the proliferation of forged educational certificates in Asia.

The Rise of the Fake Degrees

Traditional physical certificates suffer from two problems: they are highly susceptible to forgery, and can easily be lost or damaged which incurs hefty replacement fees. Like with anything of value, degrees from reputable universities can often be worth a fortune on the black market. While they cannot be used to buy goods in a store, they certainly act as currency in the job markets. But while central banks have invested heavily in tamper-resistant technologies to foil banknote forgers, schools have been far less active in preventing the debasement of their degree certificates.

In Malaysia for instance, fake degrees are rampant because companies have poor background checks for new hires. In a report by The Star, around 1 in 20 job applicants enter companies using fake qualifications, while 1 in 10 applicants had questionable credentials from unaccredited academic institutions. Fraud investigation firm Akhbar & Associates discovered that between 5% to 7% of the people investigated had fake degrees, while 10% to 15% had degrees from unaccredited universities [1].  This poses a serious problem for educational institutions and employers. It undermines their legitimacy and reputation and also robs genuine candidates of opportunities for further education or employment [2].

Tackling Education Fraud with Blockchain

OIO and Indocyber will work together on developing a blockchain-based platform for securing and validating tamper-resistant digital academic certificates. The platform will use the Hyperledger Besu protocol hosted on a third-party cloud platform.

The platform stands to benefit the different stakeholders involved: educational institutions, students and employers. Educational institutions can benefit from the reduced amount of time and manpower devoted to verifying third party authentication requests. Students can also easily retrieve their qualifications for job applications without having to worry about costly replacement fees for lost or damaged paper certificates. For instance, replacement fees for physical academic certificates from tertiary institutions in Singapore can cost up to SGD100 or USD72 [3]. Furthermore, employers can easily use the platform to authenticate of the certificates of prospective applicants and sift the forgeries from genuine educational certificates [4].

Comments from Rudy, CEO of OIO Singapore Pte Ltd.