Indian State Maharashtra Issues Nearly 100,000 Diplomas on Polygon Blockchain

The Maharashtra State Board of Skill Development (MSBSD) in collaboration with Maharashtra State Innovation Society (MSINS) has issued about 100,000 verifiable diplomas on Polygon blockchain using the LegitDoc platform, The Indian Express reported on Thursday.

Maharashtra Issues 100k Diplomas on Polygon

“The project aims to digitise diplomas and transcripts that are annually issued to nearly 100,000 students annually by MSBSD. This was done by creating tamper-evident digital diploma PDFs that are anchored on Polygon Blockchain,” Neil Martis, co-founder of LegitDoc said.

Before now, MSBSD did not issue online diplomas and this is the first time it is issuing such. Martis noted that instead of the board using traditional centralized digital methods to issue online diplomas, they decided to do it using blockchain technology instead, because it is more secure, private, transparent, and reduces costs.

Martis explained that MSBSD used to only issue hard copy diplomas to students, which required the board to hire more than 1,000 workers across its chain of training institutes and departments for them to help distribute the diplomas, which takes a lot of time

He also noted that the verification process of the diplomas was also a manual method in which verification requests would need to be carried out by three board officials within a period of one month.

“Hence, this project was taken up to automate the entire process by digitising diploma issuance and verification via the blockchain technology and eliminating all kinds of manual interventions and inefficiencies,” he said.

Ethereum Scalability Issue

According to Martis, Maharashtra has already piloted this solution on the Ethereum blockchain for former student credentials but due to “scalability and high gas cost associated with Ethereum,” they decided to issue it on the Polygon blockchain.

Meanwhile, Maharashtra has in the past used blockchain technology for use cases such as caste certificates and COVID certificates. 

Mithun John, Joint CEO of MSINS said the board’s “past success in implementing blockchain use cases” played an important role in its decision to issue these blockchain-based diplomas.

Meanwhile, blockchain adoption by several governmental institutions has continued to grow in recent times. In June, The Nigerian Exchange (NGX) Ltd. said it is planning to launch a blockchain-enabled exchange platform by next year.