Building a Decentralized Education Ecosystem: Politehnica
University of Timisoara’s Pioneering Blockchain Initiatives
Victor Holotescu, Radu Vasiu, Andrei Ternauciuc, Carmen Holotescu, Diana Andone
[email protected],
[email protected]Abstract:
In alignment with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the EU's vision for a high-quality,
inclusive digital education landscape, this paper presents an in-depth analysis of integrating Verifiable
Credentials (VCs) within the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI) utilizing Politehnica University
of Timisoara's (UPT) Moodle-based learning platform. The research provides a case study that highlights the
process and benefits of digitizing university diplomas and micro-credentials, facilitating secure and compliant
issuance through EBSI. The study explores how enhanced credibility and portability of academic credentials
contribute to lifelong learning and bridge the gap between education and the labor market. It examines the
technical challenges and solutions encountered during the Moodle-EBSI integration, offering valuable insights
into how this synergy can automate and streamline the credentialing process, support cross-border
educational mobility, and foster personalized learning paths. Moreover, the paper discusses how such
integration can simplify administrative processes, bolster trust, and increase operational efficiency, thereby
supporting the EU Digital Education Action Plan and addressing the skill shortages highlighted in the European
Year of Skills. The research ultimately serves as a comprehensive guide for educational entities and
policymakers on leveraging blockchain for educational credentials, setting a precedent for future
advancements in the European digital qualification framework.
Keywords: Blockchain; Verifiable Credentials; European Blockchain Services Infrastructure; Diplomas; Micro-
credentials; Educational policies
Introduction
The United Nations Sustainable Development 2030 agenda defines one of the goals as “ensuring inclusive and
equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all” (UN, 2022), while the EU
Digital Education Action Plan (2021-2027) envisions a high-quality, inclusive, and accessible digital education in
Europe (EC, 2020). Moreover, 2023 was the European Year of Skills, highlighting the need to advance lifelong
learning and skills shortages, supporting innovation and competitiveness (EC, 2022a).
In October 2021, the European Commission launched the standard of the European Digital Credentials for
Learning, responding to the need of the citizens to easily share their diplomas, transcripts of records, and
other certificates of learning achievements in formal, informal, and non-formal settings, securely and digitally,
when applying for a job or further studies and training in any Member State (EC, 2021). The European Digital
Credentials Infrastructure (EDCI) is in development, which by using open standards will make the digital
credentials interoperable and recognized across Europe, thus decreasing credential fraud. Moreover, in June
2022, the Council of the European Union adopted a “Recommendation on a European approach to micro-
credentials for lifelong learning and employability”, seeking to support the development, implementation, and
recognition of micro-credentials across institutions, businesses, sectors, and borders. Certifying the learning
outcomes of short-term learning experiences, the micro-credentials could offer a flexible and targeted way to
help people acquire new knowledge, to upskill and reskill the competencies needed for their personal and
professional development (EC, 2022b).
In the context of the changes brought to the teaching and learning process worldwide by opening up
education through digitalization and emerging technologies, to achieve all these strategies and priorities, there
is a need to redesign the way educational credentials are issued, stored, displayed, and verified, bringing new
opportunities for flexible participation in traditional education and in lifelong learning for upskilling and
reskilling (DCC, 2020).
Blockchain technology, with its characteristics of self-sovereignty, trust, transparency, immutability,
disintermediation, and collaboration (Antonopoulos and Wood, 2018; Holotescu and Vasiu, 2020), can
represent a solution for a trusted decentralized credentialing ecosystem, making it more robust, scalable, and
flexible than a centralized system (Grech and Camilleri, 2017; Grech et al., 2021; McGreal, 2023).
Such a solution was adopted by the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI), launched in 2019,
which through its Diploma use case, constitutes a cross-border decentralized credentialing ecosystem for
issuing Verifiable Credentials.
One of the projects that have explored the EBSI ecosystem is “EBSI4RO: Connecting Romania through
Blockchain”, implemented by the Executive Unit for Financing Higher Education, Research, Development and
Innovation (UEFISCDI) and Politehnica University of Timisoara (UPT), Romania. The two partners have
conceived and tested a national system for issuing university diplomas and micro-credentials as VCs on EBSI.
Moreover, the issuance process was integrated by the UPT team into the institutional educational platform,
and the concepts and steps for achieving this result are presented in this paper.
Verifiable Credentials and associated concepts
In our daily lives, there are situations when we must prove our identities and credentials (sets of claims
attributes about a person made by an issuer) to others, a process that involves three roles in a “trust triangle”:
the issuer, the holder, and the verifier. A Verifiable Credential (VC) is a tamper-evident and privacy-respecting
credential, with specific Metadata and Proofs, requested by the Holder and issued by a competent authority,
called a Trusted Issuer, and where the authorship can be cryptographically verified. The VCs, which are stored
in the Holder’s digital wallet, are machine-verifiable documents and can be used to build verifiable
presentations by the Holder. The verifiable presentations could be cryptographically verified by any Verifier
agreed by them and without contacting the issuer. The notion of Verifiable Credentials is interconnected with
Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI), which guarantees that the user is central to the administration of his/her digital
identity, being the data owner and in control of what data in the personal digital wallet he/she shares with
verifiers, thus proving that the shared information belongs to the holder (EBSI, 2022a).
As shown by Lacity and Carmel (2022), multiple standards-making bodies, open-source working groups,
organizations, and individuals are working for the creation of open standards for Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI)
and Verifiable Credentials, such as Linux Foundation, the World Economic Forum, the Sovrin Foundation, the
W3C Verifiable Credentials Working Group, and the Digital Credentials Consortium (DCC).
The W3C Verifiable Credentials (formerly known as Verifiable Claims) Working Group (VCWG) started its
activity in 2017, intending to “make expressing and exchanging credentials that have been verified by a third
party easier and more secure on the Web”, currently working on the VC Data Model v2.0 (W3C, 2023).
Comprising several top universities, the Digital Credentials Consortium (DCC) was founded in 2020, to propose
a modern concept of credentials for bringing benefits to learners and relying parties (such as employers) by
improving how skills and competencies are conveyed and recognized (DCC, 2020).
To ensure the authenticity of issuers and holders of VCs and the key element for self-sovereign identity (SSI),
there are used Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs), which are created through their wallets or back-office systems
and controlled by individuals and organizations, provide greater security and privacy of their online
information and not requiring a centralized registry. Acting as associated URL-based identifiers, being portable
between service providers and existing as long as their controller wants to use them, DIDs became a W3C
Recommendation in July 2022, as “a new tool to empower everyone on the web with privacy-respecting online
identity and consent-based data sharing” (W3C, 2022).
European Blockchain Services Infrastructure Ecosystem
Launched in 2019, the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI) is the most important Blockchain
initiative of the European Commission and the European Blockchain Partnership, founded in 2018 by 29
countries, including Romania. EBSI was developed and deployed through a network of distributed nodes across
Europe and aims to leverage the power of blockchain for the public good, creating cross-border trust services
for the seven use cases selected by the EBP so far: Self-sovereign Identity, Diploma, SME financing, Document
Traceability, Social Security, Asylum Process Management, and Trusted Data Sharing, thus making
decentralized governance (DeGov) a reality for European Citizens (EBSI, 2022a; EBSI, 2023b).
Mainly these use cases are based on Verifiable Credentials that adhere to the W3C Verifiable Credentials Data
Model, bringing usages in a large variety of domains (W3C, 2022):
• for Citizens: VCs could guarantee and verify the Identity of a person or legal entity, educational
credentials in Education and Employment, social insurance for Social Security health certificates in
Health;
• for Businesses: VCs can be used to guarantee and verify the origin and authenticity of a Food product,
the origin of Funding, the consignment of a Transport, the green Energy consumption, and the origin
of Audited publications or books.
Based on W3C’s popular and industry-accepted open standards. and addressing scalability, flexibility, and
interoperability, through the Diploma use case, EBSI provides the elements of a Web3 trust model for sharing
Verifiable Credentials between public administrations, citizens, and businesses, making data easy to verify,
anywhere, anytime, replacing the Web 2.0 motto ‘trust the platform’ with the one of Web3 ‘don’t trust, verify’
(EBSI, 2023a; EBSI, 2023b). The EBSI Diplomas use case represents an implementation of the European Digital
Credentials for Learning standard (EC, 2021).
At the EBSI technical level, public sector entities, such as ministries of education acting as Trusted
Accreditation Organizations (TAOs) and universities or training institutions, acting as Trusted Issuers (TIs),
register their accreditations and public keys on the EBSI blockchain ledger, which can be identified based on
their Decentralised Identifiers (DIDs).
Figure 1: UPT Scenario illustrating the workflow, actors, and their roles for issuing VCs on EBSI.
Whenever one of the TIs issues a Verifiable Credential (e.g., a diploma or a micro-credential) containing
verifiable information to a Holder (student/citizen) and using the Open ID Connect Protocol, using a Verifiable
Presentation from the Holder, any Verifier (university or company) can check that the issuing entity is trusted
by accessing EBSI’s decentralized trusted registries, without the need to contact the issuer. In addition to the
DID documents of TIs, EBSI makes available in real-time to Verifiers the accreditation given by a TAO, which
itself is a Verifiable Credential and the link to the associated Trusted Schema. Furthermore, EBSI provides the
schemas of the Verifiable Credentials. A schema supports the verification process and ensures that the TIs
respect the agreed data models.
In the scenario described above and illustrated in Figure 1, the TAO, TI, Holder, and Verifier are integral
components of a trust chain. Trust flows downwards and is inherited from the top, facilitating the secure and
decentralized exchange of Verifiable Credentials. This structure establishes trust between entities that do not
necessarily know each other (EBSI, 2022a; Tan et al., 2023; Hylli, 2022).
Once the trust chain is set up, EBSI enables Verifiers to easily verify whether the Issuer of a VC can be trusted.
This model is designed such as to be easy to manage for the TAOs and the TIs, be easy to verify, thus the
verifiers can easily check the authenticity of the information, and be difficult to fake, prohibiting information
copying and duplication.
The decentralized education ecosystem
The Politehnica University of Timisoara (UPT), Romania is one of the pioneering higher education institutions in
the country, adopting an open education strategy for the digitalization of the teaching and learning processes,
being recognized as a valuable model of best practices for European universities, especially during and after
the pandemic (Vasiu and Andone, 2014; Andone et al., 2020). The innovation engine is represented by the
Center of eLearning, which implemented the Virtual Campus in 2009, for supporting academic programs, and
the UniCampus platform in 2014, for delivering MOOCs (Ternauciuc et al., 2018; Mihaescu et al., 2014).
Both platforms are customized and extended versions of the open-source Learning Management System
Moodle, hosting online spaces for blended courses at undergraduate, Master, and Doctoral levels, and MOOCs
for continuous learning, and are accompanied by mobile applications for mobile learning (Holotescu et al.,
2018).
Between April 2021-March 2023, Politehnica University of Timisoara (UPT) and the Executive Unit for
Financing Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation (UEFISCDI) were partners in the project
“EBSI4RO: Connecting Romania through Blockchain”, one of the aims being the development of a
Credentialing System for issuing university diplomas on EBSI.
They were pioneers in the EBSI Early Adopters Programme, in which two European universities alliances and
20 universities from 15 countries took part, implementing a cross-border successful scenario for university
diplomas, together with teams from Greece and France (EBSI, 2022b).
Therefore, in the process of implementing the Credentialing System, participation in the EBSI Early Adopters
Programme waves 2 (July 2021 – May 2022) allowed the UPT team to learn from and collaborate with the EBSI
team and other universities within the Diplomas cluster.
The services needed to implement the Credentialing System had to plugin into the existing solutions, but also
to have the capability to interconnect with EBSI Infrastructure. For this purpose, the open-source WaltID wallet
was selected due to its compliance with EU identity standards (EBSI/ESSIF), ease of use, and integration. Its
adoption was facilitated by its use of mainstream programming languages and expert support. Additionally,
the first author has made a contribution to WaltID’s open-source libraries (WaltID, 2022).
Therefore, the proposed solution is based on the following components:
• Issuance, which is based on the solution proposed by the WaltID wallet
• Integration with the UEFISCDI RMUR system
• Integration with UPT Educational Platform.
Issuance of Verifiable Credentials
The issuance services for EBSI Verifiable Credentials were implemented on the EBSI4RO project site
(https://issuer.ebsi4ro.ro).
A student must authenticate with the UPT account, then he or she can select the diplomas and student ID to
be issued and be redirected to the WaltID personal wallet, where the verifiable credentials will be stored.
Figure 2: Login interface for the Issuer platform
The credentials are available in the wallet and can be exported or can be packed into a Verifiable Presentation
to be shared with 3rd parties.
Figure 3: Users can choose which type of documents they want to issue to their wallets
In the Early Adopters scenario, two flows were defined: Credential issuance flow, where a student requests
issuance of a verifiable credential from a Trusted Issuer, and Verifiable presentation exchange flow, where the
student presents credentials to a Verifier.
Issuance integration with the UPT Platform
Verifiable Identity Attributes (Student ID) were issued by Politehnica University of Timisoara (acting as Trusted
Issuer) together with a Europass diploma valid on EBSI, for the Bachelor diploma. The Student ID and the
Bachelor diploma are modeled as Verifiable Attestation, a W3C-compliant Verifiable Credential.
Issuance integration with the UEFISCDI RMUR system
The integration of the Credentialing System with RMUR - the Single National Student Enrolment Registry
operated by UEFISCDI, is still in development, adapting the system to the new configuration of EBSI and
changes of the legal framework, which is an ongoing process.
The integration consists of enrolling in the EBSI system and developing APIs to authorize universities to issue
Bachelor, Master, and PhD diplomas. Given the overall architecture of the system, the Credentialing system
has the following activities/modules involved: create necessary services to the existing National Enrolment
Students Registry to provide an identity and allow the integration of the service to the partner (UPT).
Figure 4: Issuing confirmation on UPT platform
Piloting the Credentialing System for University Diplomas
The Credentialing System was piloted, tested, and validated for compliance with the internal procedures of the
universities:
• university diplomas are issued on EBSI, as Verifiable Credentials;
• shared/validated in the hiring process by companies.
The first pilot of the Credentialing System was realized during the Multi-University (MU) Pilot of the EBSI EA
Programme, as part of Cluster 2 – Diploma credentials, together with the teams of Greece and France,
preparing the scenario in which a student applies for a PhD with a Bachelor and Master degree from a foreign
country, being issued Bachelor, Master and PhD Diploma Credentials.
More specifically, Anca, a Romanian student, who graduated with her Bachelor studies from the Faculty of
Electronics, Telecommunications, and Information Technologies at the Politehnica University of Timisoara,
obtained her Master Diploma at the University of Athens in Greece and then applied for a PhD degree at the
University of Lille in France.
The steps of the implemented scenario are:
(1)
• Anca is a Romanian student. She is applying for Bachelor Level studies at the Politehnica University of
Timisoara.
• She receives her student email account from Politehnica University of Timisoara.
• Anca signs into the Politehnica University of Timisoara Issuer Portal using her student credentials.
• The Politehnica University of Timisoara issues a student ID (Verifiable Attestation)
• Anca officially becomes a student of the Politehnica University of Timisoara and receives her Bachelor
Diploma upon successfully finalizing her studies.
(2)
• Anca is applying for a Master Programme at the University of Athens.
• She requests that Politehnica University of Timisoara issues her Bachelor Diploma (Verifiable
Attestation).
• The University of Athens verifies the Student ID and Bachelor Diploma and Anca successfully enrolls,
obtaining her Master degree upon completion.
(3)
• Anca applies for a Ph.D. degree at the University of Lille, France
• She requests the University of Athens to issue her Master Diploma
• The University of Lille verifies it and Anca enrolls for a Ph.D. degree
• The University of Lille issues Anca’s Ph.D. degree in a format that can be shared by email and verified
online.
Figure 5: The implemented cross-border scenario
The Trusted Accreditation Organizations are:
• Ministry of Education, UEFISCDI, Romania
• Ministry of Education, Ministry of Digital Governance, GRNET Greece
The Trusted Issuers are:
• Politehnica University of Timisoara, Romania
• University of Athens, Greece
• University of Lille, France.
In the implemented scenario, the open-source WaltID wallet (walt.id), which is EBSI compliant, was used as the
personal student wallet in the 3 countries and 3 universities.
In the scenario, there are two flows:
• Credential issuance flow, where a student requests issuance of a verifiable credential from a Trusted
Issuer
• Verifiable presentation exchange flow, where the student presents credentials to a Verifier.
Verifiable Identity Attributes (Student ID) were issued by Politehnica University of Timisoara (acting as Trusted
Issuer) together with a Europass diploma valid on EBSI, for the Bachelor diploma. The Student ID and the
Bachelor diploma are modeled as described in the schema for Europass Verifiable Attestation, a W3C-
compliant Verifiable Credential.
The “Credential issuance” flow is initiated by the learner requesting the issuance of a verifiable credential from
the Trusted Issuer, in our case the Politehnica University of Timisoara (UPT). For this, they authenticate with
the UPT institutional educational platform. The learner is presented with the credentials they are eligible to
receive (which is determined by the learner’s achievement record) – diplomas for different academic levels
and micro-credentials. The learner makes their selections and provides the identifier(s) with which they want
the credential to be associated. The issuer generates the credential(s) and sends it/them to the learner. This
process allows the learner to associate their credentials with real-world identities, such as emerging self-
sovereign ID, an approach enabling learners to control when, to whom, and how they share data about
themselves, and to cryptographically prove control over the identifier and associated documents (EBSI.fr,
2022).
Figure 6: Envisioned experience for UPT issuance of Verifying credentials
Issuing Micro-credentials on EBSI
Another mechanism for issuing micro-credentials is currently under development, which will extend the
current infrastructure, being piloted using badges and micro-certificates issued on the UniCampus platform.
Figure 7: Example of course completion certificate on UniCampus
The platform currently hosts MOOCs developed by UPT as well as its partners in various projects, including
EBSI4RO. These courses are available for free to users interested in the various subjects available and offer
course certificates (Figure 7) and badges (Figure 8) upon course completion (Andone et al., 2021).
By integrating the EBSI4RO Issuer with the UniCampus platform, built on the open-source Learning
Management System Moodle, we aim to enable users to export their badges and micro-certificates into their
EBSI-powered wallets. Similar integration of Web3 modules in Moodle has been accomplished by (Vidovič et
al., 2022; Tanriverdı, 2024).
Figure 8: Example of a course badge in UniCampus
Furthermore, the Issuer we created could also be used to export into EBSI Open Badges currently stored in
public backpacks such as those provided by Badgr (https://badgr.io). The next figure shows such a badge
certifying that its recipient attended a webinar where the EBSI4RO project was disseminated. While integrating
the EBSI4RO Issuer with Badgr is less feasible, allowing users to use their publicly available badges and other
micro-certificates for issuing their Blockchain-powered counterparts is something we are willing to pursue.
The issuing of micro-credentials was successfully tested by the participation of UPT in the EBSI Early Adopters
Programme wave 3 (December 2022-May 2024), as part of the Micro-credentials Cluster, together with other
universities and companies from France, Spain and Romania (EBSI, 2024). Together, the teams were
pioneering the future of micro-credentials in Europe, by developing a presentation and verification platform to
achieve complex cross-university education mobility for facilitating the cross-border issuance, recognition, and
acceptance of educational digital certificates.
Figure 9: Badge for participating in the online Webinar about EBSI4RO
Conclusions
The piloting phase of the Credentialing System, in conjunction with UPT's integration with the platform,
successfully demonstrated the issuance of university diplomas and micro-credentials on the European
Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI). Participation in two EBSI Early Adopters programmes facilitated the
evaluation of solution interoperability within real-life educational ecosystems, encompassing trusted
accreditation organizations, trusted issuers, credential holders, wallet providers, and other relevant
stakeholders.
Despite the success of the pilot tests, the need for a more streamlined operation, enhanced documentation,
and comprehensive technical support has been identified. Continuous development efforts are underway to
align the system with the latest EBSI updates while expanding its capabilities to include issuing micro-
credentials from UniCampus and other prominent learning platforms.
Additionally, UPT's involvement in three significant European projects related to EBSI—DC4EU: Digital
Credentials for Europe, EBSI-Vector, and EBSI-NE: Node Expansion—strengthens this development. These
projects facilitate the piloting of Verifiable Credentials (VCs) issuance across a broad network of educational
organizations and university alliances, further enhancing the system's robustness and applicability.
The refinement of the VC issuance and verification processes has resulted in a system that is not only faster
and more cost-effective but also maintains the integrity of individual privacy. This evolution marks a significant
step forward in realizing the European vision for a digitally inclusive education system, setting a precedent for
future advancements in the European digital qualification framework.
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