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Technical University of Munich

Analysis of the use of EBSI in the environment of digital academic certificates

Thesis Type (BA/MA)

Advisor: Dr. Matthias Gottlieb

Context

Analog academic certificates have features to prevent forgery. Nowadays, academic certificates are subsequently scanned and sent digitally. However, these digital copies are not forgery-proof and are not machine-readable. Verifiable credentials, on the other hand, enable forgery-proof exchange.

One basis for this is the work being done in the Digital Credentials Consortium (DCC): in 2018, twelve leading international universities, including MIT, Harvard, UC Berkeley, TU Delft, HPI, and TUM, founded the Digital Credential Consortium (https://digitalcredentials.mit.edu/) (2020) to design and build forgery-proof credentials using blockchain technology and aiming for a global standard for a trustworthy infrastructure to exchange digital credentials and academic achievement certificates.

Based on the DCC's whitepaper "Building the digital credential infrastructure for the future" (2020), the BMBF-funded DiBiHo project is conducting a proof of concept (PoC) for various use cases at German universities. This includes the specification of a reference architecture and data model as well as the development of prototypes and operational, operator, and support models. Sample processes for the generation, storage, transfer, verification, and revocation (in case of error or revocation) of digital education credentials are concretized and evaluated.

A basis for the transfer is provided by the European Blockchain Service Infrastructure (EBSI) (CEF Digital, 2021). BCdiploma is already implementing initial credentials on the infrastructure as a use case (BCdiploma, 2021). For the identification of institution (Issuer) and learner (Subject/Holder), so-called Decentralized Identifiers (DID) are used (W3C, 2021). These are subject to feasibility analysis.

Task(s)

In this framework, you will investigate the European Blockchain Service Infrastructure (EBSI) (CEF Digital, 2021) as a possible standard. In a first step, you will program the DID:EBSI method to issue a Verifiable Credentials for feasibility testing. Then, compare the implemented solution with existing DID methods.

In brief:

  • Analyze the state of the art in implementing Verifiable Credentials with a focus on DID methods.
  • Implement a DID:EBSI for the Issuer
  • Comparative analysis of the implemented DID:EBSI solution with existing DID methods

Possible Questions

  • What is the state of the art on EBSI especially on the implementation of DID methods in the area of Verifiable Credentials?
  • How can a prototype for the issuer be applied using DID:EBSI?
  • What are the advantages and disadvantages of the implemented solution?

Further Information

The work can be written in English or German. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact me directly. Please send your application with a current "Notenauszug" from TUMonline, and your CV to matthias.gottlieb(at)tum.de. Please note that we can only consider applications with complete documents.

References

  1. BCdiploma. (2021, 17. Dezember). Digital credentials: testimonials. www.bcdiploma.com/en/blog/ebsi-universite-de-lille-2021-01-11
  2. CEF Digital. (2021, 17. Dezember). EBSI. ec.europa.eu/cefdigital/wiki/display/CEFDIGITAL/ebsi
  3. Digital Credential Consortium. (2020). Offical Website. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. digitalcredentials.mit.edu
  4. Duffy, K. H., Pongratz, H. & Schmidt, P. (2020). Building the digital credential infrastructure for the future. digitalcredentials.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/white-paper-building-digital-credential-infrastructure-future.pdf
  5. W3C. (2021, 2. August). Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) v1.0. https://www.w3.org/TR/did-core/

Further References

  1. More, S., Grassberger, P., Hörandner, F., Abraham, A. & Klausner, L. D. (2021). Trust Me If You Can: Trusted Transformation Between (JSON) Schemas to Support Global Authentication of Education Credentials, 625(4), 19–35. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78120-0_2
  2. Sedlmeir, J., Smethurst, R., Rieger, A. & Fridgen, G. (2021). Digital Identities and Verifiable Credentials. Business & Information Systems Engineering, 63(5), 603–613. doi.org/10.1007/s12599-021-00722-y
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