Malaysia Rolls Out DLT Certificate Verification to Fight Circulation of Fake Degrees

The Malaysian Ministry of Education (MoE) is now using Blockchain to fight degree fraud in order to maintain the reputation and ethics of universities across the country. Malaysia itself is ranked among the top five Asian Nations when it comes to the field of education.

The MoE revealed that it will widely apply NEM Blockchain technology during the issuance and verification exercise for university degrees. This great system will be called "e-Scroll." The effort of the distributed ledger technology (DLT) application was argued early 2018 by the Council of ICT Deans of Malaysian universities.   

The e-Scroll system is powered by LuxTag, a solutions provider which enables commercial enterprises and their clients to safeguard the authenticity and ownership of their precious assets by offering genuine digitised certificates on the NEM DLT.   

Analog to Digital Migration   

The system is designed to fight the increasing occurrence of false degrees circulating in the country, some of which are obtained online especially from "diploma mills." False educational certificates constitute various dangers to the community in regard to significant sectors such as healthcare sector being filled with staff whose expertise is questionable, besides being of great disadvantage to honest and authentic students, according to the report by The Medium.   

Currently, universities in Malaysia receive hundreds of thousands of requests from across the globe regarding questions related to verification of academic certificates. This has so far been difficult because it's done via emails or through telephone chats. e-Scroll, NEM-based, will solve this problem.   

This system has unique features regarding verifying and handling traceability. If the need for verification arises, a QR code that is printed on the certificate is possible to be scanned from any corner of the globe provided the internet connection is available, according to the MoE. It will be accessed on https://e-scroll.iium.edu.my.   

The e-Scroll system will have to thoroughly verify all the degree certifications of all PhD graduands in November 2018, during the initial stage of its implementation, in the International Islamic University of Malaysia (IIUM), where the data will be embedded on the DLT.   

The LuxTag Business Development Director and also the e-Scroll project lead, Elmi Haryadi, revealed that:   

“I’m so happy that we have completed this project and delivered to IIUM. The team of programmers in LuxTag worked very hard together to come up with a meaningful solution for the education sector.”   

Members of the Consortium   

The Malaysian MoE has further rolled out a DLT consortium, and the membership is drawn from all recognized universities in the nation. The main aim of this project is to help during the training of academics and best students in DLT. It is also planning to create Apps in DLT, greatly setting this a large revenue generator for all member educational institutions. 

The six founding members in the Blockchain consortium are:

• International Islamic University of Malaysia
• Universiti Teknologi MARA
• Universiti Utara Malaysia
• Universiti Malaysia Sabah
• Universiti Utara Malaysia  
• Universiti Malaysia Terengganu.

“We’re so proud to have finally proven to the whole world that we deliver! We put real DLT-powered business solutions into real production,” said Rene Bernard, LuxTag CEO.