In the summer of 2017, 111 MIT graduates received a second diploma. It was not printed on paper. It was a file in an app on their phone, and a fingerprint of that file sat inside a Bitcoin transaction, so anyone could check that the document had not been changed without calling the registrar. That pilot put blockchain diplomas in the headlines. As of October 2026 they are still a niche. The digital credential most Europeans will actually meet is a phone wallet for identity papers, driving licences and, later, diplomas, which every EU country must offer by the end of 2026. It does not run on a blockchain at all.
This lesson follows our lesson on blockchain in supply chains, and the same limit applies here: a chain can prove that a record was not altered after it was written, not that the record was true when it went in. Our overview of blockchain use cases gives the short version for every sector.
A diploma is a claim, and a fingerprint on a chain proves only part of it
A degree certificate says one thing: this institution states that this person earned this award. Two questions follow for an employer. Was the document changed after it was issued? And is the issuer a real university with the right to award it? Paper answers the first question badly and the second not at all.
Fake degrees are a real market. In the UK, the official verification service is Prospects Hedd, part of the education technology body Jisc. On its site in October 2026, Hedd describes itself as the UK’s official degree verification hub and says it holds details of 471 recognised UK institutions and 243 bogus ones, with prices for employers starting at £14. A check still means a request to the university, with the graduate’s consent, and a wait.
This is where a blockchain enters. The issuer computes a hash of the diploma, a short fingerprint that changes completely if a single character of the file changes (our guide to cryptography explains hash functions). The issuer writes that hash, or a value built from many hashes, into a transaction. Because a confirmed block is very hard to rewrite, as our page on why a blockchain is immutable shows, the transaction becomes a timestamped proof that this exact file existed on that date.
What the chain does not prove is just as important. It does not prove that the person who wrote the transaction is a university. It does not prove that the student passed. Those facts come from outside the chain, the same problem as an oracle feeding prices to a smart contract. Every serious system of this kind therefore adds a second step: linking the key that signed the transaction to a known institution.
The first diplomas on a blockchain, from Nicosia to MIT
University of Nicosia: certificates on Bitcoin in the mid-2010s
The University of Nicosia in Cyprus was early. Its page on blockchain-based certifications says it issued its first certificates on the Bitcoin blockchain in 2015, to students of DFIN-511, its introductory course on digital currencies, and has issued all its diplomas this way since 2017. UNIC presents itself as the first university in the world to issue academic certificates that can be checked on the Bitcoin blockchain; no independent body has confirmed the claim.
MIT and Learning Machine: 111 graduates in 2017, 619 a year later
The pilot that made the idea famous came from Cambridge, Massachusetts. According to MIT News on 17 October 2017, 111 graduates took part that summer: 85 from the master of finance and 26 from the master of science in media arts and sciences. The Registrar’s Office worked with Learning Machine, a local software company. Only a one-way hash and a timestamped transaction went on the Bitcoin blockchain. The diploma itself, with the graduate’s name, stayed off chain.
The open standard behind it is Blockcerts, developed by the MIT Media Lab and Learning Machine. Its guide describes open-source libraries and a mobile wallet to issue and verify records, on any blockchain, with an emphasis on recipient control and what the project calls trustless verification.
By the next spring the pilot had grown. MIT Technology Review reported on 25 April 2018 that over the previous year 619 MIT graduates had been able to choose a digital diploma, and that 214 had downloaded the Blockcerts Wallet app as of March 2018. Philipp Schmidt, director of learning innovation at the Media Lab, told the magazine: “Bitcoin blockchain lets us give the data back to the individual recipients.”
The company did not stay independent. Hyland, a US software group, announced on 5 February 2020 that it had acquired Learning Machine, effective 1 February. The press release does not mention Blockcerts or MIT, and neither MIT article discusses what happens when a diploma must be withdrawn or when a graduate loses the phone that holds the key.
How blockchain diplomas are verified, step by step
The method has barely changed since 2015. Here is the sequence described by UNIC and used by Blockcerts-style systems, from issue to check:
- The university produces the digital diploma, a file with the graduate’s name, the award and the date.
- It computes the hash of each diploma of a graduation batch and arranges these hashes in a Merkle tree, a structure that combines many fingerprints into a single value called the root.
- It writes the root into one transaction on a public chain, Bitcoin for MIT and UNIC. One transaction anchors hundreds of diplomas.
- Each graduate receives the diploma together with a receipt: the Merkle proof, the root and the transaction ID. In the MIT pilot the app also generated a key pair for the graduate, so the diploma was tied to a key the student controlled (our guide to private and public keys covers how a key pair works).
- The employer, or any verifier, hashes the file it received, rebuilds the path to the root with the Merkle proof, and compares that root with the one stored in the transaction on chain.
- If the values match, the file is the one anchored on that date. The verifier must still check that the address that sent the transaction belongs to the university, usually through a public key the institution publishes on its own website.
Step 6 is the weak point. The chain moves trust; it does not remove it. If a fraudster sets up a fake university website with its own key, the maths will happily confirm a fake diploma anchored by a fake issuer.
Two other facts matter for a reader. First, the diploma’s content is never on the chain in these designs, only the fingerprint, which is why privacy rules still allow them (see the privacy section below). Second, the graduate does not need any cryptocurrency: the university pays the transaction fee. The diploma is a record, not a token you can sell, so it is not a crypto asset.
Université de Lille: tens of thousands of diplomas and the criticism
France’s best documented case is the Université de Lille, working with the French start-up BCdiploma. According to the European Commission’s Interoperable Europe case study, the first test in 2019 covered 248 certificates for the CLES language diploma. The page says the university has since issued over 60,000 blockchain-based digital diplomas since 2020 and that by 2023 digital issuance had fully replaced the PDF certificates. Among the obstacles it lists are long-term funding, legal recognition and hesitant administrators.
The French tech site Next.ink reported on 11 October 2022 that about 30,000 diplomas had been issued for the 2020 and 2021 graduating years. Graduates get a personal link by email and decide whether to share it. The university reportedly raised 150,000 to 200,000 euros from calls for projects and funds. It chose the Avalanche network, although BCdiploma had first worked on Ethereum, and it planned to move to the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI). Lille also leads fr.EBSI, a project launched in 2021 to issue W3C Verifiable Credentials on EBSI, and takes part in the EU’s EBSI-VECTOR project.
The same Next.ink article gave the critics their space. The verification page embeds a frame from BCdiploma, so a well-made look-alike page could fool an employer who is not a specialist. Pablo Rauzy, a computer science researcher at Paris 8, argued that a blockchain is only needed when nobody can be trusted and no permission system exists, and that a chain of certificates or even a versioned repository would do the job. He described the project as starting from the technology rather than from a problem.
We found no other French university with a verified, documented programme of this kind. BCdiploma says it works with about 120 institutions in 19 countries, a company figure reported by Centre Inffo in 2022 that we could not check. Which network Lille uses in October 2026, Avalanche or EBSI, is not stated in the sources we could open.
Italy’s CIMEA puts foreign-degree attestations on a blockchain
Italy’s example is narrower. CIMEA, the Italian ENIC-NARIC centre that assesses foreign qualifications, issues its Statement of Comparability through a platform called Diplome. The University of Milano-Bicocca explains that the PDF lands in the student’s MyDiplome account and is then published to a digital wallet. It also notes that the statement is an opinion that does not bind universities, and that the platform is in English only.
An article in Agenda Digitale on 30 April 2019 described Diplome as a free blockchain ecosystem promoted by the education ministry (MIUR), the digital agency AgID and CIMEA, built on a permissioned network where credentials are signed by the issuer and stored in a wallet. The author claimed the model sits outside the GDPR; that is her reading, not a ruling. Italian university degrees themselves are not issued on Diplome: only CIMEA’s attestations about foreign titles are. We found no adoption figures.
From fingerprints on a chain to W3C verifiable credentials
The more lasting result of the 2016 to 2018 wave is a standard, not a chain. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) published the Verifiable Credentials Data Model 2.0 as a Recommendation on 15 May 2025. It defines a verifiable credential as a tamper-evident credential whose authorship can be checked by cryptography, and it names three roles: the issuer (a university), the holder (the graduate) and the verifier (an employer). It also requires that status checks, such as whether a diploma was revoked, must not let anyone track individuals, and it describes selective disclosure and zero-knowledge techniques.
Identifiers come from a second standard, Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) 1.0, a W3C Recommendation since 19 July 2022. A DID looks like did:method:identifier. The specification says it does not presuppose any particular technology: many DID methods use a ledger, many do not. The standard that grew out of blockchain identity work treats the blockchain as optional.
MIT’s later work went the same way. The Digital Credentials Consortium, a university-led group founded in 2018 to make academic credentials portable and verifiable, describes its focus as open-source technology and standards; in July 2026 MIT Open Learning handed it to the Strada Education Foundation, which renamed it the Digital Credentials Commons. The European Union built its own system without a chain: the Europass European Digital Credentials for Learning, launched in late 2021, are sealed with an advanced or qualified electronic seal that the issuer buys from a trust service provider under the eIDAS Regulation. Europass said on 21 October 2024 that over 35,000 of these credentials had been issued to learners’ wallets. A signed file, checked against a register of trusted issuers, gives the same tamper evidence as a hash on a public chain.
What is self-sovereign identity?
Self-sovereign identity, or SSI, is the idea behind all of this: you hold your own credentials and show them when you choose, instead of an intermediary holding your identity and confirming it each time. The most quoted definition comes from the developer Christopher Allen, who presented ten principles at a Consensus 2016 identity workshop, summarised by Phil Windley on 11 May 2016. A user’s identity should exist independently, be under the user’s control, give the user access to their own data, run on transparent systems, persist over time, be portable, be interoperable, require the user’s consent, disclose the minimum necessary and protect the user’s rights.
In practice SSI works as a triangle. The issuer signs a credential and hands it to the holder. The holder keeps it in a wallet app. When a verifier asks, the holder presents it, sometimes only part of it, and the verifier checks the issuer’s signature without contacting the issuer. A blockchain can be the public register where issuers publish their keys, but a web domain or a government trust list can do the same job.
Four ways of checking a diploma, side by side:
| Method | Who vouches for the issuer | Needs a blockchain | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Phone call or verification service | The service itself | No | Hedd in the UK, prices from £14 (October 2026) |
| Hash anchored on a public chain | The university’s published key | Yes | UNIC since 2015, MIT 2017 |
| Verifiable credential with a DID | Key in a DID document or trust list | Optional | fr.EBSI, W3C standard of May 2025 |
| Electronic seal under eIDAS | EU trust service provider | No | Europass credentials since 2021 |
The best-known SSI blockchain did not survive. On 8 February 2025 the board of the Sovrin Foundation announced that its MainNet ledger would likely shut down on or before 31 March 2025. It cited falling use (no new transaction endorsers joined in 2024), regulatory uncertainty about decentralized identity, staff time meant for upgrading the main network’s nodes spent on fixing its test network, and a governance load carried by a few trustees who had also inherited a $2 million debt from the previous board. “The Sovrin Foundation has been a pioneer, but challenges have made ongoing operations unsustainable,” the board wrote. A later post dated 20 January 2026 says the State of Utah dissolved the foundation on 21 May 2025 at the board’s request, and that the ledger remains as a read-only archive, with the company Trinsic acting as its caretaker. No new credentials can be anchored on it.
The EU Digital Identity Wallet: a deadline in 2026 and no blockchain inside
What Regulation (EU) 2024/1183 requires
The European Digital Identity Regulation, often called eIDAS 2, is Regulation (EU) 2024/1183. It amends the 2014 eIDAS Regulation and was published in the Official Journal on 30 April 2024, entering into force on 20 May 2024. Each Member State must provide at least one European Digital Identity Wallet within 24 months of the entry into force of the first implementing acts. The Commission’s questions and answers on digital identity sum it up as a wallet in every member state by the end of 2026.
The exact day follows from the implementing acts. According to the law firm Garrigues (30 September 2026), the first five were published on 4 December 2024 and took effect on 24 December 2024, which puts the deadline for states on 24 December 2026. Businesses in the sectors the law designates, along with very large online platforms, must accept the wallet as a means of authentication by 24 December 2027; micro and small enterprises are exempt.
Using it will not be compulsory. The Commission’s Q&A states that there will be no obligation to use a wallet, and that it will be free. The user decides which data leaves the phone.
What the wallet holds, diplomas included
The wallet is an app on the phone. It will carry a person identification record and, next to it, attestations from public and private issuers. The Commission lists education qualifications among them, with the example of a diploma stored in the wallet and shown to an employer. Four large-scale pilots tested these uses, with education among the scenarios.
The most useful feature is selective disclosure. A bar or a website that needs to know you are over 18 can receive that single fact, without your name or date of birth. The wallet also gives users a way to see and control what they shared with whom.
Where countries stand in October 2026
Progress is uneven two months before the deadline. Italy is among the furthest along, with a national app already in wide use. Its IT Wallet, inside the government’s IO app, has been open to all citizens since 4 December 2024 and holds the driving licence, the health card and the European Disability Card; activation needs a SPID account or the electronic identity card. Money.it reported 10.1 million activations and 17.3 million documents loaded on 17 February 2026, and quoted undersecretary Alessio Butti giving 12 million on 23 July 2026. Degrees and school certificates are not available yet, and no launch date had been set as of 10 September 2026.
France has France Identité, the Interior Ministry’s app, which is being turned into the French EU wallet. Germany has planned its wallet for 2 January 2027, after the deadline. A tracker published by the eID vendor eideasy on 15 October 2026 listed live test environments in Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Norway, and stressed that this does not confirm certification or production availability for any of them. Treat such trackers as indicative.
The wallet is not a blockchain, and EBSI is a separate network
This is the point most articles blur. The EU wallet stores signed credentials on your device and presents them to verifiers. Neither the Commission’s Q&A nor its wallet pages describe a blockchain anywhere in the design. Trust comes from lists of registered issuers and qualified trust service providers, as with the electronic seals on Europass credentials.
The EU does run a blockchain, but it is a different project. EBSI, the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure, is a network of nodes run by public bodies, used for pilots such as fr.EBSI, the diploma project led by Lille. Since a Commission decision in May 2024, it is governed by Europeum-EDIC, a consortium of member states that the EBSI site calls its sole operator. A diploma anchored on EBSI could one day be shown through a wallet, but the wallet itself does not need EBSI.
Privacy: the GDPR versus a ledger that never forgets
European data protection law gives people the right to have their data corrected or erased. A public blockchain is designed so that nobody can do either. The French data protection authority, the CNIL, addressed the clash in its guidance of 20 September 2018: a blockchain is a technology, not itself a processing operation; controllers should not store personal data in clear on the chain; and techniques such as keyed hashes, commitments or encryption get close to erasure without giving exactly the same effect.
The EU’s data protection authorities went further. The European Data Protection Board published a draft of its Guidelines 02/2025 on blockchain in April 2025 and, after a public consultation, adopted the final version on 7 July 2026. The final text discourages storing personal data on a chain, strongly discourages plain text, and asks for salted or keyed hashes with the original data and the secret kept off chain. It reminds controllers that hashes and encrypted data remain personal data. It prefers permissioned chains, allows public ones only where public access is necessary for a purpose, and expects a data protection impact assessment where risks are high, including the question of whether a blockchain is needed at all. Technical impossibility is not accepted as an excuse for ignoring a right.
For diplomas, this means the MIT and Lille designs, which put only fingerprints on chain, are the acceptable pattern; a diploma written in clear on a public chain is not. It also means that a hash of a diploma is not automatically anonymous.
The wallet raises other worries. Euronews listed some on 15 September 2026: a stolen phone as a single point of failure, a trail of who checked what, pressure on users to reveal real names, and privacy techniques still maturing. The answer the standards offer is selective disclosure and, further out, zero-knowledge proofs, which let you prove a statement (over 18, holder of a master’s degree) without revealing the data behind it.
What it changes for readers in the US and the UK
There is no federal US scheme for blockchain diplomas: MIT’s pilot and the Blockcerts standard came from universities and a company, not from Washington. Nothing is sold or traded in these systems, so the SEC, the CFTC and the IRS have no part in them. On identity, US states issue mobile driver’s licences that live in phone wallets. The TSA says it accepts digital IDs in Apple Wallet, Google Wallet, Samsung Wallet or approved state apps at more than 250 airports, while every passenger must still carry a compliant physical ID.
In the UK, degree checks still go through Hedd. The government’s national digital ID plan has been dropped. The Register reported on 14 January 2026 that the plan to make digital ID mandatory to prove the right to work, announced in September 2025 for 2029, had been abandoned; a government spokesperson said it remained committed to mandatory digital right-to-work checks. On 18 July 2026 a spokesperson for Andy Burnham, newly elected Labour leader, said he would scrap the scheme when he took office as prime minister on 20 July, Reuters reported. LexisNexis reported on 18 September 2026 that the government’s response to the Home Affairs Committee confirmed the national programme will not proceed, including the proposed mandatory use of digital ID for right-to-work checks, while work continues on GOV.UK One Login, the GOV.UK Wallet and the certified digital verification services. None of these UK systems is described as a blockchain.
Dated figures
| Item | Figure | Date | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| MIT pilot graduates | 111 (85 finance, 26 media arts) | Summer 2017 | MIT News, 17 October 2017 |
| MIT graduates offered a digital diploma | 619, of whom 214 downloaded the wallet | Year to March 2018 | MIT Technology Review, 25 April 2018 |
| Lille first test | 248 CLES certificates | 2019 | Interoperable Europe |
| Lille diplomas issued | About 30,000 (2020 and 2021 years) | October 2022 | Next.ink |
| Lille diplomas issued | Over 60,000 since 2020 | Undated page, viewed October 2026 | Interoperable Europe |
| Europass digital credentials | Over 35,000 issued | 21 October 2024 | Europass |
| Italy IT Wallet activations | 10.1 million; 12 million | 17 February 2026; 23 July 2026 | Money.it |
| Bogus institutions on Hedd’s list | 243 | October 2026 | Hedd |
| EU wallet deadline for states | 24 December 2026 | Set by Regulation (EU) 2024/1183 | Garrigues, Commission |
| Wallet acceptance by regulated firms | 24 December 2027 | Same regulation | Garrigues |
Where a blockchain helps a diploma, and where a signed file is enough
After ten years, the record is clear enough to draw a line. A hash on a public chain helps when the issuer may disappear, since the proof survives a closed university or a dead website, and when verifiers across borders do not share a trust register. It adds little when a national register or an eIDAS seal already exists, which is the direction the EU took. Our page on public and private blockchains explains why permissioned networks such as EBSI or Diplome are a compromise between the two.
Before trusting any “blockchain diploma” claim, ask four questions:
- Where is the verification page hosted, and is it on the university’s own domain?
- How do you know the key or address that anchored the diploma belongs to the issuer?
- Is any personal data written on the chain, or only a fingerprint?
- What happens if the diploma is revoked or the graduate loses the phone holding the credential?
An identity wallet is also not a crypto wallet. Our guide to crypto wallets covers apps that hold keys to coins; the EU wallet holds signed documents and no money. The next date to watch is 24 December 2026, when every EU country is due to have its wallet ready. A later lesson of this path looks at another public use where blockchain promises meet hard limits: voting.
