The European Commission is accelerating the integration of secure blockchain technology and verifiable credentials to automate verification and exchange of education credentials across EU states.
The EBSI VECTOR project has secured Protokol, a Web3 and blockchain solutions provider, to exchange and verify educational and professional credentials across borders, bound by a secure, efficient and decentralised framework.
With emerging blockchain technology being leveraged by other industries such as healthcare records, The European Blockchain Services Infrastructure confirmed embarking on an ambitious move to utilise secure blockchain for exchanging CVs and trusted career credentials to constituents like employers and school.
Launching a similar platform called Velocity Network, Dror Gurevich, Founder of its namesake foundation, explained while attending Identity Week America last year sending career records and documents digitally using blockchain turned them into immutable and verifiable digital credentials where the individual has control over their data.
While healthcare has also been exploring creating a federated patient identity using blockchain to exchange sensitive medical data between patients and the medical profession, the job market is a largely an unexplored domain for digital verification.
Protokol have been enrolled to explore broader use cases for Web 3.0 outside of financial services with the inclusion of tokenised career credentials in their issued digital wallet, which can store and access a range of digital, payment and identity credentials. EU Residents are able to verify and receive career credentials.
Blockchain is being embraced in digital banking of real and cryptocurrency, as European Central Bank aspires for blockchain and Web 3.0 security with adoption of the digital euro.
The EBSI indicated that the plan for blockchain cross-border verification would likely see convergence with the characteristics and conditions of other EU initiatives like the EU digital identity. Although it is not clear yet whether the EUeID will be built on blockchain technology over outstanding privacy and data protection concerns.
David Palmer, Global Platform Innovator, Vodafone Blockchain Lead commented in a LinkedIn post:
“We are moving towards a ‘world of wallets’, an ‘economy of tokens’, the economy of things, and the expansion of virtual worlds with the metaverse, but the key to these developments is the ability to link them with the identity of a person, business or thing and automate authentication”.
“This could potentially eliminate the need to provide copies of your qualifications for job applications, but could also extend to other credentials including payments, passports and drivers license, the blockchain and verifiable credentials solution enabling full no touch automation”.
Lars Rensing, CEO of Protokol said: “Our involvement in the EBSI VECTOR project aligns closely with our broader mission to create scalable and interoperable blockchain solutions that drive innovation and change”.
“We believe that blockchain and Web3 technology have enormous potential to transform a wide range of industries and prepare them for the future”, enhancing the efficiency and security of credential verification processes.
