NFTcate: A Soulbound Non-Fungible Token Decentralized User-Centered Certificate Verification System

Abstract

Many countries, with emphasis on Nigeria, face a critical challenge with the undermining of educational systems and graduate qualification credibility. Popular physical and hardcopy-based certificates linked to centralized databases are vulnerable to fraud and inefficiency while also limiting the accessibility of these processes across institutions. This paper presents NFTcate, a decentralized certificate verification system that leverages Soulbound Non-Fungible tokens (SBTs) built on the Ethereum blockchain. The system ensures that certificates are permanently bound to the recipient wallet, immutable, and can be publicly verified by institutions and employers, thus preventing transfer and replication. The system uses a combination of smart contracts, IPFS-based decentralized storage, and an intuitive web interface, which helps users’ ability to interact with the system without prior blockchain knowledge. Evaluations of the presented system were done across four metrics: cost-efficiency, speed, universality, and testability, which show that the system performed comparatively better than existing systems. The cost of issuing a certificate was also significantly lower during testing as compared to the Mainnet and Testnet. NFTcate does not limit institutions, and if an institution is verified on the system, they can distribute certificates to students' wallets.