Verifiable Diplomas for Life

A diploma the school issues once that anyone can check in seconds, offline and for free.

A school diploma has to be trusted for decades, but paper and PDFs prove nothing, so school offices spend staff time confirming records by phone and students wait. We let a school issue each diploma once as a signed digital credential the student keeps for life. Anyone can verify it in seconds, offline and free of charge, and a corrected or withdrawn record stops working the same day.

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Overview

Information on this page is provided by the innovator and has not been evaluated by HundrED.

Updated October 2026

Web presence

2020

Established

779 2026

4

Countries

All students

Target group

We want a young person to leave school holding a record that still works twenty years later, in another country, without anyone having to telephone the school that issued it. That sounds small, but a great deal of unfairness hides in the gap. A student whose school has closed, whose records were lost in a flood or a conflict, or who simply applies from far away, is told that their learning cannot be confirmed. Employers quietly discount qualifications they cannot check. Refugee and migrant students are hit hardest, because the institution that holds their proof is the one they can no longer reach. The change we want is that confirming a qualification becomes free, instant and ordinary, everywhere. When checking costs nothing, everyone checks, and forged certificates lose their market. When a school is no longer the bottleneck, its office spends that time on students instead of on paperwork. And when a young person holds their own record, they can show one part of it without surrendering the rest. We would like this to be unremarkable infrastructure rather than a product: an open format that any school can use with any supplier, so no child's proof of learning is ever locked inside one company or one country.

About the innovation

Why did you create this innovation?

A school diploma is the first formal record a young person owns, and it has to be trusted for decades. Today it is paper or a PDF, which proves nothing by itself. When an employer or a university needs to confirm it, someone telephones or emails the school, a member of the school office searches an archive, and the student waits, sometimes for weeks. The cost falls on the school and the delay falls on the student. Meanwhile forged certificates circulate freely, because checking is slow enough that most people never bother.

We built this so that a school can issue a record once and never be asked about it again. Everything else follows from one decision: the party that issues pays, and checking is free for everyone else. The moment a check carries a fee, it stops happening, and a document nobody checks is worth nothing.

What does your innovation look like in practice?

The school keeps issuing records as it does now. Our issuing console connects to the school's existing student record system, or takes a simple upload of a graduating class. At graduation each student receives a digital credential alongside the paper copy, held on their phone or in a wallet of their choice.

For whoever receives it, there is nothing to install. They scan the credential and see who issued it, what it says, and whether it is still valid. The check runs against a published list rather than by contacting the school, so it works without a connection, the school office is never the bottleneck, and the school never learns which employer looked at a former student's record.

Two things matter in a school setting. A record that is withdrawn or corrected stops working the same day instead of circulating for years. And a young person can prove one fact, such as completing a course, without exposing the rest of their record.

How has it been spreading?

The first school deployment was a public combined elementary and junior high school in East Asia, which has issued its graduation certificates this way for several years. Successive cohorts now leave school already holding a record that will still verify when they apply for work or further study.

Since then the platform has grown well beyond one school. More than 6,000,000 credentials have been issued across 15 countries and regions, for 45 governments, 18 healthcare institutions and over 50 universities, along with a number of K12 institutions issuing graduation, course completion and co-curricular records. In Europe, The Hague Academy for Local Governance in the Netherlands and UWE Bristol in the United Kingdom issue through the platform, and we work with the World Health Organization on credentials for health workers and volunteers.

It has spread mainly through issuers telling other issuers, because the benefit shows up quickly: the school office stops handling verification requests.

How have you modified or added to your innovation?

Two changes came from schools rather than from us. The first was selective disclosure, after schools pointed out that a student applying for a part time job should not have to hand over an entire academic record to prove one course. That is in production today.

The second was offline verification. Early versions checked by contacting the issuer, which was fine in an office and useless at a careers fair or in a district with no reliable connection, so verification now runs against a published list that a verifier can hold locally.

We are candid about what is not done. Zero knowledge proofs are on the roadmap rather than in production, and the service is cloud hosted today with no self hosted option, which some ministries will eventually want.

If I want to try it, what should I do?

Write to Jeff Hu at jeff.hu@turingspace.co and we will set up a short call to look at how your school issues records today.

A first deployment is usually one graduating class. We take the class list, configure the credential to match the certificate the school already awards, and issue it alongside the paper copies, so nothing about the ceremony or the school's own process changes. That normally takes a few weeks of light work from one person in the school office, and we do the rest.

There is nothing to pay for the students, the employers or the universities who later check a record, and the credential format is an open standard, so a school that changes supplier later keeps credentials that still work.

Implementation steps

Choose one record to start with

Most schools begin with the graduation certificate for a single cohort. The school keeps its own wording, layout and awarding rules, and nothing about the ceremony changes. Starting with one record keeps the first year simple and gives the school something concrete to judge before deciding whether to extend it to course completion or co-curricular records.

Connect the record system or upload a class list

One person in the school office connects the existing student record system, or simply uploads the graduating class as a spreadsheet. There is no hardware to install and nothing changes in how results are recorded during the year. This usually takes a few hours of work spread over a couple of weeks, with the configuration done for the school.