Vietnam partners with TomoChain to store diplomas on its blockchain

The new blockchain archive will store the 1.5 million certificates issued each year

TomoChain, a scalable blockchain powered by proof-of-stake voting consensus, announced yesterday that they would be working with Vietnam’s Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) to develop a National Qualifications Archive (NQA).

The NQA will secure all 1.5 million recognised diplomas and graduation certificates issued each year in Vietnam on the TomoChain Public Blockchain, where people and educational institutions across the country will be able to access them.

The new system, which is the first governmental project in Vietnam to use blockchain technology, is to be rolled out for the 2020-2021 school year. It will store education records of that year’s graduates from secondary schools, universities and foreign language institutes, after which the ministry expect to retroactively catalogue diplomas from previous years and expand the system to include other types of qualifications.

Nguyen Van Phuc, Deputy Minister of Education and Training, commented “Diploma and certificate management is one of the issues that need to be renovated by technology, which is significant for the whole society and cost-efficient for the diploma management system in particular and the education sector in general.”

MOET hope the NQA will halt the rise of academic fraud and diploma forgeries by providing a simple, standardised way for employers to verify qualifications. They selected the TomoChain blockchain for its high transaction speeds of 2000 transactions per second and its near-zero fees – over 300,000 transactions would cost less than $1.

Long Vuong, CEO of TomoChain, added “The qualifications archives solution with blockchain technology has been researched and adopted by TomoChain for over one year. We are very honored to cooperate with the Ministry of Education and Training to deploy this technology to the education system in Vietnam, contributing to the elimination of the prevalent issue of counterfeit diplomas, and making the access of diplomas easier. Currently, storing data evidence on a public chain is a global trend due to its economical, secure and confidential advantages.”

The Singapore-based TomoChain already has offices in Japan and Vietnam, where it has spent the last two years developing enterprise solutions in industries including food, automotive and healthcare. They also recently acquired German blockchain project Lition – which provides a sidechain solution on the Ethereum blockchain – in a move which they hoped would entice governmental and enterprise clients. Following their success in Asia and recent access to European markets, TomoChain plan to evolve into a reputable and sought after blockchain consultancy group on the global stage.