In August last year, a transformation was underway that didn’t capture mainstream attention at first but has since marked a significant milestone in the digital certification landscape. A startup, operating under the radar, achieved the remarkable: it successfully uploaded the diploma certificates of 100,000 students onto the blockchain. The transition from traditional verification methods to blockchain technology meant that students could now have their skills verified by prospective employers within seconds, a process that previously could take up to a month. This initiative was not just about speed; it was automation and innovation brought to life by LegitDoc, the startup at the helm, utilizing Polygon, a public blockchain. This single project escalated into the world’s largest blockchain implementation for educational credentialing, issuing over a million verifiable diploma certificates.
The ripple effect of this innovation did not stop there. LegitDoc’s next venture involved collaborating with the Gadchiroli district administration in Maharashtra. The team embarked on a mission to issue 65,000 caste certificates for the tribals in the hamlet of Etapalli. The automation meant that tribals could now have their credentials verified in under a minute to avail social support benefits, transforming the cumbersome process into a simple QR code scan, all thanks to the power of public blockchain.
Such examples underscore a broader trend: startups across the globe are now leveraging the power of public blockchains to automate systems and processes on an unprecedented scale. Documents that once slowly moved from desk to desk can now be digitized, becoming easily accessible, verifiable, and trustworthy. For pioneers like Neil Martis, the brain behind LegitDoc, turning to a public blockchain is almost instinctive when aiming to devise solutions that cater to large populations effectively. However, this inclination towards public blockchains and the skepticism that surrounds it raises several questions. Is a public blockchain indispensable for building such solutions? Is there a pathway to achieve this without dabbling in cryptocurrencies?
To answer these, it’s crucial to understand what a public blockchain is and how it contrasts with its counterpart, the private blockchain. A blockchain fundamentally serves as a database for transactional records, distributed across numerous computers, with a structure that makes altering stored data nearly impossible due to its cryptographic lineage within blocks.
A public blockchain is characterized by its open, distributed, and permissionless nature, allowing anyone to join and contribute to maintaining the database. It’s a model seen in blockchains like Ethereum, Polygon, and Cardano, managed collectively by developers worldwide. On the other hand, private blockchains like HyperLedger Fabric, R3 Corda, and Quorum are managed by pre-selected nodes, making them both exclusive and centralized to some extent.
The distinction highlights a pivotal role of cryptocurrencies in public blockchains. They serve as an incentive mechanism, motivating developers to participate in and maintain the network, ensuring its integrity and efficiency.
This incentive-driven model stands as a testament to why startups, including LegitDoc, prefer public blockchains for verifying documents. These blockchains offer unparalleled accessibility, ease of use, flexibility, and the open-source nature facilitates custom solution development without bureaucratic hurdles. Additionally, significant advantages such as enhanced security and cost efficiency cannot be overlooked. Public blockchains bring to the table a robust security framework and a cost-effective solution for large-scale applications, as demonstrated by LegitDoc’s initiatives.
The case of LegitDoc elucidates the pragmatic advantages of deploying solutions on public blockchains, especially in a populous country like India. The layer of security, the simplicity of execution, and the economic benefits present a compelling case, shedding light on the indispensable role of cryptocurrencies in maintaining these distributed networks. This scenario poses a country with a critical choice: continue in the traditional, high-cost, and restrictive technology avenues, or empower local innovators by endorsing and adopting more open, secure, and cost-effective solutions offered by public blockchains.
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