smartdegrees – Smart Degrees

Governmental entities can issue claims about citizens and businesses easily in a Web3 consumable format, such as Verifiable Credentials, as João Rodrigues Frade, Head of Building Blocks sector in DIGIT, European Commission, highlighted at Brussels Blockchain Week, from 7 to 8 June.

European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI) helps the public sector to issue Verifiable Credentials, which become ‘reputation tokens’. EBSI is unique by making data from authentic sources of the public sector available in Web3-ready format, providing more transparency, censorship resistancy and openess to new entrants and innovators.

EBSI and Web3 have a crucial role in transforming the issuance of governmental claims, and governments have a role to play in bringing trust into the nascent Web3 economy, benefiting the citizens of Europe… Read more.

SmartDegrees has adhered to this European initiative, incorporating the Verifiable Credentials standard in its clients since July 2020, to take full advantage in favor of the universities and the final users.

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SmartDegrees y Larrosa Academy certify in blockchain the training in the new music industry

Larrosa Academy students will have their diplomas registered and certified in blockchain by SmartDegrees. Those attending the Postgraduate Course in Blockchain, NFTs, Financing and Growth Hacking for the Music Industry are the first to benefit from the advantages that blockchain provides to their diplomas in agility, convenience and security.

This is the first postgraduate course oriented to the new music industry, where its students learn how to obtain financing for their musical projects, understand blockchain technology and NFTs, as well as what to do with these technologies in the music industry along with other techniques to increase their profits and optimize their yields.

The new music industry is the transformation of the traditional industry, the record, publishing and rights management models based on the use of more efficient technologies and innovative models that focus on independent creators, trying to decentralize as much as possible the music ecosystem.

These are the first professional certificates of skills and training in the new music industry, registered in a mature, hybrid blockchain network (own network and Alastria network, to provide greater transparency to the certificates), scalable and with the potential that allow smart contracts, such as Quorum, based on Ethereum. It uses the newly created European Commission Verifiable Credentials standard, which provides interoperability with other institutions. It uses the distributed ledger technology, blockchain, whose innovative character makes it the most important to change education and for the decentralization of the musical ecosystem, opening up enormous possibilities for graduate users, companies, educational institutions, platforms of work and recruiters.

Larrosa Academy students will be able to manage their certificates from their smartphone, through a free app that allows them the following benefits:

It facilitates the enhancement of skills and abilities, streamlining their sharing with work platforms, recruiters, social networks and third parties.
The student is the sovereign owner of their data and decides how, where and when to display it.
The app and the supporting technology, blockchain, guarantee its inviolability and prevent fraud.

About Larrosa Music Group

It is a consultancy specialized in investment and financing of musical projects, which also has a record division (Rose Records, 2020) and a publishing house. It is founded by Cristian Larrosa, producer, composer and performer, with 5 published albums and a 20-year career as an executive in the music industry, founding companies in Latin America, the United States, the United Kingdom and Spain.

About SmartDegrees

SmartDegrees is a platform for the registration and certification of academic degrees and corporate training, with associated services, which allow their value in the labor market and in society, while making them inviolable, ensuring their validity indefinitely. Additionally, it offers management services for communities with self-sovereign identity, based on blockchain (SSI), and strategic business consultancy, to facilitate the incorporation of blockchain in the digital transformation of institutions.

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Verifiable Credentials explained

Verifiable Credentials (VC) is an open standard developped by the European Commission to offer a new pattern for exchanging information that is distributed and decentralized, where blockchain acts as a single point of truth.

The objective is to help public administrations accelerate the creation of trustworthy cross border digital services.

Verifiable Credentials associate three concepts:

Decentralized identifier (DID).
Verifiable credentials lifecycle, which enables standardization and scalable implementation.
Digital wallets, allowing user interactions exchanging digital credentials, where VC are supported on them.

The video explains the Verifiable Credentials, its infrastructure (European Blockchain Services Infrastructure, EBSI), and the vast opportunities that it currently provides, through a user’s journey (“Eva’s trip”).

SmartDegrees has adhered to this European initiative, incorporating the Verifiable Credentials standard in its clients since July 2020, and is participating in the Early Adopters Programme to ensure that SmartDegrees wallet takes full advantage of the value of this ecosystem in favor of the universities and the final users.

(Source: CEF Digital)

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EU joins forces towards European digital credentials

The European Commission fosters the digital credentials, using open standards (Verifiable Credentials), to help public administrations accelerate the creation of trustworthy cross border digital services.

Its document Joining forces towards European digital credentials describes the opportunities and advantages of the initiative and the following information:

Its infrastructure, European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI), first EU-wide blockchain infrastructure, which began being operational in Q1 2020.
Verifiable Credentials (VC) standard.
Digital wallets, self-sovereign identities (SSI) and the European Self Sovereign Identity Framework (ESSIF) standard.
User seamless experience, explaining in detail the process followed by a cross border university student, involving three countries, its public administrations and two universities (Eva Journey).
An incubator, Early Adopters Programme, to facilitate the adherance of administrations, universities, providers and other stakeholders. The programme has set up the specifications EBSI compliance, in particular the required ones in the digital wallets and its APIs, to ensure interoperability.

Currently, as of 30 November 2021, the situation is:

29 countries are participating in the European Blockchain Partnership, that supports the initiative,
38 blockchain nodes in 21 countries,
18 universities participating in a multi-university pilot, in 15 countries.

SmartDegrees has adhered to this European initiative, incorporating the Verifiable Credentials standard in its clients since July 2020, and is participating in the Early Adopters Programme to ensure that SmartDegrees wallet takes full advantage of the value of this ecosystem in favor of the universities and the final users.

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Nebrija University offers its students digital certification of their diplomas

(Article published by Nebrija University with the same title on its website)

Graduates of Nebrija University already have their degree certified in digital mode. With this verification, through blockchain technology and the SmartDegrees platform, graduate students in any of the studies that make up the educational offer of Nebrija can accredit their degree to companies and recruiters in a fast and effective way. Now, some 170 students who have completed their undergraduate studies in the 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 academic years benefit from this initiative – listed under the name of Nebrija Smart Portfolio. Later, it will be open to the rest of graduates. Furthermore, the initiative complies with the European Commission’s Verifiable Credentials standard.

Through a simple form, each student, if they wish so, gives their approval to register their undergraduate degree digitally. In this approval, he also has the possibility of accrediting his educational background at Nebrija University as his TFG, his internships in companies or his professional and language skills. According to Clara Vizoso, professor of the Master’s Degree in ICT for Education and Learning Digital and responsible for the Nebrija Smart Portfolio Project, Nebrija University, in its path of innovation and digitization, has decided to put the blockchain system into operation, “an incredibly secure platform”, with great potential that allows through Smart Contracts introduce changes in the way of issuing academic degrees, providing agility, transparency, independence and a new way of transacting with institutions and with students ”. “One of the problems our graduates encounter when applying to a job is that of demonstrating their studies and activities. Thanks to the blockchain technology -which ensures the inviolability of their certificate- and the collaboration agreement signed with the company SmartDegrees, provider of registration services, students will be able to access their certifications in a digital and immediate way, directly through the SmartDegrees mobile application, which facilitates job search, enrollment in new studies and future access to oppositions. Diplomas and certificates go from being a static element on paper or in an electronically signed file, with room for fraud, to being secure digital assets and, therefore, dynamic, under the exclusive control of the graduate”, adds Vizoso.

Nebrija Smart Portfolio is especially useful in this time characterized by the health crisis and the elimination of face-to-face procedures. In addition, it affects the employability of the students themselves by facilitating the recruiter to verify their skills. This proposal will also increase, in a second phase, membership in the Nebrija Alumni Club, the group of alumni of the Nebrija University, which, sponsored by the Antonio de Nebrija Foundation, creates a link between the university and the graduates and postgraduates who have walked the classrooms and hallways of the different campuses.

Media coverage: El Economista, CoinTelegraph, Bolsa Manía, Bit2Me Crypto News

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Testimonies: Ahmed Adam Faouzi

Ahmed Adam Faouzi, graduate Master of Banking and Financial Markets in Casablanca, by universities Hassan II of Casablanca, in Morocco, and Cantabria, in Spain, in 2018, describes his experience as user of SmartDegrees.

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Testimonies: Ayoub Hajji

Ayoub Hajji, student Master of Banking and Financial Markets in Casablanca, by universities Hassan II of Casablanca, in Morocco, and Cantabria, in Spain, describes his experience as user of SmartDegrees.

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Building the digital credential infrastructure for the future

Digital Credentials Consortium, was founded in 2018 by 12 universities in Germany, Canada, the United States, the Netherlands, Italy and Mexico, under the leadership of MIT, to modernize the concept of credentials, bringing benefits to learners and to relying parties (such as employers) by improving how skills and competencies are conveyed and recognized. Its mission is to create a trusted, distributed, and shared infrastructure that will become the standard for issuing, storing, displaying, and verifying academic credentials, digitally.

It has just completed his white paper “Building the digital credential infrastructure for the future“, where it establishes the design specifications of the associated system architecture and offers a more powerful and convenient way to share, manage and verify credentials:

It has a holistic approach and not biased to specific solutions or platforms, facilitating the convergence of other initiatives.
His effort is focused on the “envelope” and the system that provides safe delivery and storage. The “envelope” contains information about who issued the credential and to whom it was issued. Both the identities and the integrity of their content can be verified to detect fraud or tampering.
Recommends the Verifiable Credentials (VC) standard and its data model, performed by the European Commission, within the framework of its European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI) initiative, because it meets the requirements established by the consortium and offers the following properties:
- Digital, tamper proof and machine-readable.
- Learner is at the center of exchanges of their data; their consent is required to exchange.
- Learner may cryptographically prove the credential is about them.
- Verification does not require consulting the issuer.
- Content of the credential can conform to a variety of schemas and vocabularies chosen by the issuer.
- Robust consideration of privacy, security, accessibility, and internationalization recommendations, making it suitable for high-stakes credentials such as transcripts.

Digital Credentials Consortium does not develop commercial products and services, but works with technology companies and platforms to create an ecosystem of options to choose from, as well as with employers to integrate verification services into their contracting workflow.

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SmartDegrees completes a second year of major milestones

SmartDegrees has finished the year 2019 in the best way, with the signing of an ambitious agreement with the Nebrija University. Thanks to this agreement, SmartDegrees will certify by means of its distributed ledger technology, blockchain, all the diplomas issued by this university and, in addition, will do so following the new standard of verifiable credentials, of the European Commission, which allows interoperability between the institutions.

This collaboration culminates a 2019 year of full growth for SmartDegrees, in which the European Commission has provided it with its Seal of Excellence (Horizon 2020 quality certificate – the largest research and innovation program in the European Union – in compliance with its criteria of excellence, impact, quality and efficiency in the implementation), in addition to granting financing to accelerate its expansion. The company anticipates in this way a technology that will become essential in the medium term.

SmartDegrees also already collaborates fluently with the following institutions:

University of the Illes Balears. Agreement signed with the objective of carrying out joint research studies on blockchain technology, to expand its possibilities in academic degrees, anticipate future trends and boost its communication to other universities.
Master in Banking and Financial Markets in Casablanca. A joint initiative between the universities Hassan II of Casablanca and Cantabria, which since August already issues its first university diplomas in blockchain, registered and certified by SmartDegrees.
Sicomoro Foundation. It has its meetings minutes certified in blockchain, simplifying and guaranteeing its processes, through an innovative end-to-end solution provided by SmartDegrees, since December.

Microsoft for Startups initiative

This innovative and disruptive model has not gone unnoticed and has obtained adherance to Microsoft for Startups initiative, consolidating its university certification platform, by hosting the blockchain nodes in the Azure cloud, improving security and scalability, in addition to multiple advantages for its expansion, for the benefit of universities.

In addition and in order to complement the above, SmartDegrees has expanded its services, incorporating a business strategic consulting activity, which it develops through SmartDegrees Consulting.

SmartDegrees began providing its services for the registration and certification of blockchain degrees at the University Carlos III de Madrid, in July 2018, to help university graduates in the labor market, promoting services around the degree and guaranteeing the validity of diplomas.

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Verifiable credentials in European Blockchain Services Infrastructure

Eva’s trip illustrates the possibilities of the blockchain solution developed by the European Commission and the members of the European Blockchain Partnership, the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI), and the verifiable credentials, whose standard it defines.

The trip shows a Belgian girl who graduates in her country, studies a master’s degree in Spain and later undertakes in Italy. In her country of origin she obtains two documents, one from the national government that will certify his identity, while another from the regional administration validates his university degree. This information allows her to access postgraduate education in Spain, which in turn issues a new digital certificate that she can store in her EBSI wallet. With all that information, as standard verifiable credentials, Eva can undertake in Italy, accessing grants from Feder funds, thanks to the credentials she has collected.

The European Blockchain Services Infrastructure aims to offer cross-border digital public services throughout the European Union using blockchain technology. It is formed by a network of blockchain nodes distributed throughout Europe, taking advantage of an increasing number of applications focused on specific use cases, whose proof of concept will begin to be available from January 2020.

(Source: CEF Digital)