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SmartDegrees and TechHeroX certify corporate training with blockchain

TechHeroX already has the first certificates for professionals in blockchain, registered and certified by SmartDegrees, being pioneers in giving validity to the skills acquired by those attending the Summit I event “Cybersecurity d3c0dified for data protection”. The main advantages for attendees are agility, comfort and safety.

This blockchain certified cybersecurity event was organized by TechHeroX, GirlsCanHack, MujeresTech and sponsored by Terminus7. These are the first professional certificates of skills and corporate training, registered in a mature, scalable and potential blockchain network that smart contracts allow, such as Quorum, based on Ethereum.

It uses the technology of distributed registration, blockchain, whose innovative character makes it the most important to change higher education and lifelong learning, opening enormous possibilities to graduates, companies, universities, labor platforms and recruiters.

Its main advantages: agility, comfort and security in blockchain

These professionals can manage their training and skills certificates from their smartphone, using a free app that allows them the following benefits:

  • It facilitates the enhancement of skills and abilities, speeding up their sharing with work platforms, recruiters, social networks and third parties.
  • The professional is the sovereign owner of his data and decides how, where and when to display them.
  • The app and support technology, blockchain, guarantee its inviolability and prevent fraud.

“These certifications make it easier for professionals to enhance their value in the labor market and in society, by allowing them to share their corporate training online, guaranteeing immutability for life. We are very satisfied with this innovative service, which we plan to extend to more companies and users soon”, according to María Laura Mosqueda, CEO of TechHeroX.

 About TechHeroX

TechHeroX is a producer of online training experiences, which designs disruptive content such as 360º and interactive videos, chatbots, augmented reality, interactive infographics and digital charts, among other tools. It also has its own Mobile Learning technology to distribute its courses in an app.

About SmartDegrees

SmartDegrees is a platform for the registration and certification of academic degrees and corporate training, with associated services, which allow to put their value in the labor market and in the society, while making them inviolable, ensuring their validity indefinitely.

Related article: TechHeroX present at the Mobile World Congress 2019SmartDegrees blockchain degrees work in Spain and Morocco

SmartDegrees ends its first year with ambition and positive synergies

SmartDegrees has started the year 2019 in the best way, thanks to the ambitious agreement signed with the educational company TechHeroX, dedicated to the production of unique online training experiences. Thanks to this agreement, SmartDegrees will certify through its distributed registration technology, blockchain, the degrees issued by TechHeroX.

This collaboration puts the finishing touch to a 2018 year of full growth for SmartDegrees. The most important milestone has been the collaboration with the University Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), which since July already issues the first university degrees in blockchain, registered and certified by SmartDegrees.

SmartDegrees has adhered to the Alastria blockchain network, where it also records its activity, increasing security and transparency, as well as enhancing interoperability between networks.

With such an innovative and disruptive model, SmartDegrees has been present in several activities and events, both in the educational and technological sectors, such as the European initiative Soft Landing or BMC Exchange, a benchmark for IT innovation, in which executives and experts analyzed the situation, possibilities and challenges for the future of this market.

As for the educational world, SmartDegrees has participated in several sectoral meetings of the Conferencia de Rectores de Universidades Españolas (CRUE), showing the opportunities of blockchain technology in the university world and its vocation of service in terms of quality certification and the truthfulness.

SmartDegrees was created in August 2017 with 100% Spanish capital, with the aim of offering registration and certification services for degrees in blockchain, to help university graduates in the labor market, promoting services around the degree and guaranteeing the validity of the diplomas.

Blockchain and university degrees in the XXIV CRUE Conference of General Secretariats

Blockchain has been part of the XXIV CRUE Conference of General Secretariats of the Spanish universities, which have taken place at the University of La Laguna, from November 21 to 23, which have been attended by more than 80 people linked to the General Secretariats of 40 academic centers across the country.

The objective of the conference was to jointly address different cross-cutting issues and problems that affect the ordinary functioning of universities.

Raúl Rubio, partner of Baker Mckenzie and legal advisor of SmartDegrees, has described the legal aspects associated with the use of blockchain in the university field. In particular, he highlighted the following aspects:

  • It is necessary to break the paradigm: blockchain is not equal to bitcoin.
  • It has key advantages: trust, security, reduction of time and cost in transactions.
  • There are public and private blockchain, this being the preferred option of most of the regulated entities.
  • In the university field it has the following uses:
    • Degrees and academic certificates (avoids manipulations, facilitates interaction with employers)
    • Credential Management
    • Monitoring and control of grants and subsidies
    • “Tokenization” of products and services
    • Financing
    • Digital protection of the results of research and management of intellectual property
    • Cryptocurrency Acceptance
  • Legal and regulatory developments are still limited worldwide, so the existing law applies to each case. There is no single approach for all cases, it depends on the use case.

For more details on the blockchain presentation and its impact on universities, click here. The conference program is shown here.

Related article: SmartDegrees participates in the first Blockchain Event of CRUE

SmartDegrees participates in the first Blockchain Conference of CRUE

SmartDegrees has been part of a round table at the Blockchain Conference organized by the Conferencia de Rectores de Universidades Españolas (CRUE), ICT sector, last October 5 at the University Internacional de Andalucía, in Malaga, which has aroused high interest, attending more than 70 people, mostly representatives of universities.

The objective of the day was to evaluate the maturity of this technology and what are its advantages and risks for universities, legal aspects and use cases in universities.

Maite Agujetas, COO of SmartDegrees, has described how blockchain is used to register and certify official university degrees in University Carlos III de Madrid, since last July, that the graduate can manage from his smartphone, through a free app that allows the following benefits:

  • It facilitates the enhancement of the degree, speeding up its sharing with labor platforms, recruiters and third parties.
  • The graduate is the sovereign owner of their data and decides how, where and when to display them.
  • The app and support technology, blockchain, guarantee its inviolability and prevent fraud.

The results are very positive, so the service is being extended to other universities, initially in Europe and Latin America.

In the experience of SmartDegrees, the keys have been “to choose the blockchain platform well”, which for the certificates of degrees has been a permissioned network, for facilitating the implementation of the specific activity of the certificates, and “avoiding the cryptocurrency”, if it is not necessary. This is the case of SmartDegrees, which uses, enterprise version of Ethereum, open source and without cryptocurrency. Maite Agujetas has also highlighted the current possibilities of the technology, which facilitates interoperability and integration between networks, as does SmartDegrees, which notarizes its operations in another additional blockchain network, that of Alastria, increasing the security provided by the SmartDegrees blockchain platform.

“Universities benefit from our activity, they are our partners, and we do not interfere with their internal processes, by resting in an API architecture.” However, “our final objective is the graduates, whom we help to value their qualification in the labor market and in the society, promoting services around the degree, which goes from being a static element in paper or electronically signed file, to be a secure and, therefore, dynamic digital asset, under the exclusive control of the graduate ”.

Related article: Blockchain and university degrees in the XXIV CRUE Conference of General Secretariats

Why Quorum, as blockchain platform in SmartDegrees?

Blockchain technology is expected to be disruptive in any activity based on the registration of property titles with time stamps. In particular, it will be the most important technology to change higher education. Big data, social networks, MOOCs, virtual reality and artificial intelligence are components of something new, enabled and transformed precisely by blockchain.

The advantages of blockchain are:

  • Autonomy: users identify themselves and maintain control of the storage and management of their personal data, as their sovereign owners.
  • Trust: in its operations, such as to carry out transactions such as payments or issuance of certificates.
  • Transparency and provenance: transactions are made with the knowledge that each party has the capacity to participate in them.
  • Immutability: records are recorded and stored permanently, without the possibility of modification.
  • Disintermediation: eliminates the need for a central control authority to manage transactions or keep records.
  • Collaboration: the parties can make transactions directly between them, without intermediating third parties.

SmartDegrees is a platform for the registration and certification of academic degrees, on which it builds services that value academic degrees for the labor market and society. The platform is based on blockchain, due to the advantages offered by this technology, referred to above, mainly the following:

  • It is distributed, with replicated nodes that prevent it from falling or losing information.
  • It is 100% safe, without risk of being hacked.
  • It has no possibility of third party interference. It keeps an immutable record of all the data that interacts in the network.

Additionally, among the various possible blockchain platforms, SmartDegrees takes the most mature and appropriate current platform for academic degrees: blockchain allowed network based on Ethereum, Quorum; It is the enterprise version of Ethereum, open source and free to use.

The reasons of Quorum for SmartDegrees are in the maturity of the technology and in its greater adequacy:

  • Smart contracts network (allows to use all the logic of a complete Turing machine). Other platforms, such as Bitcoin, do not have smart contracts.
  • Without cryptocurrency, for being unnecessary and complicating the operation of the network. The revenue model is out of network.
  • Voting as a type of consensus (for the type of contract to be handled, for speed and not to demand a large process capacity in the nodes).
  • Private network and operations between nodes. A dedicated network favors the definition and implementation of a specific type of processes, such as university accreditations.
  • It allows greater scalability, both in terms of participants and activity, as well as in extending the scope of certifications beyond academic degrees, such as competencies, practices, minutes and other university processes.

In order to take advantage of blockchain opportunities and provide greater transparency to its activity for universities, SmartDegrees, in addition to registering in its blockchain network, also externally notarizes all its operations in the Alastria network and offers universities, optionally, the exploitation of network nodes by the universities that want to do so.

Related article: Hybrid blockchain: the best of both words

SmartDegrees activates in Alastria its solution to validate university degrees with blockchain

From now on, the registrations and certificates of academic degrees made from SmartDegrees blockchain will also be notarized in the Alastria network. This gives validity, security and monitoring of higher education in universities.

The innovative and disruptive nature of this technology opens up enormous possibilities in all sectors, particularly in higher education, new graduates, alumni, universities, labor platforms and recruiters.

This service is open to all universities, the University Carlos III de Madrid has since July the first official university degrees in blockchain, registered and certified by SmartDegrees. Graduates who have joined the service can manage their degrees from their smartphone, through a free app that allows them the following benefits:

  • It facilitates the enhancement of the degree, speeding up its sharing with labor platforms, recruiters and third parties.
  • The graduate is the sovereign owner of its data and decides how, where and when to display them.
  • The app and support technology, blockchain, guarantee its inviolability and prevent fraud.

The blockchain platform used by SmartDegrees operates on Quorum, Ethereum’s entreprise evolution, the same protocol as Alastria network, which ensures strength, flexibility and high scalability.

Its main advantages: security and interoperability between blockchain networks

Through the notarization in the Alastria network, the security provided by the SmartDegrees blockchain platform is increased with that offered by the Alastria network, as well as the integration and interoperability between blockchain networks is evidenced and valued, whose importance will be increasing in the future .

The SmartDegrees service is being extended to other Spanish universities, as well as other countries in Europe and Latin America, interested in being members of the network of user universities.

About Alastria

Alastria is a non-profit association that aims to provide Spain with the basic blockchain infrastructure, the ‘Alastria Network’, and the ‘ID Alastria’ digital identity standard that allows transactions over the network to be legally valid, and with it , Spanish society can develop its own strategy. Alastria is a multisectoral consortium to which more than 300 entities of all types of sizes and sectors have already joined. Alastria partners collaborate and compete within a ‘semi-public’ network, which has the fundamental tools for the development of blockchain strategies designed to distribute and organize products and services for the Spanish market.

About SmartDegrees

SmartDegrees was created in August 2017 with 100% Spanish capital, with the aim of offering registration and certification services for blockchain degrees, to help university graduates in the labor market, promoting services around the degree and guaranteeing the validity of the diplomas.

Media coverage: Economia de HoyIbercampus.es

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