Block.co, a pioneer in Blockchain Credentialing applications, offers an open source platform to issue and verify digital certificates in a completely decentralized way; i.e. with no dependencies to the issuing institution or anyone else other than Bitcoin's blockchain. This site is a front-end of the open source verification software that anyone can use to validate digital certificates. Certificates are issued as PDF files with special metadata that anchor them into the blockchain.
Please note that the actual PDF of the certificate itself is not published to the blockchain, but rather a fingerprint of the PDF, which is enough to validate that the exact document was indeed published by the issuer and timestamped by Bitcoin’s blockchain.
To verify the authenticity of a certificate you can use the validation tool above to upload that PDF by clicking "Select a PDF certificate file..." and then selecting the certificate PDF on your computer.
Once the PDF file is selected then the “Verify” button will appear and clicking it will attempt to verify the certificate.
If the certificate verification is successful, the tool will display information regarding the graduate, the course and the issuer.
If the PDF file does not successfully validate then a warning message will appear. A certificate will successfully validate only if it has the appropriate metadata that anchor it on the Bitcoin’s blockchain. If not, for example, if the physical copy was scanned and provided to the validator, it will fail to validate since it will be missing the necessary metadata to match it to the blockchain entry.
Please note that an unsuccessful file validation does not necessarily mean that the document is not authentic. It may be the case that the specific PDF is not the original one that was generated by Block.co and published on the blockchain.
In this case, we suggest contacting Mr. Alexis Nicolaou (nicolaou.al@block.co) for further information regarding that certificate.