University of Nicosia to record degrees using cryptography

The University of Nicosia (UNIC) will become the first university in the world to record all of its academic degrees in the blockchain – a list of records linked and secured using cryptography that cannot be modified.
The announcement was made on Thursday by UNIC’s CEO Antonis Polemitis.
Speaking at the Decentralised 2017 conference, organised by UNIC, Polemitis said the university was the first to record academic degrees on the blockchain in 2014.
So far, this has been done on a trial basis but as of now the university will be writing all the degrees it issues on the blockchain.
In practical terms, companies seeking to hire university graduates will be able to verify candidates’ degrees online.
For use as a distributed ledger, a blockchain is typically managed by a peer-to-peer network collectively adhering to a protocol for validating new blocks. Once recorded, the data in any given block cannot be altered retroactively without the alteration of all subsequent blocks, which needs a collusion of the network majority.
The decentralised consensus makes blockchains suitable for the recording of events, medical records, and other records management activities.
UNIC was also the first university in the world to offer a course on cryptocurrency. The university accepts Bitcoin for tuition payments.
Decentralised 2017 is a two-day event (November 2-3) being held at the St. Raphael Resort in Limassol.
It is billed as the ‘first major conference in Europe focused on the business and political implications of blockchain technologies, across several key industries, including shipping/supply chain, financial services, government, accounting/auditing and legal and governance, along with analysis of the long-term implications of blockchain, artificial intelligence and decentralized autonomous organizations’.

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