CORTEX is a decentralized and distributed network that keeps safe and verifies individual academic records. CORTEX is a private blockchain with only an academic purpose, in which the courses approved and degrees obtained by a student are recorded as transactions in the student personal profile. Using blockchain we can create a decentralized and reliable system, and by using biometrics technologies we can create a paperless system which is always available to the users.
The inspiration for our project is the true story of two brothers Mohammad and Mahmoud, Syrians refugees whom we have interviewed during our research. After a long and tough journey, they are now living in Spain. With great efforts Mohammad managed to bring his academic certificates to Spain. This allowed him to find a decent job in his field of expertise and apply for a master degree. However, Mahmoud couldn’t bring his academic certificates as he was in the middle of his studies when he had to flee Syria. Today he is not able to finish his studies and find a decent job as he lost everything and can’t prove his academic qualifications to resume his life. It may sound unbelievable, but today in the 21st-century people can lose the power to use their education, and one of the reasons is the current anachronic system of educational certificates based on paper and middle-men verification.
We envision CORTEX as a sustainable nonprofit organization. The profits generated are first reinvested on maintaining the system, while the remaining is reimbursed to the academic institutions that support the system as computing nodes. Our main objective is to onboard prestigious institutions for the first three years and demonstrates the value proposition of using CORTEX, we will then move to onboarding group of institutions and eventually envision CORTEX to be a global protocol.
Project documentation https://cernbox.cern.ch/index.php/s/kwHs2XDc61GHunJ