Hyperledger Blockchain solution for academic certificates

Abstract: Academic certificates are document that attest an accomplishment with regards to adquiring new skills. These skills may be adquired from an educational institution, on the job trainng or any other institutional arrangement. It is not uncommon to find headlines regarding academic accomplishment by public figures that are not true or that are exagerated. It also not uncommon for people to fake public documents like academic certificates. In addition prestigous institutions may be interested in revoquing granted certificates from individuals with devious behavior as some form of social punishment. In todays system of granting academic certificates this is not possible.
Blockchain technology is one possible to keeping a public record (from the readers side) of educational accomplishments that can be easyly verified and accessible (from the writters side) to many institutions in a decentralized manner.

---

The project is curretly in development using frameworks and tools from Hyperledger, in particular Fabric and Composer

The business network is designed to capture the interactions between adminstrative staff within a certificate granting institution (for example a university) as well as participants from outside of such institutions (for example employers, reporters, and students). The interactions involve the process of creating programs or educational experiences and the certificates that attest the accomplishments, that are shared as assets accross a network. A basic setup of a business network involves a Certificate Template and a Personalized Certificate as assets and Administrator (staff and students) as participants. Student UserExternal are confered degrees assets from staff that use different types of smart contracts. The business network may be used to register interactions among participants, provide tractability for academic accomplishments and it may include a system of tokens to reward interactiosn among participants.

We will be posting updates on different versions of the business network degree-bnav2 that can be used both in the Composer Playground or can be deployed locally in Fabric. The individual files that make up the business network archive are in the directory degree-bnav2 of the repository.

---

In order to use any version of the business network in the Composer Playground you can download the .bna file, for example degree-bnav2@0.0.1.bna then connect to the playground,

1. Select the option to deploy a new business network.
2. In secttion 2. Model Network Starter Template select the option to Drop here to upload or browse. This will allow you can upload any .bna file.
3. Once the .bna file is uploaded you must deploy the business network. As soon at the business network is up and running you can follow the instructions to test or make modifications.

---

In order to deploy into a local Fabric enviormennt please clone the repository and follow the instructions

git clone https://github.com/Blockchain4openscience/hyperledger

We follow the hyperledger-composer tutorial on Deploying to a multi-organization Hyperledger Fabric.

Make sure that you start a fresh Hyperledger Fabric network, that is you must teardown any previous Hyperledger Fabric constainer and delete any old business network card that may exist form previous Fabric enviorments.

Fabric Network Design

The current Hyperledger Fabric Network that will serve as a skeleton design to test out the deployment of further changes to the business network will contain two organizations Org1 and Org2 each with two peer nodes a certification authority and a single orderer node for the network. These components will be running insde Docker containers. This sample network is known as the first-network from the fabric-samples from the repository mentioned in the following tutorial.

Once the repository has been cloned then we can generate Fabric network/ security artifacts according to design of the network and following the steps mentioned in the hyperledger-composer tutorial: Deploying a Hyperledger Composer blockchain business network to Hyperledger Fabric (multiple organizations)

The tutorial is made up of prerequisites and 19 steps that generates the network, the artifacts, cards and the element required for each organization. The steps also include the deployment of the business network to the nodes of the organization. We will make reference to the steps in the tutorial by mentioning them in italic.

We modify some of these steps in order to install/deploy the business network degree-bnav2,

1. In step one the following commands,

./byfn.sh -m generate

./byfn.sh -m up -s couchdb -a

generate Fabric network (given the design mentioned above) and security artifacts (certificates for all the network components and private keys). For convenience these artifacts will be kept togheter in a temporary file under /tmp/composer/.

2. In steps two through four, we must manually create a connection profile that includes the Certificate Authority (CA) certificates for all of the network components in order to connect to those network components (note that every time that we bootstrap the network these certificates will change an hence we must update the connection profile).

This connection profile now describes the fabric network setup, all the peers, orderers and certificate authorities that are part of the network, it defines all the organizations that are participating in the network and also defines the channel's on this network. Hyperledger Composer can only interact with a single channel so only one channel should be defined. We must specify the connection profile for each or the organizations, byfn-network-org1.json and byfn-network-org2.json.

3. In steps five and six we must locate the the certificate and private key for the Hyperledger Fabric administrator for Org1 and Org2 in order to copy this artifacts to the temporary folder.

Installing Business Network onto Fabric running network

4. In steps seven through ten we must create and import the business network cards for the Hyperledger Fabric administrator for Org1 and Org2, respectively. Once the business network cards are imported check them using the command composer card list.

5. In steps eleven and twelve we must install/deploy the business network degree-bnav2 (defined in bna file, degree-bnav2@0.0.1.bna) onto the Hyperledger Fabric peer nodes for Org1 and Org2

composer network install --card PeerAdmin@byfn-network-org1 --archiveFile degree-bnav2@0.0.1.bna

composer network install --card PeerAdmin@byfn-network-org2 --archiveFile degree-bnav2@0.0.1.bna

6. In step thirteen we define the endorsement policy for the business network. For the example the default endorsement policy is naive in the sense that only one organization has to endorse a transaction before it can be committed to the blockchain. This must be revised in the sequel. Create file in temporary folder.

7. In *steps fifteen and sixteen we retrieve business network administrator certificates for Org1 and Org2. The certficates will be placed into a directory called alice and bob in the current working directory.

At the end of the process we must have a temporary folder as the one we find in the repository as example-temporary-folder. Note that each file in this folder is only for ilustrative pourpose since the certificates and the other artifact will not be the same in a different setup. In addition in this temporary folder we have included a copy of the diretories alice and bob that are created in the current working directory, first-network.

8. In step seventeen we start the business network. Only Org1 needs to perform this operation.

composer network start -c PeerAdmin@byfn-network-org1 -n degree-bnav2 -V 0.0.1 -o endorsementPolicyFile=/tmp/composer/endorsement-policy.json -A alice -C alice/admin-pub.pem -A bob -C bob/admin-pub.pem

Once this command completes, the business network will have been started. Both Alice and Bob will be able to access the business network, start to set up the business network, and onboard other participants from their respective organizations. However, both Alice and Bob must create new business network cards with the certificates that they created in the previous steps so that they can access the business network.

9. In step eighteen we creata a business network card to access the business network as Org1

Run the composer card create command to create a business network card that Alice, the business network administrator for Org1, can use to access the business network:

composer card create -p /tmp/composer/org1/byfn-network-org1.json -u alice -n degree-bnav2 -c alice/admin-pub.pem -k alice/admin-priv.pem

Run the composer card import command to import the business network card that you just created:

composer card import -f alice@degree-bnav2.card

Run the composer network ping command to test the connection to the blockchain business network:

composer network ping -c alice@degree-bnav2

Running the composer-rest-server

Generating a REST server requires running the following command

composer-rest-server -c alice@degree-bnav2 -n "never" -p 3200 

The generated API is connected to the deployed blockchain and business network.

10. In step nineteen we create a business network card to access the business network as Org2

Run the composer card create command to create a business network card that Bob, the business network administrator for Org2, can use to access the business network:

composer card create -p /tmp/composer/org2/byfn-network-org2.json -u bob -n degree-bnav2 -c bob/admin-pub.pem -k bob/admin-priv.pem

Run the composer card import command to import the business network card that you just created:

composer card import -f bob@degree-bnav2.card

Run the composer network ping command to test the connection to the blockchain business network:

composer network ping -c bob@degree-bnav2

Running the composer-rest-server

Generating a REST server requires running the following command

composer-rest-server -c bob@degree-bnav2 -n "never" -p 3200 

The generated API is connected to the deployed blockchain and business network.

11. Use the rest server to test the business network, using the test examples from the playground. The test examples generate two participants (participant:admin-staff and participant:student), and two assets (asset: Certificate Template and asset: Certificate Personalized). These will be created using each of the active API that have been deployed by each organization. This test ilustrates how both API's create participants, assets and transaccions among them.

Stopping Hyperledger Fabric and deleting network cards

12. To stop the runtime and delete containers, run the following command

./byfn.sh -m down

13. Delete any 'old' business network cards that may exist in your wallet from previous Fabric environments.

composer card delete -c Card Name

14. Delete your file system card store in your HOME directory as follows:

rm -fr $HOME/.composer