NEBULA: Ghana Academic Credential Network β A Proof-of-Authority blockchain for secure academic certificate verification, built in C# with RSA-2048 and Merkle Trees.
# π Nebula β Blockchain Academic Certificate Verification System
> **A blockchain-based academic certificate issuance, verification, and validation platform designed to combat fraudulent academic credentials.**
Nebula is a decentralized academic certificate verification system that allows universities to issue digitally signed academic certificates and enables students, employers, institutions, and other authorized parties to verify the authenticity of those certificates.
The system combines a modern web interface, cryptographic hashing, digital signatures, Merkle Trees, blockchain data structures, and a Solidity smart contract to create a tamper-evident academic credential system.
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## π Problem
Academic certificate fraud is a major problem. Traditional paper-based and centralized verification systems can be:
* Slow to verify
* Expensive for institutions
* Difficult for employers to access
* Vulnerable to document alteration
* Dependent on contacting the issuing institution
* Difficult to scale across multiple universities
Nebula addresses this problem by creating a system where certificate information can be cryptographically secured and verified against blockchain records.
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## π‘ Solution
Nebula provides a digital certificate lifecycle:
```text
University
β
β Issue Certificate
βΌ
Cryptographic Processing
β
βββ SHA-256 Hashing
βββ Digital Signature
βββ Merkle Tree
β
βΌ
Blockchain Registry
β
βΌ
βββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββ
β Certificate β
β Registry β
βββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββ
β
ββββββββββββββββ
β β
βΌ βΌ
Student Employer
β β
ββββββββ¬ββββββββ
βΌ
Verify Certificate
```
Instead of trusting a certificate document alone, the verifier can check the certificate against cryptographically secured blockchain data.
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# β¨ Features
## π Certificate Issuance
Authorized universities can issue academic certificates containing information such as:
* Certificate ID
* Student β¦