The education industry needs to be reformed, and Hyperstack is leading the revolution.
Calling Hyperstack a blockchain-based digital credentialing platform is an understatement. We’re nearing a future of education reform, and Hyperstack is right at the front and center. Before you learn how, you need to know what Web3 is and how Web3 is changing the education industry.
Web3 And Its Potential
The World Wide Web that you know and use today is slowly changing. The change from the first generation of the web, Web1 to the second generation, Web2, was not as significant, because not many people had been using the Internet at the time. Today, however, the entire world lives on it. Everyone is connected and sharing content, information, money and so much more through the power of the Web.
Understanding Web3 is not easy compared to understanding Web1 and Web2, mainly because there is still a long way to go before Web3 has been fully realized. Web1 applications and websites focused on providing information quickly in the form of news articles and blogs (like the one you’re reading right now), and Web2 applications focused on connecting people through the internet, with social media networks such as Facebook and Whatsapp. However, while Web1 and Web2 are the past and the present, Web3 is the future.
Web1 and Web2 platforms rely on a lot of trust. You need to trust that the platform you’re signing up to won’t misuse your data. This brings us to the biggest reason that is driving the growth of Web3 – escaping centralized control. Platforms such as Google and Facebook are centralized bodies that can control your data once you give them permission. They also have the ability to control what gets seen on their platforms and can censor information, brands, or people that don’t align with their or their investors’ ideals. Web3 removes this completely.
Web3 removes this completely.
It is built on decentralization, openness, and more extensive user utility. This allows users to move away from centralized platforms more towards decentralized, nearly anonymous platforms. The vision for Web3 is that of an intelligent, autonomous, and open internet that uses AI and ML to act as a global brain and process content effectively and efficiently.
Web3 is becoming more and more popular among enthusiasts and people concerned about their privacy. Most people who use the Internet are a part of some centralized authority that claims to respect privacy and secures your data. While some are sincere, others are not. Moving to decentralized platforms gives you back control of your data. You don’t have to trust or have blind faith in a platform because your data will be owned by you, and you will be able to see if your data is being misused or not.
Web3 still has a long way to go to become the norm, mainly due to the technological limitations we have today. These characteristics of Web3 are far from being developed, but more and more websites are implementing Web3 features, and within the next 5 years, most websites and platforms will be Web3 compliant.
The Importance Of Digital Identity
A digital identity is reusable, digital proof of identity issued by a trusted authority with a certain level of credibility. It can be used in many applications in the digital world, such as online authentication and transactions. Your digital identity can contain information about you and is created when you use a service or a product online, including details such as your:
- Date of Birth
- Email Address
- Username
- Password
Think about how digital identities are used online currently. You have one account for one platform, and you may be using multiple platforms and will need multiple digital identities. This is an issue with digital identity in Web2 – there is no interconnectivity between applications online. Your digital identity is cloned several times. Some platforms allow you to use your Google or Facebook account to use their services, but this however means your data is controlled by a central authority. Your identity doesn’t actually belong to you.
Now, imagine you have a digital document, containing all your information, hosted on your own – a digital passport almost. You decide who gets to access your data, and when to cut that access off. Your identity belongs to you. This is the change that Web3 aspires to bring. And it is no longer a vision, as we’re seeing this becoming applied in current Web3 applications and platforms.
Understanding Web3 Credentials
Web3 Credentials are a form of digital credentials, in that they exist digitally. They use the major characteristics of Web3 technology in certification. While they are similar to traditional paper credentials in that they are earned through the completion of a task such as a course or a test, they differ from them in that they are not controlled by centralized bodies. Learn more about Web3 Credentials here.
Web2 Credentials, being issued by a centralized authority, leave you no choice but to trust them to take care of your credentials. Hence, you are trusting your data in the hands of someone else. This brings issues such as privacy infringement, data security, and inefficiency in validation. Web3 Credentials solve these issues by giving you direct ownership of your credentials. You can decide who can use your data. The decentralized nature of Web3 credentials makes it nearly impossible for hackers and threats to target your data, unlike attacking a centralized server where all credentials are stored.
Hyperstack’s Approach For A Web3 Future
Now, let’s get to the point of the article.
Hyperstack has been providing educational institutions with blockchain-secure, instantly verifiable digital credentials since 2018, replacing the traditional paper-based certificates that have been issued since the olden days. Hyperstack’s platform is used by some of the world’s top universities, non-profits, accelerators, online Edtech and training providers, medical / health care organizations, etc to issue certificates and badges to recipients.
Our vision for the future is a credentialing ecosystem, where all your credentials can be stored in one place, and can be used for proving your identity as well as your talents in both the real and digital world. For example, a student’s ID card should be able to:
- verify their identity when entering their university campus.
- grant access to their university’s library, with proof of membership
- log, and track their attendance when entering and leaving classes.
- prove their skillset to employers when applying for internships and jobs by providing digital credentials that are readily available and instantly verifiable
and so on. And all of this should happen seamlessly. While the issuer is the university, the power, and control lie with the student. This is the decentralized future that Hyperstack is working towards. While we have a long way to go for that to become a reality, technology is rapidly evolving. So we might see this sooner than we think.
How Hyperstack Edges Past Its Competitors
What makes us stand out from other credential platforms?
Hyperstack is decentralized and trustless, both of which are vital characteristics that make up the principles behind Web3. In our example earlier, we mentioned how verification and authentication of a student’s credentials need to be instant. Now imagine that needs to happen for thousands of students in an institution, for whatever purpose required. Hyperstack achieves that kind of speed, without compromising security and stability through the Hedera Hashgraph. Hedera is an open-source blockchain solution that can store and perform up to 10,000 transactions per second.
This also means that institutions and employers can instantly verify your credentials, allowing you to prove you are an eligible candidate if you’re applying for admission or a job position.
You can also create custom designs for your certificates with Hyperstack’s comprehensive Design Studio, which comes with hundreds of templates to choose from to get your certificates and badges, exactly the way you want them to be. Upon creating and issuing certificates, they will be sent to your recipients via email and can be stored in their own digital wallet.
This makes Hyperstack-issued credentials Web3 compliant.
Once the credentials are issued to the recipient, they can be used across platforms and viewed by anyone who has an internet connection. Hyperstack-issued digital badges are no different, as they are OpenBadge compliant. They can exist and be used across platforms in accordance with the OpenBadge standard. The Open Badges standard describes a method for packaging information about accomplishments, embedding it into portable image files as digital badges, and includes web-based validation and verification resources.
We integrate with many popular LMS and digital seminar platforms such as WebEx, Zoom, and Google Meet. This allows your workshop or seminar attendees to receive instant certification after an event concludes. Hyperstack’s API also allows professionals, entrepreneurs, and developers to integrate our services into your applications.
We understand that everyone’s needs are different, and having a “one-size fits all” model is not the way to go. With Hyperstack, you can build your own custom plan that suits your needs and goals. Schedule a demo with our team so we can find out what plan is exactly right for you.
You can also check out our pricing plans here.
How You Can Benefit By Choosing Hyperstack
Hyperstack helps top universities around the world, budding ed-tech startups, non-profits, training providers, etc to issue and store digital credentials to their recipients. Education providers have realized that they can’t remain in the current status quo and keep providing 4-year courses with paper-based degrees that are provided a year after graduation. They needed to evolve to what students and people looking to upskill want to learn.
Employers are no longer looking to hire fresh graduates. They want people with actual skills and the proper credentials to back them. So, instead of 4-year or 3-year courses, and issuing degrees, universities, and educational institutions are moving towards short-term courses, no longer than 3 to 6 months, which provide the particular skill sets that employers are looking for, and issue learners with micro-credentials to back their eligibility. Students can sign up for these courses, upskill and land career-defining jobs. Every party goes home a winner. But someone needs to be at the center, providing and verifying the certificates that are being issued, to whomever needs access or verification.
This is where Hyperstack comes in, and this is how we are changing the education industry, slowly but surely.
We hold the responsibility of authentication and verification, while education providers hold the responsibility of providing education. Hyperstack provides these services to educational institutions such as Stanford Medicine and Santa Clara University and organizations such as Dell and Startup Weekend.
Towards A Bright Future
Blockchain and Web3 are rapidly developing industries. The global blockchain industry in the education market alone is expected to reach $3.7 billion by 2025. This is with a compound annual growth rate of 68.8% from 2019 to 2025. This growth is largely driven by the increasing demand for secure and tamper-proof digital records, such as educational transcripts and diplomas, exactly the kind that Hyperstack provides.
A report by the World Economic Forum estimated that by 2025, 10% of global GDP will be stored on blockchains. This indicates the potential for widespread adoption of decentralized solutions like web3 credentialing in the coming years.
With all this excitement about how blockchain technology and Web3 development are going to change the world, there is no question about the impact Hyperstack has in one, but very important part, that is Web3 credentialing.
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