Hello, I am Rosalino, a software engineer.
In recent years, the term “NFT diploma” has begun to appear more frequently, particularly in discussions around Verifiable Credentials.
While the concept itself is often mentioned, it is not always clear how such diplomas would actually function as a system in real-world use.
To better understand this, I built a minimal prototype (MVP) and verified it by actually implementing and running the system.
Rather than discussing ideals or theoretical possibilities, this article focuses on what became clear through hands-on development and verification.
Table of Contents
Why I Decided to Build and Verify It
How I Approached the System Design
What Turned Out to Be Challenging During Implementation
What I Confirmed by Running the System
What I Learned from Building the MVP
Closing Thoughts
Why I Decided to Build and Verify It
When people hear the term “NFT diploma,” many imagine a certificate stored on a blockchain.
However, in many cases, explanations stop at that level, and it is not clearly explained how such diplomas would actually be issued, verified, and used in practice.
For example:
Who issues the diploma
How a third party verifies its contents
Whether verification always requires contacting the issuing institution
If these points remain unclear, it would be difficult to use such diplomas as real credentials.
With this in mind, this MVP focused on verifying whether it is possible to issue diplomas digitally and allow third parties to independently verify their contents.
The goal was to confirm whether the entire flow, from issuance to being held by the student and verification by a third party, could be completed end to end.
How I Approached the System Design
The most important requirement for this MVP was ensuring that a third party can confirm whether a diploma is legitimate.
PDF-based diplomas may look official, but their contents can be modified relatively easily.
Centralized database approaches are another option, but they require verifiers to rely on the issuing institution each time verification is needed.
Writing data directly to a blockchain is also possible, but this approach raises practical concerns, such as how personal information should be handled and how updates or revocation would be managed.
Based on these considerations, I chose a mechanism in which digitally structured certificates are signed by the issuer and can be verified independently.
The system architecture was intentionally kept simple, as follows:
An administrative interface for issuing diplomas
A backend process that signs certificates
Off-chain data storage
A public verification page accessible to anyone
Blockchain integration was considered, but since the purpose of this MVP was to confirm whether a diploma system could function at all, it was treated as a future extension rather than a core requirement.
What Turned Out to Be Challenging During Implementation
The most time-consuming part of the implementation was determining how to represent diploma information in a way that systems can correctly understand.
Fields such as the following are easy for humans to interpret:
Student ID
Degree
Major
Graduation date
However, on their own, these fields do not clearly convey meaning to machines.
As a result, it was necessary to carefully check whether existing standard terms could be reused and, if not, how to explicitly define their meaning. Each item had to be reviewed and defined individually.
Although it initially seemed that fields could be added freely, in practice the system only worked correctly when definitions and conventions were strictly aligned.
This was one of the most important realizations during development.
What I Confirmed by Running the System
After implementing the system, it became possible to verify a diploma simply by accessing a verification URL.
In particular, I confirmed the following:
Verification does not require contacting the issuing institution
No special wallet is required to perform verification
These points are especially important when considering real-world use cases for diplomas. At the same time, I observed that even small changes to the structure or fields could cause verification to fail.
This made it clear that the data structure is highly sensitive and that user interfaces need to hide this complexity from end users.
What I Learned from Building the MVP
Through this MVP, several points became clear:
NFT diplomas are not just a concept and can be implemented in practice
What matters is not whether a blockchain is used, but whether third parties can independently verify the contents
Data structure, definitions, and management rules are more important than visual appearance
At the same time, deciding which guarantees should be handled by the system itself and which should be supported through operational processes remains an important consideration.
Closing Thoughts
NFT diplomas are a topic that is better understood by building and testing rather than by discussing concepts alone.
This MVP represents a complete attempt to verify whether it is possible to issue diplomas digitally and allow third parties to independently confirm their validity.
By going through the entire process from start to finish, it became much clearer where such a system works well and what requires careful consideration.
I hope this record serves as a useful reference for others exploring the same topic.