An Initiative by Pistis to Establish Blockchain Learning Credentials

Blockchain is an ingenious invention that has received extraordinary adaption in the millennial age. It simply is a growing list of records known as blocks, which are linked by cryptography. Blockchain technology was often related to cryptocurrency in Bitcoin, which limited the possibilities of its adaption into any other field apart from the fintech or supply chain industry. Pistis, a revolutionary blockchain platform service, recognized the capability of blockchain and its benefits in other industries like education. Under the resourceful guidance of Feng Hou, Pistis.io made it easy to provide digital credentials using blockchain technology whereby students gain access to a plethora of blockchain based services.

About Pistis

Currently serving as the Chief Digital Transformation Evangelist at Maryville University in St. Louis, Feng Hou co-founded Pistis.io with his wife Yu Peh in June 2019 in Albuquerque NM.  Pistis.io is a global blockchain platform service that provides a true low barrier entrance for business and individual users to blockchain services. As an award-winning CIO, Feng Hou, Co-Founder and CEO of White Fish, LLC. has led the blockchain initiative to successfully implement a student owned digital certificate and degree diploma solution. Hou has been working on several blockchain use cases from creating a universal student ID, using smart contract to create a blockchain ERP solution, as well as building a stackable micro-credentialing solution to certify student soft skills.

Hou’s blockchain solutions implemented at Central New Mexico Community College (CNM) made CNM the first higher education institution in the nation to use blockchain technology to provide its students with digital credentials. Similarly, Oral Roberts University (ORU) chose Pistis as their blockchain-based platform due to their ability to comprehend education, SIS/LMS systems, transcripts, JSON file conversions, and had the ability to meet the ‘fluidity’ criteria of ORU.  Pistis was clearly the only vendor who had the depth and breadth of understanding that a Blockchain vendor needed to allow the university to have control over the digital credentialing process.

Now individual users as well as organizations can quickly issue Degree-Diplomas, achievement certificates, licenses, academic transcripts, etc on the blockchain using Pistis.io. Universities can issue to students at once using bulk issuance feature. Pistis.io provides individual users as well as organizations a free to use Certificate designing tool. Organizations / Universities can use this tool to create their bulk-issuance. They also provide free blockchain verification tool for anyone to verify a certificate issued on Pistis.io. Pistis.io allows users to import certificates from any other blockchain certificate issuance platforms. Users can also import JSON certificates based on MIT’s Open Standard for Certificates.

Pistis.io is launching its global Pistis Learner’s Record (PLR), says Feng Hou. “We believe that individual learners should own and control their learning credentialing data, and PLR will help them re-imagine learning with easy-to-issue, easy-to-share, and easy-to-verify digital credentials on blockchain.”

Pistis Learner’s Record is establishing a new blockchain learning credentialing standard and offers the following 10 guiding principles:

– Universal access for learners of all ages. Learners should have direct access to blockchain services independent of any institutions to issue, share, store, verify, manage and search their learning credentials on blockchain.

– While we recognize the reality that different blockchain such as BitCoin or Ethereum may use a different document format to issue learning records, individual learners should have the ability to store all of their learning records in one easy-to-access online location where they can share, verify and maintain their learning records in different formats. 

– Learner’s records should include learning artifacts such as music, video clips and computer program codes other than just certificate-based documents because learning credentials are best evidenced in their original forms. 

– To protect learner’s sensitive data and privacy, learners should have the ability to easily delete their accounts or hide their online profile if they so choose. 

– Likewise, learners also can further protect their privacy by encrypting their learning records as an additional layer of data security. 

– Learners should have the ability to easily access their learning records on blockchain directly from their smart phones and web browsers. 

– Learners should have the ability to issue their own learning records that they have achieved from both in and outside of the classrooms. 

– Learners should have the ability to choose how they want to share and with whom they want to share their learning records. 

– Learner’s records should be easy to share via email, social media, PDF, as well as the traditional printed copies. 

– Finally, all learner records must be saved and stored in a true distributed file system with hash links and encryption to increase data security. 

PLR is fully compliant with the industry standard Self Sovereign Identity (SSI).

Everyone can register and the registered users, both individual and organizations, can easily design, test and issue certificates such as property deeds and learning credentials on blockchain. Pistis will develop new blockchain use cases to help both Individual and organization users create and grow their own businesses on Pistis blockchain platform.