EduNex

Inspiration

We were inspired by the problem of credential fraud and verification in the education sector. We realized that many students and employers face difficulties and costs in proving and validating their educational achievements, especially across different countries and institutions. We also learned that some people resort to forging or buying fake certificates and degrees, which undermines the trust and quality of the education system. We wanted to create a solution that could make the credential verification process more secure, transparent, and efficient for all stakeholders.

What it does

EduNex is a decentralized application that combines blockchain technology with TiDB Cloud 33 Serverless to create a tamper-proof and transparent education credential verification system. EduNex allows educational institutions to issue digital certificates and degrees on the blockchain, and students to share their credentials securely with employers and other stakeholders. EduNex eliminates the need for costly third-party verification services and provides a reliable way to validate educational achievements, reducing fraud and improving trust in the education ecosystem.

How we built it

We built EduNex using various technologies and frameworks, such as:

Blockchain: We used Ethereum as our blockchain platform, and wrote smart contracts in Solidity to implement the logic for issuing, updating, deleting, and verifying certificates and students. We deployed our contracts on the Rinkeby test network, and used Truffle as our development environment. We also used Web3.js as our library for interacting with the blockchain from our backend.
Backend: We used Node.js and Express.js as our backend framework, and MongoDB as our database for storing student and certificate data. We also used Mongoose as our object data modeling tool, bcrypt for hashing passwords, jwt for generating tokens, cors for enabling cross-origin resource sharing, and dotenv for managing environment variables.
Frontend: We used React.js as our frontend framework, and Bootstrap as our UI library. We also used Axios as our HTTP client, QRCode.react for generating QR codes, react-router-dom for routing, react-toastify for displaying notifications, and react-copy-to-clipboard for copying text to clipboard.
TiDB Cloud 33 Serverless: We used TiDB Cloud 33 Serverless as our cloud-native database service that combines AI-generated SQL and Serverless HTAP. We used it to store and query data from our blockchain network, such as transaction hashes, contract addresses, event logs, etc. We also used the @tidbcloud/tidb-client module to connect to TiDB Cloud from our backend.

Challenges we ran into

Some of the challenges we faced while building EduNex were:

Learning how to write smart contracts in Solidity and deploy them on the blockchain network
Integrating TiDB Cloud 33 Serverless with our backend and blockchain
Designing a user-friendly and responsive UI for our frontend
Testing and debugging our code across different components

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Some of the accomplishments that we're proud of are:

Creating a working prototype of EduNex that demonstrates the core features of our app
Using blockchain technology and TiDB Cloud 33 Serverless to create a secure and transparent system for credential verification
Implementing various functionalities such as issuing certificates, verifying certificates with QR codes or links, registering students on the blockchain, etc.
Making a demo presentation and a user manual for our app

What we learned

Some of the things that we learned while building EduNex are:

How to use blockchain technology and smart contracts to create decentralized applications
How to use TiDB Cloud 33 Serverless as a cloud-native database service that offers real-time analytics and elastic scaling
How to use various technologies and frameworks such as Node.js, Express.js, React.js, MongoDB, Web3.js, etc.
How to work as a team and collaborate on a project using GitHub