At Yope, we normally blog about payments as that’s our core proposition, but we’re generally enthusiastic about all things blockchain and this looked like an interesting use case.

This week it hit the news that Holberton Software Engineering School in San Francisco is partnering with Bitproof to embed proof of their graduates’ certificates in the Bitcoin blockchain.

Call it Proof of Education.

By placing students’ certificates in a public blockchain, Holberton School makes it easier for employers to check if a candidate is truly a graduate from the school. Using any free blockchain explorer available online, such as Merkle, employers can get the answer in seconds.

Every Holberton digital certificate will be issued in a secure environment, 256 bits encrypted private key and 2 factor authentication to access the interface that will generate, sign and and insert the certificate into the Bitcoin blockchain, making the certificate’s content sealed and tamper-proof

“The blockchain is the future of certification, and we believe that in the following years, more schools will use the public blockchain to secure their certificates and diplomas,” said Sylvain Kalache, co-founder of Holberton School.

At a time when fake certifications are widely available, this can only be a positive move.

We can see a time in the not too distant future when someone builds a fancy interface for recruiters and HR departments to verify candidates’ claims in a matter of minutes.

In fact, why stop at academic certifications? A decentralised, blockchain-based careers networking site would be a killer app… like LinkedIn but without the spam, and instantly verifiable.

Recruiters, watch this space. Things could be about to get very interesting indeed.