UAE Grape Technology and SmartWorld announce Blockchain academic credentials platform

Hyperledger Fabric Shahada eco-system brings together Education Institutions, Government Entities and other stakeholders on a secure permissioned blockchain platform. Shahada empowers Ministries to play a regulatory role on the blockchain records, digitally attest and certify credentials issued inside and outside the UAE.

SmartWorld and Grape Technology have jointly launched Shahada, which provides SaaS capabilities to securely create, maintain, share, and verify academic credentials via web platform & mobile application as per a press release on SmartWorld website.

Shahada is in alignment with both the UAE blockchain strategy 2021 and the fifty-year charter (article 4) that were launched by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, on April 2018 and January 2019 respectively. Shahada creates a consolidated education profile for all UAE residents fully powered by blockchain technology to save time, effort and resources as well as enhance happiness levels.

In a statement made to UNLOCK Abdul Husein, Co FOunder and CTO of Grape Technology, " Shahada is a digital certificate protocol built by leveraging the potential of existing, popular blockchain protocols. It is an advanced hybrid implementation of private and public blockchains. It aligns with global open standards developed by MIT and Blockcerts for anchoring digital records on public blockchain. it currently support Ethereum. Bitcoin and HyperledgerFabric. Our vision is to create an open and transparent ecosystem.

With the implementation of Shahada, educational institutions can issue credentials for all their students on blockchain. UAE Residents will have consolidated education profiles where they can maintain and verify their digital records. They can also share them with employers and other entities who can easily verify digitally their authenticity and identify fraudulent records. Shahada is also integrated with UAE Pass to identify the user; and grant user consent for sharing digitally.

Shahada eco-system brings together Education Institutions, Government Entities and other stakeholders on a secure permissioned blockchain platform. Shahada empowers Ministries to play a regulatory role on the blockchain records, digitally attest and certify credentials issued inside and outside the UAE.

“We are proud of our collaboration with Grape Technology and pleased to provide best in-class blockchain solutions for the educational sector in alignment with the UAE leadership vision”. Said Abdulqader Ali, Chief Executive Officer, Smartworld.

Shahada is built on a hybrid platform and compatible with the global open standards for publishing digital certificates on blockchain as implemented by MIT. In addition, it implements the best security practices in the industry, supporting advanced key storage, encryption and cryptography.

“We are excited to launch our state of the art Shahada Product which will transform the way education credentials are managed and shared to ease the life of UAE Residents. It’s also in line with our leadership vision for UAE to become the world leader in adopting technology”. Said Ali Sajwani, Founder & CEO, Grape Technology.

Grape Technology is also working Hyperledger Fabric Blockchain platform for Trade Ecosystem. According to their website, they are developing a proof of concept with multiple organizations across the UAE to connect all the participants in the Trade Eco-System. This use case cuts across different business and organizations and aims to simplify business processes involving multiple organizations.

In addition Grape Technology is working with Smart Dubai on a payment study with the objective to create the next stage of payments. It aims to streamline reconciliation and settlement between government organizations saving several man hours and paper in the process.

SmartWorld in Gitex 2019 also showcased what they dubbed at the time to be their Blockchain certification solution.