St. Peter’s School Barcelona is deploying blockchain-verified academic records across its full student body, as schools face rising pressure to protect transcripts, diplomas and certificates from AI-assisted forgery.
The system will cryptographically certify grade reports, official certificates and parental consent forms.
It is being implemented through CertiEDUCA, a trust infrastructure product from BLOOCK, using Billions Network’s privacy-preserving identity technology, according to the announcement.
The rollout follows a limited pilot in 2023 and began school-wide at the start of the 2025–2026 academic year. St. Peter’s expects to issue more than 2,500 certified academic reports to over 600 student families this year.
St. Peter’s claims itself as the only international school in Barcelona offering the full International Baccalaureate Continuum in English, from nursery through the Diploma Programme.
The move comes as credential fraud is becoming easier to scale.
Credentialing experts have warned that AI tools can generate fake diplomas, certificates and even fake credential-issuing websites, making conventional document checks harder for schools, employers and universities.
Under St. Peter’s system, each document is digitally signed by the institution, timestamped and linked to a blockchain-based integrity proof.
Parents, universities or authorized third parties can verify a document through a validation page without contacting the school.
The school says no student personal data is published onchain. The blockchain is used as an evidence layer, while sensitive information remains inside the school’s controlled systems.
Dr. Teresa Ferrer, curriculum coordinator at St. Peter’s School, said the school believes “it’s essential that the certifications students receive can be verified and validated while safeguarding their privacy.”
“This system allows students to demonstrate their academic achievements without any risk of their personal data being traceable,” Ferrer said. “What surprised us was just how important certified, verifiable academic records are for students applying to the world’s most reputable universities.”
She said the system gives graduates “a real advantage” and gives the school “a more reliable and efficient way to manage trust at scale.”
Billions Network, formerly Polygon ID, positions itself around privacy-preserving verification for humans and AI agents. The company says its technology is based on zero-knowledge and identity infrastructure used across Web3 identity projects.
Evin McMullen, CEO and co-founder of Billions Network, said academic credentials remain among the most important documents a person carries, but the systems behind them have not kept pace with the digital world.
“St. Peter’s has built a secure credential system where the school retains full control, parents gain confidence, and students’ data is never exposed,” McMullen said. “You own your records, you decide what to share, and no one stores what they don’t need.”
The initiative reflects a broader shift in education technology: moving verification from manual confirmation to cryptographic proof.
MIT began issuing blockchain-based digital diplomas in 2017, allowing graduates to receive recipient-owned virtual credentials and allowing verifiers to authenticate diplomas written to the blockchain.
Blockcerts, an open standard for blockchain credentials, has also been used for academic, professional, workforce and civic records. Its model allows institutions to issue tamper-resistant credentials that can be verified independently.
In Europe, the trend is being reinforced by public-sector credential frameworks.
The European Digital Credentials for Learning framework defines digital credentials as verifiable versions of diplomas, certificates, micro-credentials and other learning records, issued by organizations and signed with an electronic seal.
DC4EU, a European digital credentials project, is testing education and professional qualification credentials under the EU’s eIDAS trust framework.
The European Blockchain Services Infrastructure, established by EU member states, Norway, Liechtenstein and the European Commission, is designed to support cross-border trusted services for public administrations, citizens and businesses.
The practical benefit for schools is speed. A university, parent or employer can check whether a document was issued by the school and whether it has been altered, without sending emails to administrators or waiting for a manual confirmation.
For students, the value is portability. A verified record can be shared with admissions offices or other third parties while reducing the need to expose underlying personal data.
That privacy distinction is central to the St. Peter’s deployment. The blockchain does not store student data, documents or personally identifiable information. Instead, it stores an integrity reference that allows a verifier to confirm authenticity without seeing more information than needed.
BLOOCK said the same CertiEDUCA model can support diplomas, course certificates, professional accreditations, micro-credentials and modular learning records.
Lluís Llibre, CEO of BLOOCK, said education is one of the sectors where “the gap between digital distribution and digital trust is widest.”
“Schools issue thousands of documents every year, and until now there has been no scalable way for parents or institutions to independently verify their authenticity,” Llibre said. “The architecture follows the same principle we apply across all our deployments: blockchain should be used to certify truth.”
The St. Peter’s deployment is not Billions Network’s only privacy-focused institutional project in Spain.
Earlier this year, the Spanish Red Cross worked with Billions Network and BLOOCK on RedChain, a blockchain-based aid platform designed to provide donor transparency while protecting recipient identities.
The education rollout shows a different use case for the same underlying logic.
Rather than using blockchain to store personal information, the system uses cryptography to verify that a trusted institution issued a document and that the document has not been modified.
That distinction may matter as schools try to adopt digital trust tools without weakening privacy protections under European data rules.
St. Peter’s is the flagship deployment for CertiEDUCA. The broader test is whether verified academic records can move beyond pilots and become standard infrastructure for schools that increasingly operate across borders, digital platforms and AI-driven fraud risks.
The article “AI Is Making Fake Diplomas Easier. This Barcelona School Is Using Blockchain to Push Back” was first published on AlexaBlockchain. Read the complete article here: https://alexablockchain.com/st-peters-school-barcelona-rolls-out-blockchain-verified-academic-records/
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