Razzaq Abdul, Altamimi Ahmed B, Khan Wilayat, Alsaffar Mohammad, Alfaisal Fahad F, Ahmed Salman, Zhang Tao
School of Software, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xian, Shaanxi, People's Republic of China.
Department of Computer Engineering, University of Ha'il, Ha'il, Saudi Arabia.
PLoS One. 2025 Aug 12;20(8):e0328620. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0328620. eCollection 2025.
Metaverse is an emerging technology that synchronizes physical and virtual things. It is used to communicate and simulate the virtual world with the physical world through human actions in real-life scenarios. Combining blockchain and metaverse technologies produces an archetype shift in the educational technology domain regarding online certification, largely due to the impact of synchronizing educational technologies. The combined technology elevates the security measure, ensures transparency, enhances accountability, and reduces costs for the online certification process. Proposed Solution: The suggested solution (MetaEduTech) accelerates the certificate verification process by (i) extenuating the risks of misuse by leveraging decentralized storage of the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), (ii) securing the certificate, and (iii) providing the metaverse environment for certification. We perform experiments and evaluate the MetaEduTech solution by deploying a blockchain-based smart contract model on Ethereum on the Microsoft Windows platform.
The evaluation results show (i) the efficiency of the query response (5 ms-50 ms), (ii) and the performance of the query execution (CPU utilization between 2%-6%). The findings in this research underscore the effectiveness of the proposed solution with the potential to modernize the certification exam process. The proposed solution and its evaluation can provide insights into how to address the persistent issues surrounding certificate authenticity related to academic verification in a metaverse environment.
元宇宙是一种同步物理和虚拟事物的新兴技术。它用于在现实生活场景中通过人类行为将虚拟世界与物理世界进行通信和模拟。区块链技术与元宇宙技术的结合在在线认证的教育技术领域引发了范式转变，这主要归功于同步教育技术的影响。这种结合技术提升了安全措施，确保了透明度，增强了问责制，并降低了在线认证过程的成本。
建议的解决方案（MetaEduTech）通过以下方式加速证书验证过程：（i）利用星际文件系统（IPFS）的分散存储减轻滥用风险；（ii）保护证书安全；（iii）提供用于认证的元宇宙环境。我们通过在Microsoft Windows平台上的以太坊上部署基于区块链的智能合约模型来进行实验并评估MetaEduTech解决方案。
评估结果显示：（i）查询响应效率（5毫秒 - 50毫秒）；（ii）查询执行性能（CPU利用率在2% - 6%之间）。本研究中的发现强调了所提解决方案的有效性，它有潜力使认证考试过程现代化。所提解决方案及其评估可为如何解决元宇宙环境中与学术验证相关的证书真实性这一长期问题提供见解。
