The University of Johannesburg is using blockchain for certificate issuance

Temitope Akintade
The school is planning to issue 30,000 blockchain-based certificates to different students by the end of the year…
The University of Johannesburg is using blockchain for certificate issuance
The University of Johannesburg is using blockchain for certificate issuance


The University of Johannesburg, South Africa will be issuing certificates for short-term training programs using blockchain. Notably, the initiative is important as it helps graduates of the institution to easily forward their certificates to prospective employers via the digital form.

That is an interesting story, especially from a largely conservative segment of society, the academia.

But that is not the biggest news this week. Despite the continuous downturn of the crypto market, there seems to be a bright side as flagship asset bitcoin hit a major landmark this week. According to data from Glassnode chart, the total value transacted on the Bitcoin network has surpassed $100 trillion.

As little as that feat might sound, it is significant in its own right. It shows how far bitcoin and other digital assets have come, despite a rocky start in the financial world.

If you think about it, a crypto week is not a crypto week without a story of theft, hacking and exploits. We learnt this week that SudoRare, a fork of the popular NFT exchanges SudoSwap and LooksRare that was built by an anonymous team, has scammed users to the tune of about $820,000 worth of various crypto tokens.

Also, in a comical occurrence, a hacker lost 5 Ether in an unsuccessful exploit on Near Protocol’s Rainbow Bridge.

Now, a bit of detail on these and many more stories from around the world this week. So, here are the major crypto updates from this week:

UJ uses blockchain for certificate issuance 

The University of Johannesburg, South Africa will be issuing certificates for short-term training programs using blockchain. Notably, the initiative is important as it helps graduates of the institution to easily forward their certificates to prospective employers via the digital form. 

According to the announcement, all short-term training program certificates will have special QR codes. The QR codes can be easily scanned using a smartphone by anyone, including prospective employers, who want to verify the certificate’s authenticity. 

The school is planning to issue 30,000 blockchain-based certificates to different students by the end of the year. 

Commenting on the development, Tinus van Zyl, director of administration at the University of Johannesburg, said the school has been working on various ways to boost the security of educational documents in the last 10 years. 

Commenting on the initiative is Jaco du Toit, deputy director of the University of Johannesburg’s Cyber ​​Security Center. 

According to Toit, with certificates now hosted on the blockchain, the inputted data cannot be changed, adding that the initiative will contribute to improving the educational sector.  

“If all higher education institutions start issuing diplomas based on the blockchain, with the help of which graduates can quickly confirm their qualifications, they will make a significant contribution to the fight against document forgery,” Toit added. 

Read also: Nigeria to lead global crypto adoption with 100% rate by 2030

Bitcoin hits $100 trillion total value traded

In a tweet on Wednesday, an on-chain researcher at ARK Invest, David Puell, sharing a Glassnode chart, highlighted that the total value transacted on the Bitcoin network has surpassed $100 trillion.

The statistic can be seen as quite important. It represents a continuous growth in the adoption of Bitcoin, which had a rocky start to acceptability in its early days.

Also notably, this growth in adoption is happening despite the recent crypto winter that has seen Bitcoin decline by over 70% from its highs of $69k.

bitcoin

The crypto markets are now taken more seriously across the globe. As a result, the emerging asset class is now seeing more adoption from governments and legacy financial institutions. Bitcoin has become legal tender in at least two countries, El Salvador and recently the Central African Republic.

Several governments are also creating policies to promote blockchain innovation and investment as they see its potential as the next economic frontier. 

NFT Exchange scams users 

Despite warnings on Twitter that SudoRare could be a scam, the anonymous team behind the decentralized NFT exchange rug pulled unsuspecting users on Tuesday. Defrauding them of about $820,000 worth of ETH and other crypto tokens. 

According to on-chain data, the incident occurred early Tuesday, only about six hours after SudoRare went live. The exchange, which was spun up as a fork of the NFT marketplaces LooksRare and Sudoswap by an anonymous team, was supposed to allow users to create liquidity pools for NFT collections and collect fees by staking the project’s native token $SR. 

However, soon after going live, the team Rugpulled(a terminology for stealing funds from users and disappearing without a trace). Shortly after making off with the $820,000, the platform’s website and Twitter disappeared. 

The culprits behind the attack withdrew about $315,700 in WETH, $200,000 in XMON, and $314,700 worth of LOOKS tokens from the exchange before swapping the assets for ETH and moving the funds to three Ethereum wallets. 

Hacker loses money during exploit attempt 

Although crypto bridges have become a hot target for nefarious actors, not all malicious attackers make away with millions in stolen digital assets. In fact, some actually lose money during their exploit attempts.

According to an announcement by CEO of Aurora Labs, Alex Shevchenko on Monday, hackers tried to exploit Near Protocol’s Rainbow Bridge over the last weekend. Cross-chain bridges enable interoperability across blockchains. The Rainbow bridge allows users to move funds between the Near Protocol, Ethereum, and Aurora through smart contracts.

Peter Obi and internet fraudsters

According to Shevchenko, the hacker submitted a falsified Near block to the Rainbow bridge and put up the required safe deposit of 5 ether Saturday morning. The hacker was probably hoping that the early-morning weekend attack would have been difficult to mitigate.

But Rainbow’s automated watchdogs fended off the malicious transaction, leading to the hacker losing their 5 ETH deposit, equivalent to around $8,000 at the time. No user funds were lost in the attempted exploit.

Shevchenko advised the attacker to focus on doing good for the community by working on bug bounties instead of pilfering users’ funds and having a rough time trying to launder the ill-gotten assets.

Former Manager of Celsius accused of stealing millions of dollars 

Events surrounding the debacle of crypto lender Celsius continue to take a new twist as the firm has accused a former manager of overseeing the loss of millions of dollars. 

According to a lawsuit filed by Celsius on Tuesday, the former money manager, identified as Jason Stone and his company KeyFi Inc. misrepresented his investing abilities to the company and either lost or stole the money in question.

Investors lose life savings as Celsius coin crashes by 85%, file for bankruptcy

The defendant, who joined the company in 2020, expressed incompetence after allegedly giving false information about his ability to navigate the investment market. 

“Stone falsely represented himself as a pioneer and expert in coin staking and decentralized finance (DeFi) investments. Unfortunately, defendants Stone and KeyFi, Stone’s majority-owned corporate vehicle, proved themselves incapable of deploying coins profitably and appear to have lost thousands of Celsius coins through their gross mismanagement. But the defendants were not just incompetent, they also were thieves,” Celsius said.

Furthermore, Celsius accused the defendants of converting the company’s funds into non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and failed to report on the investment. To avoid detection, the lender that has since suspended customer withdrawals stated that KeyFi deployed the now-sanctioned Tornado Cash crypto mixer. 

Read also: With ₦4bn transactions in 10 months, eNaira is performing less than expected

Recall that Stone sued Celsius, accusing the company of orchestrating fraud and cheated him out of potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in payment. 

Celsius, a crypto lending platform filed for bankruptcy alongside withholding customer funds citing the effects of the cryptocurrency market crash in July. 

Here is all from us for this week. See you next week!


Technext Newsletter

Get the best of Africa’s daily tech to your inbox – first thing every morning.
Join the community now!

Register for Technext Coinference 2023, the Largest blockchain and DeFi Gathering in Africa.

Technext Newsletter

Get the best of Africa’s daily tech to your inbox – first thing every morning.
Join the community now!