These days, nearly every major corporation is eyeing blockchain for prospective use cases and realizing its disruptive potential. As part of our ongoing innovation around blockchain, we introduce TrueRec - a secure and trusted digital wallet for storing professional and academic credentials.
Verifying and sharing credentials is still mostly managed with physical documents, sent via snail mail because until now the authenticity of digital copies has been difficult to guarantee. When applying for college or a new job, we have to spend time and money requesting our certificates from our previous educational institutions in order to prove our qualifications.
TrueRec functions as the source of truth, a new way to securely authenticate our proof of identity and achievements in the digital world. With TrueRec, users can store all their verified credentials in a single place and share them with anyone, anytime, anywhere.
This is how TrueRec works: when an institution issues a credential through TrueRec, a digital fingerprint (known as a hash) is added to the blockchain. TrueRec sends the credential to the user as a TRU file, which the user easily imports to the TrueRec app on their mobile device. Users can share their credentials directly from the TrueRec app. Recipients can verify the credentials by simply comparing the document to its fingerprint on the blockchain.
In today's global economy, people are increasingly mobile, living and working in various geographical locations. TrueRec can become a universally trusted way to verify identity and credentials. It also has the potential to help people in crisis situations such as refugees who were unwillingly displaced and need to build a new life. Because many refugees don’t have copies of their credentials, they face a daunting task to prove their training and skills. With TrueRec, we are leveraging blockchain technology to give people control of their digital identity and credentials in a secure and simple manner.

There were numerous challenges developing TrueRec as a decentralized application — or DApp for short. A DApp consists of a user interface (UI) and a decentralized backend, typically using blockchain technology and smart contracts. One of the main value propositions of a DApp is that it decentralizes authority, eliminating the need to trust one source of truth. In addition, a DApp allows users to maintain sole ownership of their information because it doesn't store any data in a centralized location. Additionally, users can rely on a peer-to-peer (P2P) network of nodes (computers) to verify the authenticity of their data. The UX of TrueRec is heavily influenced by blockchain's principles and characteristics.
To build a network, we adopted a 360° view and created an end-to-end solution with a seamless flow of information between the various users. Our three primary users are the “issuer” of the certificate, the “candidate” who owns the certificate, and the “verifier” who needs to validate the certificate. The TrueRec mobile application connects all three users through different channels and across multiple platforms.
Since a DApp allows users to maintain sole ownership of their information, it limited the automation possibilities of the app and forced us to identify alternative, simple ways to import the user’s data to the application, while still maintaining the best experience possible. Blockchain is a quickly emerging, yet relatively unfamiliar technology to the general public so we needed to design for different levels of technical user knowledge. Some users are intimidated by the technology, while others are eager to learn more, we aimed to address the needs of both users.
24h after starting our pilot, over 1100 openSAP course participants issued and shared their verified credentials using TrueRec. Here is what one user said: ”Wonderful. It is truly fascinating. I am very proud to participate in this first Blockchain TrueRec certificate”.