🚀Blockchain Certificate Verification System

This project demonstrates a decentralized certificate issuing and verification system using Ethereum smart contracts, a Node.js backend, and MongoDB. The frontend is built with HTML/CSS/JS. It enables institutions to securely issue and verify student certificates on the blockchain.

🛠️ Project Structure

Certificate-Verification/
├── backend/             # Node.js + Express + MongoDB + Ethers
│   ├── models/          # Mongoose models
│   ├── index.js         # Main backend server
│   └── .env             # Environment variables (not pushed)
├── contracts/           # Solidity smart contract
├── artifacts/           # Compiled smart contract (from Hardhat)
├── frontend/            # HTML + CSS + JS static frontend
│   ├── index.html       # Homepage
│   ├── issue.html       # Certificate issuing
│   └── verify.html      # Certificate verification
├── .gitignore
└── README.md

---

📦 Backend Setup Instructions

Clone the Repository

git clone https://github.com/tharunR-17/Certificate-Verification.git
cd Certificate-Verification/backend

Try running some of the following tasks:

# 1. Install all project dependencies
npm install

# 2. Compile the smart contract
npx hardhat compile

# 3. Start a local blockchain
npx hardhat node

# 4. Deploy the contract to the local blockchain
npx hardhat run scripts/deploy.js --network localhost

# 5. Create a .env file inside the backend folder and add the following:
# (Replace values as needed)

MONGO_URI=mongodb://localhost:27017/certificates
GANACHE_URL=http://127.0.0.1:7545
PRIVATE_KEY=your_private_key
CONTRACT_ADDRESS=deployed_contract_address

# 6. Start the backend server
cd backend
npm install
node index.js

# 7. Open the frontend in a browser (index.html, issue.html, verify.html)
# Or serve using a local server:
cd frontend
npx serve .

---

MongoDB Certificate Schema

Each certificate is stored in MongoDB in the following format:

{
  "studentName": "John Doe",
  "courseName": "Blockchain 101",
  "issuedDate": "2024-04-12",
  "grade": "A+",
  "certHash": "0xabc123..."
}

---

Optional Enhancements

• ✅ Add certificate revocation
• ☁️ Integrate IPFS for certificate storage
• 🔐 Admin authentication
• 🦊 MetaMask frontend integration

---

✅ Prerequisites

• Node.js (v18+ recommended)
• Ganache (for local Ethereum blockchain)
• MongoDB (Local or cloud e.g. MongoDB Atlas)
• Metamask (if using frontend wallet in future)

---

🛡️ Security Notes

• Certificate hashes are generated using keccak256 (same as Solidity's hashing).
• All certificate data is stored on-chain for verification; metadata is stored in MongoDB.
• Consider adding HTTPS + authentication + revocation logic for production.

---

🤝 Contributing

Pull requests are welcome. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.

---