A Comparative Analysis of Public Versus Private Blockchain Platforms for Academic Credential Verification

Abstract

Some of the major challenges associated with academic credential verification comprise forging of certificates, slowness of manual credential verification and absence of data ownership. A decentralized and tamper-proof Blockchain technology is available, but institutions are uninformed on how to choose between a public or a private platform. The study performs a comparative study of the subject of public blockchain (Ethereum) vs. aPrivateblockchain(HyperledgerFabric)in terms of scholarly credential authentication based on secondary analysis of existing literature on the topic dating 2018-2025. Five metrics of performance are analyzed: transaction throughput, latency, cost, security and scalability. Findings indicate that the private blockchains can far outperform the public blockchains by all metrics, and with 1000-3500 TPS (in contrast to 15-30 TPS), milliseconds latency (in contrast to seconds-minutes), negligible costs (in contrast to 0.50-50pertransaction),andmoreimportant scalability. Public blockchains are only beneficial to transparency but adversely affect privacy and performance. The results offer practical advice to institutions, suggesting that most academic credentialing uses should be done on private/ consortium blockchains.

Introduction

This study compares public and private blockchain platforms for academic credential verification, focusing on Ethereum (public blockchain) and Hyperledger Fabric (private blockchain). Traditional academic record systems suffer from issues such as data breaches, certificate forgery, slow verification processes, lack of student ownership, and single points of failure. Blockchain technology offers a secure, decentralized, and tamper-proof alternative for managing academic credentials.

The research uses a secondary analysis of literature published between 2018 and 2025, evaluating both blockchain types based on throughput, latency, cost, security, and scalability. Findings show that Ethereum provides strong decentralization and transparency but suffers from low transaction throughput (15–30 TPS), higher latency, and significant transaction costs due to gas fees. In contrast, Hyperledger Fabric delivers much higher throughput (up to 3500 TPS), faster verification times, lower operational costs, stronger privacy controls, and better scalability for institutional applications.

The study concludes that private blockchains are more suitable for universities and educational institutions because they provide efficient, cost-effective, and privacy-compliant credential management. Public blockchains may still be useful when maximum transparency and decentralization are required. A potential future solution is a hybrid blockchain model, where certificate hashes are stored on public blockchains for transparency while sensitive student data remains on private networks.

Although the findings strongly favor private blockchains for academic credential verification, the study is limited by its reliance on existing literature rather than real-world experiments. Future research should include practical deployments, comparisons with additional blockchain platforms, decision-support frameworks for institutions, integration with technologies such as self-sovereign identity and zero-knowledge proofs, and investigations into user adoption and long-term economic benefits.

Conclusion

This study made a comparative analysis of academically verifying credential blockchain through both a public and privately operated blockchain platform with Ethereum and a representative of a public blockchain and Hyperledger Fabric a representative of a privatelyoperatedblockchain.Itidentifiedfive performance indicators, namely, transaction throughput, latency, cost, security, as well as scalability systematically evaluated through secondaryanalysisofcurrentliteraturethrough 2018-2025. The results are quite evident, showing that the performance of private blockchains is significantlyhigher than that of public blockchain in the majority of metrics that can be related to institutional academic credentialing. Hyperledger Fabric has a throughput of 1000-3500 TPS against Ethereum throughput of 15-30 TPS and saves latency of verification which would otherwise take seconds or minutes. In contrast, the cost per-taxofaprivateblockchainiszero,whereas the gas costs per-tax of a public blockchain lie between $0.50 and $50 and above, so massive scale deployment would be prohibitively expensive.Scalability:Privateblockchainscan achieve better scalability, with channel-based designs (and horizontal scaling). Public blockchains are only beneficial in terms of decentralization and transparency, in which all transactionscanbepubliclyaudited,butthis Transparencyisincompatiblewithstudentdata privacy concerns and regulatory and compliance requirements including GDPR. In thecaseofthecredential managementsystems atmostacademicinstitutions,thebestchoiceis aprivate/consortiumblockchain. Transparency / performance-privacyis the root trade-off that determines which platforms to use, where organizations focus on efficiency, cost-effectiveness,andprotectionofpersonaldatais betterservedbyprivateblockchains,andmulti-stakeholder consortia advantages are more important with public platforms. Hybrids, in which the hashes of certificates are posted publicly,butthestudents\'dataiskeptprivately, hold some bright future. This study clarifies contradictory assertions in the literature by showing that the platform suitabilityis a result of particular institutional demands and not universal preeminence, can be applied practicallyto guideuniversities,policymakers, and system designers, and requires future empirical verification and exploration of hybrids in advance of these findings.

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Copyright

Copyright © 2026 Kusum ., Dr. Preeti. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.