As of July 2025, all academic diplomas in Brazil have become digital. It is still possible to print a paper copy, but the value will be purely symbolic. Behind the digital solution is the young company LedgerTec, established with assistance from RNP, the national research and education network (NREN) of Brazil.
Currently, more than 80 universities and other academic institutions use the services provided by the company. These include the issuing, registration, validation, and preservation of digital diplomas. To date, LedgerTec has issued more than 360,000 diplomas.
The solution is based on blockchain technology which ensures that it is not possible to alter information in the documents unnoticed. Besides the actual diplomas, LedgerTec has registered more than 1.2 million documents in blockchain and more than 3.6 million digital signatures with certification from the certifying body ICP-Brasil.
Born to support RNP service
The origins of the initiative date back to 2017 at the Laboratory for Digital Video Applications at the Federal University of Paraiba. In 2018, the project became integrated into the working group scheme of RNP, and in 2019 LedgerTec was founded with support from RNP.
“The collaboration allowed us to validate the LedgerTec solutions in critical and regulated environments, and further to increase their impact on the public sector. The company was born as a startup to offer support for the Digital Diploma Issuing Service of RNP and expanded its portfolio to offering complete services which could be integrated with documentation tools, digital signature services, NFTs, digital storage and blockchain registration,” explains Caio Almeida, CEO of LedgerTec.
Further, the solutions would align with the development of strategic initiatives from the Ministry of Education, such as the National Portal for Validation and Visualization of Diplomas.
Scaling-up was a huge challenge
Already in 2018, the Ministry of Education launched an initiative aiming for modernization of diploma issuing. This triggered a process, which now has resulted in full digitization of the diplomas.
“It was a huge challenge to move from development of software aimed at projects to supplying ongoing technological services. We were required to set up a structure for commercial operations, with support processes, maintenance, and institutional relations, while also looking for market space, translating complex technological solutions into services of concrete value and accessibility to different target groups,” says Caio Almeida, continuing:
“The participation from RNP was important for validating and applying our solutions at large scale. Now we are looking to expand the utilization of the service (…) across the educational sector, including public bodies at the state and municipal levels, and private institutions which have demands for robust solutions concerning sensitive digital documents.”
The text is inspired by the article “Empresa oferece soluçãoo para a gestão e preservação de acervos acadêmicos digitais” (in Portuguese) at the RNP website.
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