# Challenges of Using Blockchain in the Education Sector: A Literature Review
## 1 Introduction
Another initiative for higher-education institutions is blockchain record-keeping, which includes several case studies, for example, \"securing the certificates permanently, verifying the accreditation, automatic recognition of credits, and intellectual property management\" [5]. Depending on their structure and design, blockchains have different \"flavors\". The content contained in blockchain blocks as well as the activities carried out by the different participants on blockchain networks can be controlled, according to how the blockchain is set up and how it is expected to meet the desired business objective [6]. Public and private blockchains are the two most common types. They are widely used in numerous cryptocurrency networks and private companies. A third type, permissioned blockchains, has also earned popularity. On the one hand, in a public blockchain, everyone is allowed to join in the basic blockchain network activities [7]. However, despite the agility of the public blockchain, there are some limitations to this type. The most important one is the high electricity consumption needed to sustain the distributed public ledger. Other problems include the lack of privacy and anonymity [7]. On the other hand, the private blockchain grants only verified participants the ability to join the network [7]. It is a cryptography-based distributed ledger that acts as a closed, secure database. Therefore, not all participants have permission to run a full node, conduct transactions, or verify blockchain changes. The third type is the permissioned blockchain, which has both private and public blockchain attributes. Permissioned blockchains have become increasingly popular, due to their ability to assign distinct permissions to different network users [6]. This involves allowing any participants to enter the permissioned network after proper verification of their credentials and assigning selected and designated permissions to undertake only specific network operations [7]. Nowadays, some educational institutes have adopted blockchain technology in education; the majority of them use it to support academic degree management and summative assessment for learning outcomes [8]. For example, blockchain technology can record entire transcripts, such as the content and results of learning, students' achievements, university degrees, research experience, competencies, and individual interests [6]. These records can be securely stored and properly retrieved on a blockchain network. In the past, several cases of degree fraud have been reported [2]. However, blockchain technology helps in the reduction of degree fraud [8], for example by using a digital signature scheme and timestamps using blockchain [2], or by employing the time-stamping feature of blockchain to avoid illegal actions from diploma issuers, and the integrity and immutability characteristics to store diploma data and track the important updates of records [8]. Beyond evaluating and managing certificates, blockchain technology also offers a wide range of applications for formative evaluation, design, the implementation of learning activities, and the tracking of learning processes [8]. Despite all these advantages and opportunities to apply blockchain in the education sector, there are still several challenges [7, 9]. For example, blockchain, according to [PERSON] et al. [10], is still regarded as an immature technology because it is still in the early stages of development. Therefore, it still suffers from various issues related to scalability, interoperability, security, and privacy. In addition, since the educational systems have collected enormous volumes of data on many students, this increases the number of blocks and transactions in the blockchain, which requires more time to process, considering that each transaction needs peer-to-peer verification [11]. Furthermore, the consensus protocol for the verification of new blocks expends a substantial amount of power [12].