Blockchain-Based Decentralized Verifiable Credentials: Leveraging Smart Contracts for Privacy-Preserving Authentication Mechanisms to Enhance Data Security in Scientific Data Access

Managing and exchanging sensitive information securely is a paramount concern for different domains such as scientific, finance, cybersecurity, and healthcare. The increasing reliance on computing workflows and digital data transactions requires ensuring that sensitive information is protected from unauthorized access, tampering, or misuse and ensuring data integrity and transparency. To address this need, several approaches have been proposed such as JWT, SciTokens, Verifiable Credentials, and Smart Contracts which provide different methods for managing and exchanging information securely in centralized or decentralized and trustworthy environments. However, each technology offers unique advantages and limitations that require a comprehensive analysis to understand its potential and challenges. In our previous study, we conducted a comprehensive analysis of these approaches for authenticating and securing access to scientific data. This research further proposes a novel blockchain-based verifiable credentials that integrate the concept of Smart Contracts. The aim of this study is to introduce a decentralized and privacy-preserving authentication mechanism to enable stakeholders to share, verify, or revocation of their data with enhanced security, transparency, and trust. The proposed framework utilizes two different blockchain frameworks, Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum to conduct comprehensive research to evaluate the effectiveness of both frameworks for the development of verifiable credentials. Our analysis indicates that Hyperledger Fabric offers enhanced security and ensures robust integrity through a private network and chaincode mechanism for authentication and access to data. As a result of our analysis, we adopt Hyperledger Fabric for the implementation and demonstration of the final version of our framework. We evaluate the proposed approach with a set of educational data to measure the effectiveness of the system. We find the proposed framework enables users to share data effectively within a secure network and only authorized stakeholders are allowed to access the shared data.