Cost association with using BlockCerts

Community
1

I’m doing some research on blockchain credentialing companies for my university. What is the cost associated with using BlockCerts?

Thank you!

2

LuAnne,

Blockcerts was released under the MIT license, which makes the code available for use free of charge. The only costs associated are for registering records on a blockchain, and each blockchain has their own fee structure that fluctuates. To mitigate these costs, Blockcerts can issue records in batches of 2000 at at time, through a merkle tree structure, and this is registered as a single transaction. On the BTC chain today, this fee ranges from $.05 to $0.25 depending on how fast it needs to be mined.

3

Will there be inflation of the cost of a transaction if the cost of bitcoin increases? Couldn’t this cause the cost to be untenable after time? If the transactions are done in batches, isn’t there a necessary latency between the certificate being issued to a user and confusion caused by their inability to confirm its issuance?

4

Hi Paul,

Welcome. It looks like you have several different questions here:

  • Yes, transaction fees to rise/fall with the cost of Bitcoin. Over time, this could become expensive over time. That is why batch issuance was introduced. By issuing hundreds/thousands of credentials at a time, the unit price per credential remains affordable, even with rising fees.

  • Batch issuance doesn’t technically result in latency, which is more related to the time it takes to mine a transaction. However, waiting until you have a significant batch of credentials to issue could take additional time.

  • Confusion of any sort comes from misaligned expectations. Proper communication can manage expectations and prevent confusion. There are many legacy processes which require days or weeks to complete, but if expectations are clear, then problems are avoided.