Blockchain-Based Digital Document Verification Using SHA‑256 on the Internet Computer Protocol (ICP)

Muhammad Fadhil Abidin, Lulu Chaerani Munggaran

Abstract

Document forgery remains a pervasive problem across education, government, and trade sectors. This paper presents a blockchain-based digital document verification system built on the Internet Computer Protocol (ICP). The approach computes SHA‑256 hashes of documents and anchors them to ICP canister smart contracts, ensuring integrity and non-repudiation without storing document contents. The system manages a registry of approved verifiers so that only trusted institutions can enroll documents. In evaluation with 15 documents (85–3025 KB) and five repeated trials per document, the prototype achieved an average verification time of 1.54 s and an accuracy of 99%. Compared with Ethereum-based baselines in prior work, the ICP-based design avoids gas fees and reduces verification latency. The proposed architecture supports future integration of zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP) to validate authenticity while preserving privacy.

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.20961/jeeict.7.2.108624

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