LYCEUM

Credentials that verify in seconds, revoke honestly, and can prove a threshold without opening the transcript.

Open the live chamber in the app
The animated flow, the attack replays and the deep architecture run there; this page is the reference text.

Who this serves

• University registrar. Degrees as signed, revocable attestations, verified without you.
• Professional body. Licences that lapse and revoke where verifiers actually look.
• Employer screening. Verify in seconds against the issuer’s signature, not a PDF.
• Scholarship fund. Stipends released from escrow on attested progress.

The problem

A degree is verified by emailing a registrar and waiting; a licence is checked against a register that lags reality; a forged certificate costs less than the courier that delivers it. And the honest candidate has only one move: hand over the entire transcript when the question was a single threshold.

The system

LYCEUM issues credentials as signed attestations: the engineering faculty signs the degree, the medical board signs the licence, each expiry-dated, each revocable, each verifiable by anyone against the issuer’s published keys in seconds, with no registrar in the loop. When the board revokes a licence on Tuesday, the revocation rides the event stream to every verifier that has ever cached it, and Wednesday’s verification honestly fails.

The quiet superpower is selective proof. A hospital needs to know a candidate passed the boards above the threshold; it does not need the score. The candidate proves the threshold with a zero-knowledge attestation verified against a published circuit, so the verifier confirms the rule held without ever seeing the number, and the transcript stays where it belongs. Scholarship stipends run the same rails as everything else here: escrowed at award, released on attested progress, disputed with evidence when it comes to that.

The cast and their ceilings

The flow, step by step

1. The faculty signs. The credential is dated, revocable, and its own proof.
2. The candidate proves the threshold without opening the transcript.
3. The employer verifies the rule held. The score stays private.
4. A Tuesday revocation reaches every verifier by Wednesday.
5. Stipends release from escrow on attested progress.

Each need, mapped to a live primitive

The attack this chamber refuses: The beautiful forgery

The attack. A candidate presents a perfectly typeset degree certificate from a real university that never issued it.

Why it fails. Verification does not read the document; it checks the issuer’s signature against published keys. A forgery is not a worse document here, it is a missing signature, and the check that finds it takes seconds and asks nobody’s permission.

What actually happens. The verification fails plainly, the real issuer’s register is untouched, and the beautiful typesetting convinces exactly no one who checked.

Deep architecture

LYCEUM deployed: the issuing institutions sign on their own frame; verifiers check against published keys in seconds with no registrar in the loop; revocations ride the event stream to everyone who ever cached a credential; and the transcripts sit below, deliberately connected to nothing, because the zero-knowledge rail exists precisely so they never have to leave. The trace replays one candidate, issuance to a threshold proved without a score.

The deployment, traced

1. Issuance reads the student information system, which remains the academic truth.
2. The engineering faculty signs the degree: expiry-dated, revocable, its keys published.
3. The medical board signs the licence on the same rails.
4. A hospital verifies in seconds against the issuer’s published keys. No registrar is in the loop.
5. The hospital needs to know the boards were passed above threshold. It does not need the score. The candidate proves the threshold, zero-knowledge.
6. The proof verifies against a published circuit. The rule held; the number never appeared.
7. The verifier records the proof, not the transcript.
8. On Tuesday, the board revokes a licence.
9. The revocation rides the event stream to every verifier that ever cached the credential. Wednesday’s verification honestly fails.
10. Scholarship stipends run the same rails: escrowed at award.
11. The stipend lands exactly once, staged.
12. Each stage releases on attested progress, and a dispute, if it comes, argues over evidence.

Adoption, phase by phase

Discover: One credential class, re-read as attestations.

• Runs. Nothing. One degree programme redrawn as attestation types, expiry rules and revocation events.
• Agents. None. The registrar’s office settles expiry and revocation semantics while they are still words.
• Integrates. Nothing. The SIS and the exam systems stay the source of truth.
• Deliberately not yet. No key is published. Nothing verifies.
• Proof that gates the next phase. One graduating class re-expressed as signed attestations, and the registrar confirms every edge case, including the withdrawn degree, maps cleanly.

Pilot: One faculty issues; one employer verifies.

• Runs. A registry seat for the institution, single VM if policy requires its own walls.
• Agents. faculty-issuer signing real credentials for volunteers; one verifier-desk at a partner employer.
• Integrates. Issuance reads the SIS; transcripts remain untouched and unread.
• Deliberately not yet. No ZK proofs. No revocation broadcast beyond the pilot pair. No stipends.
• Proof that gates the next phase. A volunteer’s credential verifies at the partner in under ten seconds against published keys, and a staged revocation fails their next check honestly.

Production: The institution signs; the sector verifies.

• Runs. A registry per issuing institution, or a shared one per sector body. About nine containers.
• Agents. The full cast: faculty and board issuers, verifier desks, the scholarship fund on escrow rails.
• Integrates. The SIS feeds issuance; ZK threshold proofs verify against published circuits; transcripts never leave the vault.
• Deliberately not yet. Accreditation of the issuer itself remains the sector’s question, not this deployment’s claim.
• Proof that gates the next phase. A season of hiring checks completes with zero transcript requests, because every threshold question was answered by a proof.

Federation: Credentials that travel; scores that do not.

• Runs. Unchanged. Institutions and employers federate as they come.
• Agents. Credentials travel with candidate DIDs; revocations reach every cached verifier.
• Integrates. Each new institution or employer is a signed card and a licence.
• Deliberately not yet. Diploma-recognition treaties stay with the authorities that grant them.
• Proof that gates the next phase. A candidate credentialed at one institution is verified by an employer on another continent in seconds, with the transcript still closed.

Sizing

One threshold, proved without the score

sequenceDiagram
  participant SIS as SIS (source of truth)
  participant Fac as faculty-issuer
  participant Att as signed attestations
  participant Anna as candidate
  participant ZK as ZK circuit (published)
  participant Hos as verifier-desk
  SIS-->>Fac: result, read-side
  Fac->>Att: attestation signed, expiry-dated
  Anna->>ZK: prove: score above threshold
  ZK-->>Hos: proof verifies against the circuit
  Hos->>Att: issuer keys checked, seconds
  Note over Hos: the rule held; the number never appeared
  Note over Att: a Tuesday revocation makes Wednesday's check honestly fail

Topology, as declared

flowchart LR
  F["faculty issuer"] -->|"sign attestation<br/>expiry + revocable"| CRED["credential<br/>verifiable vs published keys"]
  CRED -->|"ZK threshold proof<br/>PlonK, published circuit"| V["verifier"]
  B["board issuer"] -->|"revocation"| WS["event stream<br/>reaches cached verifiers"]
  FUND["scholarship escrow"] -->|"release on attested progress"| TEG["TEG"]
  CRED --> ES[("append-only record<br/>outlives the issuer")]

Standing it up

• Infrastructure. A registry per issuing institution, or a shared one per sector body.
• Agents. 4 roles; issuance plugs into the student information system that already exists.
• Integration. The SIS and exam systems remain the source of academic truth; the protocol carries the signed public half.

What this does not claim

• LYCEUM verifies that an issuer signed a claim. Accreditation of the issuer itself remains the sector’s question.
• No diploma-recognition treaty is implemented or implied; recognition between jurisdictions stays with the authorities that grant it.