The problem zkScholar solves

Traditional academic and research verification is slow, centralized, and prone to fraud. zkScholar enables privacy-preserving credential verification using zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) while ensuring authenticity.

• Students can prove degrees & certifications without exposing personal data.
• Researchers can verify peer reviews and funding history anonymously.
• Employers can verify candidate qualifications securely.
• Institutions can issue fraud-proof credentials on-chain.
  zkScholar ensures trust, decentralization, and scalability using zkVerify, EDU Chain, and Arbitrum.

Challenges I ran into

🔹 Integrating zkVerify for credential proofing – Had to optimize proof generation for fast verification.
🔹 AI-based fraud detection – Implemented OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and LLM-based analysis for detecting fake credentials.
🔹 Deploying on Arbitrum Stylus – Rust-based smart contract development required debugging compatibility issues with zkVerify.
🔹 Ensuring user privacy – Built a system that allows anonymous credential verification without exposing user data.

Through constant testing and iterations, we overcame these issues to create a seamless, efficient, and scalable solution.