EBSI serves multiple purposes:

It provides an infrastructure, fostering legal certainty and trust by design, to offer blockchain-based services that integrate public and private sector applications.

As a key element of the European Blockchain Partnership, it strengthens the EU’s capability to reinforce Europe’s strategic autonomy in key digital capacities.

It aims to stimulate blockchain exploration and implementation within different organizations – promoting interoperability, scalability, and sustainability within a legally compliant framework.

EBSI will also contribute to the standardization and wider use of blockchain technologies, inviting Europe to be at the forefront of blockchain adoption in the world.

The primary mission of the CY-EBSI project is to increase efficiency, automation, and trust in the issuance of professional licenses and diplomas in Cyprus and across the EU. It aims at digitizing a currently manual and time-consuming process of acquiring a license to practice certain professions.

The project focuses on the application of Verifiable Credentials (VCs), using blockchain technology and the EBSI network. It targets the transformation of the current state, which involves several professional associations and chambers in Cyprus, authorized to issue licenses or certificates to practice.

In addition, CY-EBSI looks forward to promoting cross-border recognition of professional qualifications facilitating the professional mobility within Europe. It aligns with the broader European strategy of a Single Market, where the free movement of professionals is a vital component.

The CY-EBSI project has led to significant enhancements in automating and securing the process of issuing professional licenses and academic credentials in Cyprus. The project deployed an all-inclusive ecosystem with the CY-EBSI digital web wallet, a citizen’s portal, and an employers’ portal. These components enable the complete lifecycle of EBSI Verifiable Credentials, from creation to verification.

The project also developed fruitful collaborations with organizations like the Greek Universities network (GUnet), enabling the demonstration of the application at a cross-border level. The project successfully presented the “License to Practice” use-case in the EBSI Demo Days and inspired the setup of the “Employment Cluster” within the EBSI EA Wave 3 program.

The contributions of the University of Nicosia (UNIC) have been significant in supporting the setup and successful implementation of the EBSI network in Cyprus. UNIC was instrumental in configuring, setting up, and operating the EBSI node, ultimately enabling the secure and efficient issuance and verification of professional licenses and academic credentials.

In addition, UNIC deployed a unique data monitoring tool to extract and analyze data from the node for further analysis, contributing significantly to task improvement and provision of enhanced features on the node.

In brief, the proposed monitoring tool utilizes the following services as summarized the following Table

Summary of services utilized by the proposed monitoring tool.

Telegaf- An agent (service) for collecting system data push them to be used by other entities (in our case influxDB).

InfluxDB – A time series database used for the storage and retrieval of time series data.

Grafana – A multi-platform analytics and interactive visualization Web application. Used to provide analytics and visualization of data.

* We note that the user can run the Grafana and InfluxDb services on completely different machines than the Telegraf agent. A detailed documentation on how to config and run the monitoring tool is provided at this repository.

The repository provides detailed instructions on how to configure and run the monitoring tool. It includes steps on creating a telegraf.conf file, setting environment variables in a .env file, starting the tool using Docker Compose, and checking if the monitoring system is up and running. It also provides instructions for initial setup of InfluxDB and Grafana.

Furthermore, UNIC participated in the “Employment Cluster” under the EBSI EA Wave 3 program, making pivotal contributions to the ongoing development of related pilot stories across the EU. In this context, UNIC’s work has helped cultivate and strengthen a wider community of stakeholders devoted to the successful deployment and advancement of EBSI.