<![CDATA[Academic certificates play a crucial role in today's competitive job market by helping employers assess candidates' qualifications and suitability for specific roles, thereby enhancing employability. However, traditional methods of certificate verification are fraught with challenges, particularly the widespread issue of forgery. This study proposes a blockchain-based academic certification system using the NEAR Protocol to improve the reliability of certificate issuance and verification. The developed decentralized application (DApp) issues certificates as Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), enabling tamper-resistant and easily verifiable credentials. The system was developed using Scrum and evaluated through qualitative thematic analysis of structured interview data. The architecture includes a NEAR-based NFT smart contract, RESTful API, and web frontend. Functional and integration testing on the NEAR testnet confirmed successful certificate minting, storage, and verification with low transaction costs. User evaluation results show that 80.48% of response-level feedback (169/210 responses) was positive across the evaluated themes, with 24 of 30 participants expressing willingness to use the system. Compared with Ethereum and Solana, the proposed DApp system demonstrates better cost efficiency. The novelty of the study lies in integrating Scrum-based development, structured user evaluation, and NFT-based credentials closely into a unified academic certification framework. The proposed approach effectively streamlines certificate management and helps mitigate certificate fraud.]]>
