CampusCoin: A Blockchain-Based Smart Contract System for Automated Reward Distribution and Token-Based Payments on Academic Campuses

The CampusCoin platform outlined in this paper illustrates how a single blockchain-based solution can streamline and enhance transparency throughout the campus reward and payment process. It starts with the creation of the event, the verification by the faculty and finally the crediting to the student wallet and settlement with the vendor. It is a fixed-supply ERC-20 token system that provides on-chain duplicate-payment protection and role-based access control, meaning that it provides a tamper-proof environment without relying on any single administrator or central authority. Every transaction is written on the public ledger and the rules of payment are not only enforced through institutional convention, but also by cryptographic mechanisms via the smart contract. The dual-ledger system can be used by institutions that require on-chain integrity and the ability to perform relational queries. The token state is stored on the blockchain and the workflow state is stored in the PostgreSQL database. This means that no extra gas is needed to store the metadata on-chain, but it's still auditable and consistent. It has been tested using 20 structured test cases and all the major flows have been validated successfully. These were the event lifecycle, duplicate-payment prevention, vendor payments through QR code and consistency of the ledger. The system can be expanded in a number of ways. An alternative to the public chains that might be a constraint in institutional deployments is a permissioned consortium blockchain such as Hyperledger Besu. The content and the participation evidence of the event could also be stored on IPFS for decentralised storage. Moreover, the platform's support for Layer-2 solutions like Polygon or Optimism can also assist in reducing transaction latency and gas costs during busy periods at the campus. Additional future enhancements include mobile support and more sophisticated governance models to manage reward policies throughout the campus ecosystem.

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