National Academic DepositoryIntegration Guide
What university registrars and IT teams need to operationalise NAD push, reconciliation, revocation, and verification — and how W3C Verifiable Credentials sit alongside NAD as the instantly-verifiable layer on top of the regulator-recognised record.
What NAD is, in one paragraph
The National Academic Depository (NAD) is a UGC-mandated digital repository of academic awards issued by recognised Indian educational institutions. It is operated jointly by NSDL Database Management (NDML) and CDSL Ventures Limited (CVL). Universities push degree, diploma, and certificate records to NAD; students, employers, and government departments query those records as the regulator-recognised source of truth.
NAD by itself does not provide cryptographic, instant verification — that is where W3C Verifiable Credentials come in. The two layers are complementary: NAD is the official register; the VC is the holder-owned, mathematically-verifiable artefact.
The NAD integration lifecycle
Six stages, from one-time onboarding to ongoing issuance/revocation. Stages 3–6 happen on every issuance and every credential lifecycle event.
Issuer onboarding with NSDL or CDSL
NAD is operated jointly by NSDL Database Management Limited (NDML) and CDSL Ventures Limited (CVL) under UGC's regulatory umbrella. A university selects one of the two operators, completes the issuer onboarding (typically a one-time KYC + signing of the participation agreement), and receives an issuer ID and API credentials.
Schema mapping
NAD accepts a structured payload — degree details, holder identifiers (Aadhaar last-4, ABC ID, roll number), programme metadata, issuance date, and the issuer signature. Map your university's existing examination-result schema onto the NAD payload format. This is a one-time engineering task per credential type.
Push at issuance
When examination results are declared, the credential infrastructure issues the W3C Verifiable Credential to the holder's wallet AND simultaneously calls the NAD push API to register the official record. The two events happen in the same database transaction so they cannot drift.
Reconciliation
A daily reconciliation job compares on-chain anchors against NAD's confirmation receipts. Any mismatch triggers a re-push or a manual review queue. Reconciliation logs become part of the audit trail for NAAC and UGC inspections.
Verification routing
Employers and embassies have two verification paths: (a) the public Gradify verifier, which returns the cryptographic proof in seconds, and (b) the NAD verification portal, which returns the official record. Both should agree — and the W3C VC carries the NAD certificate ID as a first-class field, letting verifiers cross-check.
Revocation propagation
If a credential must be revoked (degree withdrawn, plagiarism finding, identity error), the issuer signs a revocation event. The on-chain status flips, the NAD record is updated to revoked, and DigiLocker reflects the change. SLA target: under 48 hours end-to-end.
What goes into a NAD push payload
The required fields below are the lowest-common-denominator schema that both NSDL and CDSL accept. Operator-specific extensions are documented in their respective integration kits.
| Field | Purpose |
|---|---|
| issuerId | NAD-assigned identifier for the issuing university |
| candidateName | As printed on the certificate |
| abcId | Academic Bank of Credits ID — required for credit posting |
| aadhaarRefId | Tokenised Aadhaar reference (raw Aadhaar never transmitted) |
| rollNumber | University-internal roll/registration number |
| programmeCode | UGC-recognised programme code |
| issuanceDate | Date of result declaration / convocation |
| result | Final grade, CGPA, division, with normalised representation |
| issuerSignature | Digital signature of the registrar's office (PKI) |
| vcReference | URI/CID of the W3C Verifiable Credential anchor |
NAD vs W3C Verifiable Credentials — they're not alternatives
NAD — official register
- • Regulator-recognised record of truth
- • UGC compliance evidence
- • Searchable by candidate, programme, year
- • Government departments query NAD first
- • Updated by issuer; revocation propagates
W3C VC — holder-owned proof
- • Cryptographic, instant verification
- • Holder owns and controls the credential
- • Verifiable globally without contacting NAD
- • Selective disclosure for sensitive fields
- • Interoperable with international SSI wallets
Together: NAD is what your regulator and the government look at. The W3C VC is what an employer in 10 seconds and a student for 50 years can carry, present, and verify.
Where NAD integrations break in practice
Aadhaar mismatch
Holder's Aadhaar last-4 in the NAD record does not match the wallet-bound DID. Most common cause: typo at registration. Resolution: registrar amends, NAD accepts a correction with audit log.
ABC ID missing or invalid
Student never generated an ABC ID, or the ID is malformed. NAD will accept the credential but the credit-bank flow breaks. Resolve before issuance, not after.
Issuer signature key rotation
If the registrar's signing key rotates, every prior credential is still valid (signed under the old key) but new issuances must use the new key. The infrastructure publishes both keys in the issuer DID document so verifiers can resolve historical signatures.
NAD downtime
NAD has scheduled maintenance windows. The credential infrastructure must queue pushes during downtime — issuance to the holder must NEVER block on NAD availability.
NAD integration FAQs
Is NAD integration mandatory for Indian universities?+
Should I push to NSDL or CDSL?+
How does W3C VC interact with NAD?+
What about pre-NAD credentials? Can old degrees be added?+
What is the rate limit on NAD APIs?+
Can a credential exist on-chain without being in NAD?+
How does NAD handle DPDP Act 2023 compliance?+
Get NAD push live alongside your VC issuance
Gradify ships with end-to-end NAD integration — push, reconciliation, revocation, and audit logs included. We work with both NSDL and CDSL operators.
Talk to our integration team