For graduates of closed and merged institutions
Your university closed. Your proof of it should not disappear with it.
Your degree stays valid when a school shuts down. What stops working is the machinery that confirms it: the registrar, the portal, the verification page. In 2026 ProofSnap seals the documents and records you can still reach into one certified package, delivered in 24 hours and verifiable offline.
The documents you still hold, sealed and dated
The custodian or archive page, captured as evidence
Qualified eIDAS timestamp and Bitcoin anchor
A record that does not depend on the school existing
This site can no longer be reached
The institution closed. Student records were transferred to a custodian.
What you still hold
Your diploma, scanned
Your transcript, issued before the closure
The custodian page naming the new record holder
Sealed together, dated and signed, this is the record that survives.
Written by Radim Motycka, founder and lead engineer of ProofSnap, who builds the hashing, signing and timestamping pipeline described on this page.
Your university closed. How do you get a transcript now?
When a university closes, student records pass to a custodian institution or a state agency, and the trail can go cold. ProofSnap seals the diploma, transcript and portal pages you can still open, delivering one certified package within 24 hours for $59.99 in 2026, verifiable offline by anyone.
What actually happens to the records
Closure is a process with paperwork, and the paperwork decides whether you can ever prove anything again.
Records move to a custodian
A closing institution has to arrange transfer and long term maintenance of student records, and name the body that takes them on. That may be another university, a state agency or a records service. Which one it is determines what you can request, at what price and for how long.
Access is uneven
Some states keep transcripts available to former students for decades. Others leave it to whoever accepted the files. The advice given to affected students never varies: request copies quickly, and keep them yourself.
The digital trail goes first
Portals and verification pages stop resolving, and the old email addresses start bouncing, long before the paper archive is sorted out. If your proof of study lived in a student portal, that screen is the first thing to disappear.
Your degree is still valid
Closure does not cancel a conferred degree. The remaining problem is evidentiary: you now have to prove something whose original source no longer answers.
How we seal a degree from a closed institution
We work with what still exists. Usually that is more than people assume, and it is worth sealing before the rest goes.
Pay and upload
Pay the one-time fee of $59.99 and send us everything you hold: diploma, transcript, letters of completion, module results, even old emails from the registrar.
Point us at what remains online
The custodian announcement, the state agency page naming the record holder, the successor institution's alumni page, an archived version of the old registrar site. Any of these strengthens the package.
We capture and seal
We capture those pages as they render today, hash every file you sent, sign the manifest, add a qualified eIDAS timestamp and anchor it in Bitcoin.
You get the package
Within 24 hours you receive one signed ZIP with your documents and the captures inside it. It shows what you held and what the public record said on that date, and every part of it can be proved.
If the closure has been announced but has not taken effect, order before it does. Requesting transcripts from a live registrar and sealing them the same week is far stronger than reconstructing anything afterwards.
What is inside the package
One ZIP, built so that a stranger in five years can check it without contacting anyone.
files/diploma.pdfyour diploma, byte for byte
files/transcript.pdfyour transcript, unchanged
files/good_standing_letter.pdfand anything else you send, under its own name
files/web_verification_capture.zipthe official verification page, sealed: screenshot, HTML, DNS, TLS, headers, UTC time
provenance_certificate.pdfthe human-readable report
chain_of_custody.jsonevery step, in order
forensic_log.jsontamper-evident hash chain
manifest.jsonSHA-256 of every file
manifest.sigRSA signature over the manifest
publickey.pemthe key needed to check that signature
manifest.json.tsreIDAS qualified timestamp
eidas_validation.jsondata to validate it years later
manifest.json.otsBitcoin anchor
verification/verify.shoffline check on macOS and Linux
verification/verify.ps1the same check on Windows
verification/VERIFICATION_GUIDE.txthow to run it, in plain language
The package carries both timestamps. Everything you send sits in files/, under its own name, so a package with more documents simply contains more files.
The capture of the official screen travels as its own sealed package inside the ZIP, with its own manifest and chain of custody. Two independent layers, no clashing file names, and each layer can be checked on its own.
Your diploma and transcript preserved exactly as you send them
Captures of the custodian, archive or successor pages, with the HTML behind them
DNS, TLS and HTTP headers recording which server answered when the page was captured
A SHA-256 manifest signed with a per-package RSA key
A qualified eIDAS timestamp with long-term validation data
A Bitcoin OpenTimestamps anchor, independent of us
Verification scripts for Windows, macOS and Linux that check the hashes, the signature and the timestamp offline
1Manifest signature valid
2All file hashes match
3Qualified timestamp valid, 2026-09-13 10:22 UTC
4Bitcoin anchor present, deep check with the ots client
Nobody can restore an institution that no longer exists. What can still be closed is the gap between what you hold and what you can prove.
What the package proves
Four things the package proves, each of them checkable by the person you send it to.
That the documents you hold existed in exactly that form no later than the timestamp
That the custodian, archive or successor page said what it said, on that date, from that domain
That nothing in the package has changed since it was sealed
That anyone can verify it offline, with no account and no payment
What the alternatives cost when the school is gone
Most routes assume there is still an institution to ask. This one assumes there is not.
| Route | Published price | What it gives you |
|---|---|---|
| Transcript from the custodian or state archive | varies by state and custodian | An official copy, where a custodian exists and answers within the time you have. |
| One-off degree lookup, US clearinghouse route | priced per check, paid by the requester | Depends on whether that service holds data for your institution. |
| Apostille or notarised copy | state fee plus a service fee, per document | Legalises a paper copy for use abroad. Needs a document to legalise in the first place. |
| Credential evaluation, WES and similar | from $118 plus delivery | An equivalence opinion for the body that asked for it. Evaluators usually require documents from the issuing institution, which is the step a closure blocks. |
| ProofSnap certified package | $59.99 | A sealed, dated and signed record of everything you still hold and everything the public record still says. |
Prices are the providers' published figures, checked in September 2026. Each route answers a different question. This one answers the question about your own documents: what you hold, unchanged, proved as of a date you can point to.
Closed institution records certification
Delivered within 24 hours of receiving your files, one flat fee, no subscription
About €52 or £44 at current rates.
- Every document you send, preserved byte for byte inside the package
- A capture of the official verification screen or register record, when your credential has one
- SHA-256 for every file and an RSA-signed manifest
- A qualified eIDAS timestamp and a Bitcoin OpenTimestamps anchor
- A chain of custody document recording every step, and the evidence report as a readable PDF
- Verification scripts that check the hashes, the signature and the timestamp offline, so the recipient never has to call us
- An email delivery note when the package is ready
The upload page opens as soon as payment goes through. Questions first? Write to support@getproofsnap.com.
Closed institutions, answered
The extension
Would you rather do it yourself?
The extension does the same job on your own machine: certify the documents you still hold and capture the custodian or archive page yourself, at your own pace.
The side panel holds the File Certifier, the evidence language and the qualified timestamp toggle.
File Certification in the extension
Drop your diploma, transcript and any completion letters into the panel and seal them in one package: SHA-256 for every file, a signed manifest, a chain of custody document and a report PDF. One by one, or all of them in a single combined package.
How File Certification worksAdd an eIDAS SnapPack
A qualified electronic timestamp bound to your sealed package, issued by Disig a.s., whose timestamping service is listed as qualified on the EU Trusted List. Under Article 41(2) of the eIDAS Regulation it enjoys, in proceedings in the European Union and the EEA, the presumption of the accuracy of the date and time it indicates and of the integrity of the data it is bound to.
$6.99
1 stamp
$24.99
5 stamps
$49.99
10 stamps
Bought inside the extension as a one-time purchase, with no auto-renewal. Credits stay on your account.
Free to install. The package on this page exists for people who would rather hand the job over and receive a finished file.