Auto-generated description: Two colorful circular diagrams illustrate the concept of verifiable credentials and their interaction within the Fediverse, alongside explanatory text.

Four years ago, I came up with an idea for what I termed Social Verifiable Credentials. This is a way of using the ActivityPub specification, the one that underpins Fediverse apps such as Mastodon, to issue, verify, earn, display, and share Verifiable Credentials (including Open Badges).

Unfortunately, even with a bit of vibe coding, I haven’t had the technical skills to make this a real. But someone else now has! Maho Pacheco, a Senior Software Engineer at Microsoft, got in touch to introduce me to BadgeFed which has an associated GitHub repository. It has a couple of Fediverse accounts to follow: project updates and issued badges.

I’m delighted about this, and hope to talk with Maho soon. Layering Verifiable Credentials on top of a decentralised network makes perfect sense and is not only in alignment with Open Recognition principles, but also pushes back against the commodification of recognition.