Open Badges

Indicio simplifies proving achievements and skills without relying on a third-party provider

By using Verifiable Credentials, Indicio is able to issue proof of achievements and new skills as Open Badges 3.0, allowing users to securely hold these badges on their mobile devices and share them at their discretion without relying on a third-party hosting platform or provider.

For Educational Institutions

• Provide a more convenient and automated information sharing process for faculty and students.

• Remove the need to manually look up student grades when other universities or businesses need to verify them.

• Remove reliance on third-party providers to store and share student achievement data.

• Fight fraud and phishing attempts with tamper-proof and uncopyable badges.

For Students

• Simplify sharing and authentication and eliminate waiting time with locally stored student records.

• Easily store all your achievement information in one place, removing the need to track down physical documents and paperwork.

• Diplomas and student information remain verifiable even if the educational institution experiences technical outages or becomes unreachable.

Overview: Open Badges were launched in 2011 by the Mozilla Foundation with support from the MacArthur Foundation as an open specification and infrastructure for creating and sharing digital records of skills and achievements.

• With this infrastructure, the badges could only be issued to a certified Open Badges platform and could not be sent directly to recipients. Badges hosted on a website could also be changed without showing any record of the change.

• The Open Badges 3.0 specification, created by the global educational nonprofit, 1EdTech, solved these challenges by updating the specification to align with the W3C Verifiable Credential Data Model.

• Now, a badge can be issued directly to a recipient’s digital wallet application on a mobile device. And, as a badge is digitally signed, it cannot be altered or tampered with once it has been created.

• As 1EdTech says, with a verifiable credential format, badges can support “limitless claims,” and provide enhanced security and privacy through cryptographic verifiability.

• The updated specification meets “market needs for trustworthy machine-ready data to power connected ecosystems in education and the workforce.”

Advantages of implementing Open Badges 3.0 as Verifiable Credentials

• Portability: They are no longer tied to an Open Badge Platform. An Open Badge recipient holds their credentials in their digital wallet.

• Immutability: They are now digitally signed in a way that prevents alteration after issuance.

• Resilience:They are not tied to a platform or API that could fail or go out of business.

As 1EdTech notes: The Verifiable Credential format enables “limitless claims,” enhanced security and privacy through cryptographic verifiability, and meets “market needs for trustworthy machine-ready data to power connected ecosystems in education and [the] workforce.”

Why Verifiable Credentials and Open Badges 3.0?

• Verifiable Credentials can hold all kinds of valuable information in a way that any attempt to alter that information breaks the credential.

• Instant, cryptographic proof of who issued a credential, and that the person presenting it is the rightful owner — an identity fraud killer.

• You are always able to verify who you share data with before sharing it — and they you.

• Data is shareable across disparate systems without direct integration.

• Data is immediately actionable — if you trust the source of the credential, you can trust the data.

• Data is secure — no need for third parties to store the data in centralized databases to manage authentication.

• Takes the hassle out of data privacy compliance — a person is in control of their data and can share it by consent.

• Verifiable Credentials can protect biometric data from AI deepfakes.

Indicio’s Implementation of OpenBadges 3.0

• Following 1EdTech’s 3.0 standard, Indicio Proven now enables Open Badges as Verifiable Credentials.

• This means that Open Badges can be directly issued to a digital wallet, overcoming a key limitation of previous Open Badge implementations.

• Open Badges are now immutable, portable, private, and secure.

Additional features for Openbages in Indicio Proven

• The ability to issue micro credentials

• The ability to create profiles

• Bulk issuance and messaging

• DIDComm is available as an option, allowing personalized interaction

• LinkedIn posting

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