Glossary
What Is Verifiable Credential?
A Verifiable Credential is a claim about someone, signed by whoever made it, in a W3C format any verifier can check on its own — without contacting the issuer.
Also called: VC, W3C Verifiable Credential
What it's for
Almost every credential we use offline works by appearance. A degree certificate looks official, so it's treated as official. Checking it properly means contacting the university, which is slow enough that most people never do it — which is exactly why forged certificates are worth making.
Verifiable Credentials replace appearance with maths. The issuer signs the claim when they make it. Anyone can check that signature. Nobody has to be phoned.
How it works
The W3C Verifiable Credentials data model defines three roles:
- Issuer — the organisation making the claim. A university, an employer, a fest.
- Holder — the person the claim is about, who keeps it and decides who sees it.
- Verifier — whoever needs to check it. An employer, a registrar, a border officer.
The issuer signs a credential and hands it to the holder. The holder presents it to a verifier. The verifier checks the signature against the issuer's published key. There's no step where the verifier talks to the issuer, which is the whole point: the issuer can't see who is checking, and the check works even if the issuer no longer exists.
A credential names its issuer, its subject, what is being claimed, when it becomes valid, optionally when it stops being valid, and carries a proof. Because the proof covers the contents, changing so much as a middle initial invalidates it.
Where you'll see it
Digital identity wallets, the EU's digital identity work, professional licensing, and education — where Open Badge 3.0 is the credentialing world's implementation of this model. Anywhere the phrase "self-sovereign identity" turns up, this is the machinery underneath it.
In Verifycate
Every certificate is issued as a Verifiable Credential under the W3C VC 2.0 context, in the Open Badge 3.0 OpenBadgeCredential shape. Each workspace signs with its own Ed25519 key and is identified by a did:key. Recipients download the signed JSON from their public page and can hand it to anyone.
One honest caveat about the model as we implement it: recipients don't yet hold their credentials in a wallet of their own choosing — they hold a link to a page we host, plus the downloadable signed credential. The signature is real and checks out independently; the wallet half of the story is not something we do today.
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Common questions
- What makes a credential 'verifiable'?
- That anyone can confirm it's genuine using only the credential itself and the issuer's public key. If checking requires ringing the issuer or trusting that a website is still online, the credential isn't verifiable in this sense — it's just checkable.
- Are Verifiable Credentials stored on a blockchain?
- Usually not. The credential sits with the holder and the proof is an ordinary digital signature. Some systems publish issuer keys or revocation lists to a blockchain, but the credential itself normally isn't on one.
- Can a Verifiable Credential be faked?
- Not without the issuer's private key. What can be faked is the issuer: anyone can sign a credential claiming to be anyone. Verification proves the credential came from a particular key intact — deciding whether that key belongs to a body you trust is still a human judgement.
Related terms
- Open Badge 3.0Open Badge 3.0 is the current version of the Open Badges standard, rebuilt on the W3C Verifiable Credentials data model so a badge carries its own cryptographic proof instead of relying on the issuer's server staying online.
- Digital CredentialA digital credential is any record of an achievement, qualification or membership issued in a form a computer can read and check, rather than as a printed document or a flat file.
- Credential RevocationRevocation is an issuer withdrawing a credential before its expiry date, because it was issued in error or the holder no longer qualifies for it.
- Credential IDA credential ID is the unique reference for one issued credential, used to look it up, verify it, and tell it apart from every other credential the same issuer has given out.
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