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We Are Open Co-op

Active 2016–2026

A Compendium of Credentialing

From badge design to the future of recognition in networks

4 min readJun 6, 2024

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Ratatouille-style rat with a chef’s hat and wooden spoon next to a sign saying “Anyone can issue Verifiable Credentials!”
Image CC BY-NC Visual Thinkery for WAO

We’ve written a lot about Open Badges, Verifiable Credentials, and Open Recognition over the years. During a recent conversation, we realised there wasn’t an up-to-date place to point people towards which gives a summary. Anne wrote a great overview back in 2022, but a lot has changed since then!

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This post is broken down into sections and doesn’t include everything we’ve written on these topics, so feel free to dive into the archives. If you would like assistance with any of this, get in touch!

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Introductory posts

These posts give an overview of platforms to get started with Open Badges, some of the latest changes to the specification, as well as how Verifiable Credentials can be used in practice.

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Badge System Design

It’s rare for badges and credentials to exist in a vacuum, so designing a system around them is important. These posts cover some of the things you may want to consider when approaching badge system design.

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As we said at the top of this post, we’re happy to help! So if you’ve got a cool idea that you’d like us to sense check, just get in touch :)

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A person holding a complicated diagram saying “What do you think of my cool idea?” The other person is looking towards the ‘camera’ with raised eyebrows.
CC BY-ND Visual Thinkery for WAO

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