Open Badges or Verifiable Credentials? The standards compared

Both standards aim at the same thing: making credentials digital, portable and verifiable. But they come from different directions. Open Badges emerged in education to make learning visible beyond traditional certificates — a badge for a course, a skill, participation, with criteria and evidence. Verifiable Credentials emerged at the W3C as a general model for digital credentials of any kind: driving licence, membership card, degree certificate.

With version 3.0 the two have converged: an Open Badge 3.0 is a Verifiable Credential with an education-specific profile. Anyone issuing today is therefore choosing less between two worlds than a profile within a shared data model.

The table contrasts the key features. It refers to Open Badges versions 2.x and 3.0 and the W3C data model version 2.0.

An Open Badge describes not only that someone achieved something, but what the badge stands for. Each badge includes a description of the achievement, the criteria for awarding it, the issuer and optionally evidence — such as a project or an exam result — as well as alignments to competence frameworks. A verifier can thus understand what lies behind the badge.

This transparency is the real value. A badge whose criteria nobody knows says little. A badge with clear criteria and evidence, by contrast, can actually make a difference in a job application or when granting credit.

The W3C data model provides the general building blocks of trust: decentralised identifiers for issuers, cryptographic signatures, status lists for revocation, selective disclosure and presentation via digital wallets. Because Open Badges 3.0 builds on this model, education credentials become verifiable with the same tools as other digital credentials.

This matters particularly in Europe: European digital credentials under the European Learning Model and the European Digital Identity Wallet rely on the Verifiable Credentials model. An education credential that follows this model stands the best chance of being understood across borders in future.

In practice the choice comes down to a few questions: who will verify the credential, with which software, and how long must it remain verifiable?

Many institutions have issued version 2.x badges in recent years. They remain valid as long as the hosted data at the issuer are reachable. For new issuance, moving to version 3.0 pays off: credentials are signed, can be verified independently and can be imported into digital wallets that support Verifiable Credentials.

Migration mainly concerns the issuer's technology: keys for signing, a decentralised identifier or another form of issuer identification and, where needed, a status list for revocation. The descriptive content — achievement, criteria, evidence — can largely be carried over. It is important to inform holders about new formats and not to switch off old badges while they are still in circulation.