UPDATE: A blog (that is federated) was created for communicate the progress, follow @badgefed

[mapache@hachyderm.io]

UPDATE: A blog (that is federated) was created for communicate the progress, follow @badgefed

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I am creating a #ActivityPub minimalistic implementation of a badge system similar to Credly, built using #dotnet and leveraging the #Fediverse

I have issued a first badge, the idea is to decentralize the verification systems, and allow organizations to self-certify. It is incredible that organizations like Microsoft or Non-Profits pay thousands of dollars to companies like Pearson to just provide "verified" badges. Similar to mastodons installed in social-dot-something, thinkg of badges<dot> mozilla<dot>com , certifications<dot>myschooldistrict<dot>com. Or even a podcast emitting a badge for its guests, with the verification in the domain.

ActivityPub already offers a secure way to sign artifacts and interact between actors. The fediverse already have people with profiles, a social graph as @mike says, ready to use. Think of how LetsEncrypt disrupted that market of few actors selling certificates for websites.

I have a functional poc,
@fediverse is not a mastodon, pledora or blog, it is an actor in a badge system, but you can follow it in Mastodon. Its badges will show in #mastodon but they are not notes or articles. If you want to learn more, follow me, I will be sharing the progress here. Or follow the github project here: https://github.com/tryvocalcat/activitypub-badges

Who wants a badge of early adopter?

[mapache@hachyderm.io]

the first badge and activitypub object, you can copy/paste the url and "open in mastodon" and will show as a note: https://badges.vocalcat.com/record/10

as with other activitypub implementations the idea is that you celebrate, comment, share the badge inside your activitypub client, e.g. mastodon!

Furthermore, think of a decentralized system, where the credentials get "federated", so different badges instances will recognize notes that are "certificates" issued by other instances. Now, if your certificate issuer disappear, well, the certificate is already decentralized, talk about survivability as the last episode of #dotsocial @Flipboard !

[mapache@hachyderm.io]

I gave a little bit of thinking on the changes I want to do to #badgefed before making my server public.

The one who emits the badges, is a #fediverse actor, this should be no controversial, after all, I use the public/private keys to sign the badges itself.

But in the first prototype the recipient of the grant, was a record in the system itself. The idea was to allow recipients outside the fediverse to receive badges as well. I did not wanted to store the email, so I required a profile url, think of your fediverse url, or for those outside #linkedin, #blog, even #facebook if they want. However, it gets things a little bit more complex and less clean than what I want.

Today, I decided that the recipient MUST be an actor of the #Fediverse. That is, it, that will be embedded as a mention, and should be clean and neat. For those who are not in the fediverse, #badgefed will provide an actor (and profile url) where they can add basic information such name, and bio links. Or they can create an account in any of the fediverse platforms at the moment of receiving the badge.

#activitypub #dotnet

[fajfer@mastodon.social]

@mapache @mike @fediverse @badgefed Would love the early adopter since they are still available; Love the project, as an event organizer I was looking for a badge emitter to give badges to volunteers as another aspect of saying thank you. Are you planning to make a Matrix chat or something so people could help each other out with their own servers? I'm struggling with random "Error creating actor: Invalid URI: The hostname could not be parsed." on my private instance and got stuck

[mapache@hachyderm.io]

@fajfer @mike @fediverse @badgefed what event management system are you using? I am interested in see how to do a closer integration.

[julian@activitypub.space]

@mapache@hachyderm.io I may consider building out a plugin for Badgefed.

Any chance you might consider using a new object type, e.g. Badge?

[mapache@hachyderm.io]

@julian absolutely, but I think I don't fully get it, could you elaborate?

[julian@activitypub.space]

@mapache@hachyderm.io from what I understand you're using the ActivityPub note for compatibility. I wonder if a custom object type might open more doors.

Doesn't really matter, just thinking out loud 🙂

Does BadgeFed have an API to create new badges? Or fetch badges?

[mapache@hachyderm.io]

@julian yes. BadgeFed has an API. But the concept is really simple, it is a Note (or Document) that has an attachment. The attachment is a property of the ActivityPub object usually used for videos or images. In this case the attachment includes a full OpenBadge object.

The only restriction is that the Note attributed (activitypub actor) MUST be the url in the OpenBadge issuer (issuer = actor). Also the recipient url from the OpenBadge SHOULD be mentioned in the Note.

With this simple mechanism you can pretty much create a compatible badge that can be decentralized with BadgeFed.