Decentralised Badges with BadgeFed: Implementing ActivityPub-based Credentials for Non Profits

Speaker: Maho Pacheco

Room: CC 234

Time: Sun 11:20 am – 11:50 am

Format: Lecture (30 Min + Q&A)

Difficulty: Introductory

Track: Sustainability & Funding

Additional Tags: Education, Self-Hosting

Presenter Location: In-person

Experience: first time speaking

At: at lfnw

Description:

Mainstream digital badge platforms often fail nonprofits and volunteer‑driven communities due to cost, vendor lock‑in, and rigid workflows. BadgeFed was created to solve that problem: a fully open‑source, self‑hostable digital badge system built on the Open Badges standard and the ActivityPub protocol, running as a cross‑platform .NET application on Linux.

This talk explores how digital credentials can move from closed ecosystems into the federated social web, enabling organizations to issue, share, and verify badges across the Fediverse. Using BadgeFed as a case study, Maho will walk through:

Why traditional badge platforms are brittle and siloed

How BadgeFed implements ActivityPub actors, badge issuance as federated objects, and cross‑instance discovery

Real‑world usage through Community Credentials, empowering nonprofits and volunteer programs with self‑hosted, standards‑based recognition

Current challenges: federation at scale, identity portability, moderation, and trust

What’s next for federated credentials and how organizations can deploy, extend, and contribute

Attendees will leave with a practical understanding of how to deploy a federated badge service on Linux, integrate it with existing tools, and participate in building a social‑web‑native credentialing ecosystem grounded in open standards and free software.

Target Audience:

Nonprofits

Game developers

Educational institutions