LearnCoin is verifiable-credential infrastructure. Any institution, employer, or training platform that issues credentials can use LearnCoin to cryptographically sign each credential, Merkle-batch it with other credentials, and anchor the resulting root on Ethereum L2 (Base) so anyone can independently verify authenticity. LearnCoin is built on open standards — W3C Verifiable Credentials 2.0, W3C Decentralized Identifiers, Blockcerts v3, Open Badges 3.0, and JSON-LD / Linked Data Proofs — and the company is based in Tallinn, Estonia.
Yes. Every LearnCoin credential has its cryptographic Merkle root committed to a transaction on Base, Coinbase's open-source Ethereum L2 built on the Optimism OP Stack. That transaction is the trust anchor: a verifier walks the Merkle path from a credential's canonical hash up to the on-chain root, and can confirm the anchoring transaction landed without contacting LearnCoin at all. The blockchain is the trust substrate, not a marketing decoration.
Yes, for free, forever. Every credential has a public verification URL at learncoin.me/c/{credential_id}. The page runs the blockcerts-verifier Web Component client-side — verification happens in the viewer's browser, not on a LearnCoin server. Five checks run: schema, signature, issuer, revocation, erasure. LearnCoin contractually commits to free verification; there is no per-verify charge, no quota, no login required.
Credly (now Pearson) is the largest credential platform in the world — about 70 million badges issued to IBM, AWS, and Microsoft customers — but it's centralized proprietary SaaS still running Open Badges 2.0 in production. LearnCoin is different on three structural axes: (1) trust is anchored on a public blockchain, not on Pearson's continued existence; (2) credentials are Open Badges 3.0 native from day one; (3) verification works without any LearnCoin API call, because the proof is a self-contained Linked Data Proof. If Pearson exits credentialing, Credly badges lose their trust anchor. LearnCoin credentials do not depend on LearnCoin.
Accredible powers credentials for Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard Business School Online, and similar institutions, with strong UX and Open Badges 3.0 migration in progress. The structural difference from LearnCoin is the same as with Credly — Accredible is centralized, and verification requires Accredible's infrastructure to be running. LearnCoin credentials anchor on a public chain and are verifiable by any Blockcerts-compatible tool, including the Blockcerts native wallets and the blockcerts-verifier Web Component.
Yes — Open Badges 3.0, the current 1EdTech specification, not Open Badges 2.0. Every LearnCoin credential declares OpenBadgeCredential in its type array and populates the OB 3.0 AchievementSubject structure with achievement.id, achievement.type, achievement.name, achievement.description, achievement.criteria, and multi-framework achievement.alignment. Structural conformance is live today. Formal 1EdTech Conformance Test Suite certification is on the roadmap.
Every LearnCoin credential is simultaneously a W3C Verifiable Credential 2.0 (@context: https://www.w3.org/ns/credentials/v2), a Blockcerts v3 credential (@context: https://w3id.org/blockcerts/v3, proof.type: MerkleProof2019), and an Open Badges 3.0 credential (@context: https://purl.imsglobal.org/spec/ob/v3p0/context-3.0.3.json, type: OpenBadgeCredential). The issuer is a W3C Decentralized Identifier — did:web:learncoin.me with per-tenant verificationMethod fragments. Credentials are canonicalized with URDNA2015 to produce the byte input for SHA-256 leaf hashing in the Merkle tree.
Ethereum L2, specifically Base. Base is Coinbase's open-source Layer 2 built on the Optimism OP Stack; it settles back to Ethereum L1 via the OP Stack's withdrawal bridge. Practically, this means LearnCoin credentials inherit Ethereum's security via Base's fraud-proof system, with the cost and throughput advantages of an L2. LearnCoin was added as a supported chain to the upstream Blockcerts libraries (lds-merkle-proof-2019 and explorer-lookup) as part of this work.
They still verify. A LearnCoin credential is a self-contained JSON-LD document with a Linked Data Proof. Three facts need to be true for verification to succeed: the recipient has a copy of the document, the anchoring transaction is still on Base, and the issuer DID document is resolvable. Base is a public chain; the recipient owns the document; and LearnCoin forks Blockcerts dependencies on the barcelova GitHub organization so core verification libraries survive. The verification chain does not require any LearnCoin server to be running.
LearnCoin never anchors personally identifiable information on-chain. The on-chain footprint is strictly the Merkle root, the issuer DID reference, the issuance timestamp, and the blockchain transaction ID. Recipient email addresses, legal names, and tenant-supplied external identifiers stay off-chain in Supabase under tenant-scoped Row Level Security and can be erased on request. The signed JSON-LD document carries a pseudonymous recipient ID (urn:uuid:...) and the recipient's self-chosen display name. On recipient-requested erasure, the public verification page redacts the name and still proves cryptographically that a credential was issued.
Ewance — a Tallinn-based platform running real-world industry challenges for higher-education students — is the first active tenant. Challenge University (challenge.university) is in onboarding with a Q4 2026 target. LearnCoin is primarily an infrastructure play: end-users belong to the tenants, not to LearnCoin. A university issues a credential through LearnCoin; the student receives a credential branded by the university; LearnCoin is the invisible cryptographic layer underneath.
Start on the Developer tier — free forever on Base Sepolia testnet, no credit card. Get a test API key, issue credentials via POST /v1/batches, and use the public verification URL for each credential. When ready for production, upgrade to the Starter tier (€99/month, 1,000 credentials, Base mainnet anchoring) or the Institution / Industry tiers for volume pricing. Developer documentation is at docs.learncoin.me; sales contact is [email protected].
Yes. LearnCoin credentials verify successfully in the Blockcerts native iOS and Android wallets, in the cert-verifier-js library, and in the blockcerts-verifier Web Component used on every LearnCoin public verification page. LearnCoin does not fork the verification logic — any Blockcerts-compatible tool will work on a LearnCoin credential.
