Credentials
Verifiable Credential
Also known as: VC, W3C VC, VC 2.0
A digitally signed claim about a subject, issued by one party and independently checkable by any third party using open cryptography.
A Verifiable Credential (VC) is a digitally signed document that asserts something about a subject — for example, "this person completed this course" or "this employee passed this certification". The claim carries a cryptographic proof that lets any third party check authenticity without contacting the original issuer.
The current W3C Recommendation is the VC Data Model 2.0, which replaced the 1.1 version in 2025. VC 2.0 uses field names like validFrom and validUntil (instead of the older issuanceDate / expirationDate), supports multiple proof formats, and is explicitly designed to be serialized as JSON-LD.
Every LearnCoin credential is a W3C VC 2.0 document. The @context array includes https://www.w3.org/ns/credentials/v2, the type array includes VerifiableCredential, and the issuer is a W3C Decentralized Identifier. On top of the VC shape we layer Blockcerts v3 for the cryptographic proof and Open Badges 3.0 for the semantic achievement fields.
A VC on its own is not anchored to any blockchain — that's a separate design choice. Blockcerts adds the anchor; VCs define the shape.