Certify: an Open Badges platform with blockchain verification

The challenge

Certify wanted to bring something new to a market that had been dominated by the same established providers for around a decade: digital credentials designed for a younger, digitally native audience, and verifiable without relying on a single central authority.

The team had already started. A previous developer had delivered a partly built platform with basic features, and progress had stalled. The management team had a clear plan, but a lot of work remained.

Building on what was there

Rather than start again, we reviewed the existing platform, kept the parts that were worth keeping and built the rest. That is the approach we still take on project rescues and legacy modernisation work: a rebuild is only worth it when fixing costs more.

What we built

Certify lets schools and training administrators create, issue and share badges that follow the OpenBadges standard, with each one verified using blockchain technology.

• Create, issue and share badges that follow the OpenBadges standard.
• Blockchain verification, so anyone can check a credential is genuine without contacting the issuer.
• Protected public URLs that badge holders can share with employers.
• A certificate and badge builder for administrators.
• QR codes on certificates that link straight to the verified record.
• Localisation for a Portuguese-speaking market in Brazil.

Technology

Certify is a Laravel application with a Vue.js single-page front end and a MySQL database. Subscriptions are billed through Stripe using Laravel Cashier.

The outcome

Certify launched the platform its management team had planned, built on foundations the team could keep developing.