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Issuing badges

Spaces can issue two kinds of badges:

  • Event badges — Open Badges 3.0 issued by your Space to attendees, speakers, organizers or sponsors of a specific event. Verifiable credentials, signed with ED25519 keys held by Emblema platform-wide.
  • Space-level recognitions — badges that span multiple events under your Space (e.g. "DevConf 2025 - 2026 Multi-year Speaker"). Same Open Badges 3.0 mechanics, just attached to the Space rather than to an event.

Manage Space-level badges at /dashboard/space/<id>/badges. Manage event-level badges at /dashboard/space/<id>/event/<eventId>/badges.

Open Badges 3.0 in 30 seconds​

Open Badges 3.0 is the latest IMS Global standard for verifiable digital credentials. Each badge issued is a JSON-LD document containing:

  • The issuer (your Space).
  • The recipient (the Emblema user or an external email).
  • The achievement (badge name, description, image, criteria).
  • A cryptographic signature (ED25519) made by Emblema on behalf of the Space.

Anyone can verify the badge using a third-party Open Badge 3.0 verifier (Badgr, IMS Reference Validator, etc.) — they do not need an Emblema account.

Design a badge​

From the badges page click New badge. Configure:

  • Name — shown to recipients and on the public badge page.
  • Description — what the badge represents.
  • Achievement criteria — free-form text describing how it was earned.
  • Image — square PNG/SVG, ideally 512×512. The image is uploaded to Firebase Storage and referenced by the credential.
  • Issuer profile — defaults to the Space, see Space settings.
  • Tags / topics — to make the badge searchable.

Once saved, the badge becomes available in the issuance flow for that event (or Space-wide).

Issue badges​

There are three issuance flows:

One-by-one​

From the event badges page, pick a badge, then add recipients by:

  • Selecting registered attendees from the event list.
  • Pasting an email (Emblema sends an invite if no account matches).

Click Issue. Each recipient gets:

  • A new entry in their badge wallet at /dashboard/badges.
  • A notification + email with the verification link.
  • A public badge page at /badge/<badgeName>/<userId>.

Bulk by segment​

For larger events, issue a badge to a whole segment in one click:

  • All checked-in attendees — the most common case for "Attendee" badges.
  • All speakers with a delivered talk.
  • All staff (team members of the event).
  • All sponsors of a given tier.

The bulk issuer respects de-duplication: someone who already has the badge is skipped.

Automatic on attendance / talk completion​

You can configure a badge to be auto-issued when:

  • An attendee checks in to the event.
  • A speaker delivers an accepted talk (talk instance closes successfully).

Use this for "Attendee" and "Speaker" badges to remove manual work.

Recipient experience​

When a badge is issued, the recipient:

  1. Sees a notification in their dashboard and a banner on /dashboard/badges.
  2. Can open the badge detail to:
    • Download the credential JSON.
    • Copy a shareable URL to publish on LinkedIn, GitHub, personal websites.
    • Verify the badge through a third-party verifier.
  3. Receives an email (if they enabled badge notifications) with a direct link.

Revocation​

If you issued a badge by mistake, you can revoke it from the badge recipient list. The credential is marked as revoked in the Emblema verification endpoint, and verifiers that follow the Open Badges 3.0 spec will reject it. Already-distributed JSON files cannot be unsent — revocation is the canonical way to invalidate a credential.

Issuer keys and verification​

You do not manage cryptographic keys yourself. Emblema:

  • Holds the ED25519 issuer keys at the platform level.
  • Exposes a DID verification method so verifiers can fetch the public key.
  • Hosts a /.well-known/issuer.json endpoint with the issuer profile metadata.

This is intentional — most communities do not have the operational maturity to manage long-lived signing keys, and centralising them at Emblema avoids catastrophic key rotation issues.

Tips​

  • Design at most 3 badges per event (Attendee / Speaker / Organizer is a great default). More badges dilute the signal.
  • Use square 512×512 images with strong contrast — they need to be legible in the LinkedIn badge thumbnail.
  • Reuse the Space logo as a corner watermark on every badge image so the brand is consistent.
  • Issue immediately after the event while attendees still remember the experience.
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