Hey Fediverse! 👋

We just wrapped up an amazing FediForum June 2025 a week ago, and BadgeFed was right in the thick of it! Here’s a recap of what we did, what we learned, and what’s next for decentralized badges.

BadgeFed at FediForum: Unconferences & Speed Demos

BadgeFed had the honor of presenting and hosting two unconference sessions and showing off our work in one speed demo slots (watch the demo). The energy was fantastic; lots of curiosity, sharp questions, and a real hunger for open standards in the credentialing space.

Community Feedback: Standards, Docs, and Openness

A big theme at FediForum was specs and open standards. We’re right there with you! That’s why we’ve enhanced our technical documentation to explain exactly how BadgeFed uses ActivityPub and OpenBadges together:

• Issuers are ActivityPub actors, each instance can federate and follow others.
• Badges are ActivityPub Notes with OpenBadge 2.1 attachments for maximum compatibility and verifiability.
• Strict linking between issuer and badge, and between badge and recipient, to prevent spoofing.
• Signature validation for both ActivityPub and OpenBadge data.
• Federation: badges propagate via follows, and a special announcer actor helps with discoverability.
• Comments and interactions: badges can be discussed and shared across the Fediverse.

Read more in our DETAILS.md.

Making BadgeFed Easier to Try

We heard you: people want to try BadgeFed! Right now, it’s a solo setup (one admin, one Docker container), but we’re working hard to make it easier for others to deploy, configure, and even federate their own instances. Stay tuned for updates on multi-admin support and streamlined onboarding.

Feedback: Discoverability vs. Spam

One of the most important pieces of feedback we received was about badge discoverability vs. timeline spam (see the issue). We want badges to be easy to find and share, but we also don’t want to flood the Fediverse with unwanted posts. This is now our top priority, we’re rethinking how verbose BadgeFed should be, and exploring opt-in/opt-out models for badge visibility and hashtag use.

What’s Next: Embedding & Profile Badges

We’re also working on ways to let you embed badges in your blog or add them to your Mastodon profile. More news on that soon!

FediForum was a fantastic experience, huge thanks to everyone who attended, gave feedback, and showed interest in decentralized credentials. Let’s keep building a more open, verifiable, and user-empowered Fediverse!

Badge up, and see you in the timeline! 🏅

You can read the article "BadgeFed @ FediForum June 2025: Unconferences, Demos, and Community Feedback" by @mapachehere as well.

Hey Fediverse, we’ve got some exciting news—BadgeFed is moving out of the prototype phase! That’s right, what started as a scrappy proof-of-concept is now becoming a real, structured, and (dare we say) polished federated badge system.
And since we believe in working out in the open, we want to share our roadmap with you.

The Big Three Priorities 🏆

We’re focusing on three major areas to take BadgeFed from “hey, this kinda works” to “oh wow, this is actually usable.”

1. Authentication 🔐

Right now, logging in is a bit of a mess. So we’re tackling authentication properly, integrating OAuth so you can log in using your Mastodon (or other Fediverse) account.
We’re building this with .NET and Blazor because performance and scalability matter. Plus, no one wants to manage yet another username/password combo.

2. Federation & Spec 🌍

We’re making sure BadgeFed speaks ActivityPub fluently. Right now, federation kinda-sorta works, but we need to define a proper spec that makes badge issuing,
earning, and verification seamless across different platforms. Whether you’re on Mastodon, Pleroma, or something else entirely, BadgeFed should just work.
We’re ironing out the kinks so badges travel as smoothly as your cat pictures. Also we want to support export and import from OpenBadges spec, and we need to do some experimentation on how this could travel on the fediverse.

3. Packaging, Docs, and Docker 📦

What’s cooler than a decentralized badge system? A decentralized badge system that’s easy to set up.
We’re working on clear documentation, making installation painless, and putting together a Docker container so you don’t have to wrestle with dependencies or even dotnet.
One command, and boom—you’re federating badges like a pro.

The “Would Be Nice” Priorities ✨

Once the big three are solid, we’re setting our sights on some much-needed improvements:

• Approval Process & Expiration – Not all badges should last forever. We’re adding controls for expiration dates and approval workflows.
• Stats & Insights – Want to see how many people are earning badges? We’ll be adding analytics to track adoption and engagement.
• CSS & UI/UX Love – Let’s be honest, the prototype is functional, but it’s not winning any beauty contests. Expect smoother UI, better mobile support, and fewer “why is this button here?” moments.
• Landing Page – BadgeFed deserves a proper introduction. A clean, informative landing page is in the works.

What’s Next? 📅

We’re heads-down working on these priorities, but as always, feedback, ideas, and contributions are welcome.
This is an open-source project, and the best way to make sure it fits the needs of the Fediverse is to have the community involved.

If you want to help, hop into our discussions, check out the repo at https://github.com/tryvocalcat/badgefed, or just share your thoughts. Let’s make federated badges a thing! 🏅

You can read the article "BadgeFed: From Prototype to Reality" by @mapachehere as well.