What are Verifiable Credentials?

ByRLDAC

Verifiable Credentials (VCs) are digitally signed credentials that let someone prove something about a set of claims in a way that’s easy to verify and tamper-proof.

If you’ve ever shown a paper diploma, a professional certificate, or any supporting document, you already understand the concept. A verifiable credential is the digital equivalent, but with an important upgrade: it comes with cryptographic proof, so a verifier can check authenticity (content, issuer, date of issuance) and detect tampering.

The VC model in a nutshell

W3C VC 2.0 is the global standard for representing cryptographically verifiable credentials in machine-readable format.
A VC is built for a world where sharing proof shouldn’t require endless emails, PDFs, screenshots, or manual checks.
Instead, the flow is usually:

  • An issuer creates a credential (for example, an insurance company issues a certificate, or a university issues a diploma).
  • A holder stores it (often in a wallet or a secure system).
  • A verifier checks it when needed (for example, an employer verifying a degree or a payslip).

This approach is part of the W3C Verifiable Credentials model, which describes a standard way to structure, secure, and exchange credentials.

What is W3C?

Founded in October 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee at MIT, in collaboration with CERN, with support from DARPA and the European Commission, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international body that develops open Web standards and guidelines, so the Web stays interoperable across browsers/devices and works “for everyone” (with a strong focus on accessibility, internationalization, privacy, and security).

In January 2023, W3C re-launched as a public-interest non-profit organization, while keeping its member-driven model and global outreach.

What makes a credential “verifiable”?

A verifiable credential is designed to be:
Tamper-evident: If someone edits the credential after it’s issued, verification fails.
Authentic: A verifier can confirm who issued it by checking the issuer’s cryptographic proof.
Portable: Holders can reuse the same credential across different verifiers, instead of repeating the same verification process every time.

What’s inside a Verifiable Credential?

A Verifiable Credential contains :

  • a list of types, including at least ‘‘VerifiableCredential’’;
  • a structured payload (“claims”);
  • an issuer identity (typically a DID, see below for more details);
  • a proof section (JWS / LD-proof);
  • an optional credential status section;
  • a JSON(-LD) context establishing semantic meaning.

Taken from the W3C documentation, “this verifiable credential states that the entity associated with did:example:abcdef1234567 has a name with a value of Jane Doe“:

{
  "@context": [
    "https://www.w3.org/ns/credentials/v2",
    "https://www.w3.org/ns/credentials/examples/v2"
  ],
  "id": "http://vc.example/credentials/4643",
  "type": ["VerifiableCredential"],
  "issuer": "https://issuer.example/issuers/14",
  "validFrom": "2018-02-24T05:28:04Z",
  "credentialSubject": {
    "id": "did:example:abcdef1234567",
    "name": "Jane Doe"
  }
}

How does verification usually work?

When a verifier receives a credential (or a presentation derived from credentials), they generally check:

  1. The cryptographic proof to confirm the credential is authentic and unmodified.
  2. Rules and requirements like the expected issuer, credential type, and validity period.
  3. Status (when applicable) to see whether the credential has been revoked or suspended.

Do Verifiable Credentials require blockchain?

No, Verifiable Credentials are a data model and verification approach, not a mandate to store anything on a blockchain. Some ecosystems use distributed ledgers for publishing keys, registries, or status information, but VCs can work perfectly well without any blockchain.

Where do DIDs fit in?

In most Verifiable Credential deployments, identities are represented using Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs).
A DID is a type of identifier written as a URI (for example, it starts with did:). A DID refers to a DID document, which is a machine-readable document that can publish things like verification methods (such as public keys) and service endpoints. In practice, this is what makes a DID useful in credential systems: it gives verifiers a standard way to find the information needed to verify proofs and signatures.
DIDs are designed so that the controller of the DID can prove control over it using cryptography. That same “prove control” idea is what lets issuers and holders use DIDs as stable identifiers in the broader verifiable credential ecosystem.

Revocation and suspension: how is it handled?

Real credentials sometimes need to be cancelled (revoked) or temporarily disabled (suspended).
A modern and widely discussed pattern is publishing credential status using bitstring-based status lists, which are designed to be efficient at scale and more privacy-preserving than other revocation registries. The verifier checks status when required, without the issuer needing to be involved in every verification workflow.

Common use cases for Verifiable Credentials

Verifiable Credentials are used wherever trust matters and manual verification is costly:

  • Education: diplomas, certificates, transcripts
  • Supporting documents: electricity bills, payslips, insurance proof
  • Professional credentials: licenses, memberships, accreditations
  • Business and compliance: verified organizational attributes, eligibility proofs
  • Digital identity: age verification, residency, permissions, roles

Benefits

  • Less fraud and easier authenticity checks
  • Fewer one-off integrations between every issuer and every verifier
  • Better user control, especially when presentations support sharing only what’s needed
  • Scales well for high-volume credential issuance and verification

Sources and standards

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