Verifiable credentials glossary
Plain-English definitions for on-chain credential verification — from verifiable credential to credential anchoring to the cert_ver event. Each entry is written to be quotable by people and answer engines alike, and grounded in how Stellaroid Earn actually works on Stellar testnet.
What "verifiable credential" means here
A verifiable credential is a claim about a person — a diploma, a course completion, a certification — that a third party can confirm on their own, without emailing the issuer and waiting days for a reply. The confidence comes from a tamper-evident record rather than a PDF that can be quietly edited or forged.
Stellaroid Earn puts that record on Stellar. An issuer anchors a certificate's SHA-256 hash to the graduate's wallet, an approved issuer or the admin verifies it on-chain, and the result is readable on a public proof page. This glossary defines the vocabulary that flow uses, one term at a time, so the same words mean the same thing to a graduate, a recruiter, and an answer engine.
One flow, from hash to payment
Most of the terms below map onto three on-chain actions. Understanding the sequence makes each definition click, because the words describe steps rather than abstractions.
Everything runs on Stellar testnet as an early-access pilot, and every step emits an event that is auditable on stellar.expert. Verification is public and read-only, so anyone can confirm a credential without a wallet or login; a wallet is only needed to issue, verify, or pay.
- Anchor — register_certificate binds a document's SHA-256 hash to a student's wallet and rejects duplicate hashes on-chain.
- Verify — an approved issuer or the admin calls verify_certificate; the status becomes Verified and a cert_ver event is emitted.
- Pay — link_payment transfers XLM through the native Stellar Asset Contract to the verified wallet, typically settling in under five seconds.
Terms, defined
- Verifiable credential
- A digital claim about a person — such as a diploma or course completion — whose authenticity anyone can check against a tamper-evident record instead of contacting the issuer by email. On Stellaroid Earn, that record is an entry on Stellar.
- On-chain certificate
- A credential whose SHA-256 hash is bound to a recipient's Stellar wallet by an issuer using register_certificate. Because the proof lives on-chain, it can be confirmed in seconds and duplicate hashes are rejected.
- Credential anchoring
- The act of writing a document's fingerprint (its hash) to a blockchain so its existence and ownership can later be proven. Stellaroid Earn anchors the SHA-256 hash, never the document itself.
- SHA-256 hash
- A one-way function that turns any file into a fixed 64-character hexadecimal fingerprint. The same file always produces the same hash, and any change produces a completely different one — so the hash proves a document without revealing it.
- Issuer
- The school, bootcamp, or institution that registers and verifies a credential. Issuers self-register on-chain with register_issuer and must be approved by the admin before they can issue or verify.
- Trust registry
- The on-chain list of issuers and their status — pending, approved, or suspended. It answers "should I trust this issuer?", so a verified credential is only as strong as the approved issuer behind it.
- Soroban
- Stellar's smart-contract platform, where contracts are written in Rust. Stellaroid Earn's credential and payment logic runs as a Soroban contract deployed on Stellar testnet.
- Stellar Asset Contract (SAC)
- The built-in Soroban interface for moving native assets like XLM inside a contract call. Stellaroid Earn's link_payment uses the native SAC to send XLM straight to a verified wallet.
- XLM (Lumens)
- Stellar's native asset. In Stellaroid Earn it is the token an employer sends to a verified graduate; on testnet it is a valueless test token, not real money.
- Proof page
- The public, read-only page for a single credential hash. It shows the credential's on-chain status, the issuer's trust status, and any attached evidence, and needs no wallet or login to open.
- Credential status
- The lifecycle state a credential carries: issued, verified, suspended, revoked, or expired. The status controls what is allowed — for example, payment only unlocks once a credential is verified.
- Verification
- The trusted step where an approved issuer or the admin calls verify_certificate, moving a credential from issued to verified and emitting a cert_ver event. It is distinct from the public lookup anyone can perform without a wallet.
- Revocation
- Permanently invalidating a credential via revoke_certificate. The record stays visible on-chain for auditability, but a revoked credential can no longer unlock payment.
- Suspension
- Temporarily pausing a credential without deleting its history. A suspended credential is not valid for verification-based actions until an issuer or admin restores its status.
- cert_ver event
- The on-chain event emitted when a credential is verified. Because Stellar indexes events, anyone can audit the verification on a block explorer such as stellar.expert.
- Testnet
- Stellar's free, public test network that behaves like the main network but uses valueless test tokens. Stellaroid Earn runs entirely on testnet as an early-access pilot, not as a production financial product.
- Freighter
- A browser-extension wallet for Stellar. Stellaroid Earn uses it to sign issue, verify, and payment transactions on desktop.
- Albedo
- A web-based Stellar wallet from the StellarExpert team that signs transactions in a popup, giving Stellaroid Earn a mobile-friendly signing path alongside Freighter.
Frequently asked questions
- What is a verifiable credential?
- A verifiable credential is a digital claim about a person — such as a diploma or course completion — that anyone can confirm independently against a tamper-evident record, instead of emailing the issuing institution and waiting for a reply. On Stellaroid Earn, that record is an entry on Stellar: an issuer binds the certificate's SHA-256 hash to the graduate's wallet, and the proof is verifiable in seconds.
- What is an on-chain certificate?
- An on-chain certificate is a credential whose SHA-256 hash is written to a blockchain and bound to the recipient's wallet. On Stellaroid Earn an issuer creates it by calling register_certificate, which rejects duplicate hashes, so the certificate's existence, owner, and issuer can be checked publicly without trusting a single private database.
- How does blockchain credential verification work?
- An issuer computes a document's SHA-256 hash and anchors it to the recipient's Stellar wallet with register_certificate. An approved issuer or the admin then calls verify_certificate, which sets the credential's status to Verified and emits a cert_ver event. Anyone can confirm the result on a public proof page or on stellar.expert — no wallet or login required.
- Do I need a wallet or login to verify a credential?
- No. Verification is public and read-only, so you can open any proof page and check a credential's on-chain status and issuer trust without connecting a wallet or creating an account. A wallet is only needed to issue, verify, or pay on-chain.
- Is the document itself stored on the blockchain?
- No. Only the document's SHA-256 hash — a 64-character fingerprint — is anchored on-chain, never the file. Because the same document always produces the same hash, a holder can prove a certificate matches the on-chain record without publishing the certificate's contents.
- What is the difference between verified, suspended, and revoked?
- Verified means an approved issuer or the admin has confirmed the credential on-chain, which unlocks payment. Suspended is a temporary pause that preserves the record's history but blocks verification-based actions until the status is restored. Revoked permanently invalidates the credential; it stays visible for auditability but can no longer unlock payment.
See the terms in action
Open a live testnet proof page or run the full issue-verify-pay flow in the pilot.