What is Certified?
Certs.social is a platform for recognizing the people doing meaningful work across impact domains. Whether it's land regeneration, open source software development, investigative journalism, scientific research, community organizing, or any other field where people contribute to the common good — Certs.social makes that work visible.
Contributors publish activity claims that document what they've done, who was involved, and the scope of their work. These claims are public, verifiable, and portable — they belong to the contributor, not the platform.
Why does this matter?
People working on some of the hardest problems — restoring degraded ecosystems, maintaining critical open source infrastructure, advancing scientific frontiers, building community resilience — often struggle to get recognized for their contributions. Without recognition, it's difficult to attract the resources needed to continue.
Certs.social creates a shared, open record of this work. The goal is not just visibility, but to build the foundation for contributors to access funding, collaboration, and support. Features for connecting contributors with resources are coming soon.
How does it work?
Certs.social is built on AT Protocol, the open standard behind Bluesky and a growing ecosystem of decentralized applications. When you sign up, you get an AT Protocol identity and a Personal Data Server (PDS) hosted at certified.one. Your profile, activity claims, and data are yours — portable across any app that speaks AT Protocol.
Sign-in is passwordless: enter your email, receive a one-time code, and you're in. No passwords to remember, no accounts to manage across different services. Your identity is cryptographically verifiable and works the same whether you're on certs.social or any partner application.
How does it work?
Sign-in is passwordless: you enter your email, receive a one-time code, and you're in. Behind the scenes, Certified issues an AT Protocol identity tied to your account. That identity is cryptographically verifiable and portable — it works the same whether you're on certified.app, a partner application, or any future service that speaks AT Protocol.
Your data lives on your Personal Data Server. If you ever want to leave, you can export everything or migrate your identity to a different PDS provider — no data is locked inside Certified.
What is AT Protocol?
AT Protocol (Authenticated Transfer Protocol) is an open, federated protocol for building social and identity applications. Unlike centralized platforms where one company controls your account, AT Protocol separates identity from the application layer. Your identity is yours — verifiable, portable, and independent of any single service.
Certified builds on AT Protocol to provide a managed, user-friendly entry point: you get the benefits of decentralized identity without needing to understand the underlying protocol or run your own infrastructure.
How is Certified different from "Sign in with Google"?
Both Certified and "Sign in with Google" let you use one account across multiple apps. The key difference is ownership and portability:
- With Google: Google controls your identity. If Google suspends your account or changes their terms, you lose access to every app you signed into. Your data stays with each individual app.
- With Certified:Your identity is an AT Protocol identity — it's cryptographically yours. You can export your data, migrate to another provider, or even self-host. No single company can revoke your identity.
Open source
Every component of Certified is open source. The application code, the PDS infrastructure, and the protocol it builds on are all publicly auditable. You can review the source on GitHub.
Security through transparency, not obscurity. If you find an issue, you can report it directly or submit a fix.
Infrastructure
The Personal Data Servers operated by Certified are hosted on cloud infrastructure located within the European Union. The service is designed to comply with GDPR and the Digital Services Act.
For more details, see our Privacy Policy and DSA Compliance page.
Who operates Certified?
Certs.social is operated by the Hypercerts Foundation, a Delaware nonstock corporation founded in February 2023. The Foundation builds open infrastructure for tracking, funding, and rewarding positive impact — and Certs.social is the social layer of that ecosystem.
The Foundation chose AT Protocol as the foundation for Certs.social because impact work shouldn't be locked into a single platform. Contributors need to move freely between applications while keeping their profile, claims, and reputation intact.
Contact
Hypercerts Foundation
1209 Orange St.
Wilmington, DE 19801
United States
Email: support@hypercerts.org