Complete User & Institution Operations Guide
Whether you are verifying someone else's credential or issuing your own, this guide covers the whole path: wallet setup, testnet funding, issuance, and verification.
The guided walkthrough at /start does everything below in five steps, unlocking each one as the previous completes. It takes about three minutes. The sections here explain what each step is actually doing.
Verifying someone else's credential needs none of this — skip to step 4.
Issuing requires a wallet. Verifying does not.
- Install a supported browser extension: Freighter, xBull, or Albedo.
- Switch the wallet's network from Mainnet to Testnet. If you forget, CredChain detects the mismatch and shows a banner rather than failing when you try to sign.
- Press Connect my wallet on /start, or Connect Wallet in the top bar.
- Choose how long to stay signed in when prompted — this browser session, 1, 7, or 30 days. Only your public address is stored; signing always goes back through the extension.
Just installed the extension? Reload the page so the browser can detect it.
A brand-new Stellar account holds nothing and cannot pay transaction fees. Step 2 of /start has a Fund my testnet accountbutton that calls Stellar's public Friendbot faucet and credits 10,000 test XLM.
This is test currency on a test network. No real money is involved at any point, and testnet XLM cannot be exchanged for anything.
Credentials are issued by registered organizations, so your address has to be registered before it can issue anything:
- On /start or the issuer app, enter your organization name.
- Press Register and sign in your wallet. This is your first on-chain transaction.
- Once the ledger confirms, your address can issue credentials and appears in the public issuer list.
Registration is permissionless. The contract records which address registered a name; it does not verify that you are the organization you claim to be. Treat the issuer address, not the name, as the identity that matters.
Issuing
Provide three things: the recipient's Stellar address, the recipient's name, and the credential title (for example "BSc Computer Science"). The name and title are encoded into the credential itself and written to the ledger, so verification never depends on an external server staying online.
The issue date is recorded by the contract from ledger time — you do not supply it, and it cannot be backdated.
Revoking
If a credential was issued in error, the issuing address can call Revoke Certificate with the certificate id. Status updates immediately everywhere it is displayed. Only the original issuer can revoke, and revocation cannot be undone.
Anyone — a recruiter, an HR department, a registrar — can check a credential for free, with no wallet and no account:
- Open /verify and enter the certificate id, or go straight to
/verify/<id>. - The page renders the credential with the holder's name, the title, the issuing organization read from the contract, the issue date, and a Valid or Revoked banner.
- Use Print / Save as PDF for a clean copy without site chrome.
To see everything ever issued, the public registry lists every credential with totals, live status, and a filter across ids, holders, titles, and issuers.
Every credential page carries a QR code pointing back at itself. Print the credential, or put the QR on a physical certificate, and any phone camera becomes a verification tool — it opens the live page, which reads the current status from the ledger rather than trusting the paper.
That is the practical difference from a printed diploma: a revoked credential shows as revoked the moment someone scans it, no matter how convincing the printed copy looks.