What Are Programs

Programs give your badge a place to be.

A program is a membership experience that runs on HeartBadge — created by a community, a venue, a festival, a platform, or any organization that wants to reward people for showing up.

Your badge is always part of at least one program. The program is what determines what your badge looks like, where you can check in, what events you can attend, and what you earn for participating.

Think of it this way: your badge is the key. Programs are the rooms it opens.

Examples

A festival creates a program. Members check in at stages, complete challenges, and earn rewards tied to the event. When the festival ends, the badge — and everything you earned — stays with you.

A venue runs a program for its regulars. You check in at the door, earn rewards for visits, and build status over time. Your tenth visit means more than your first.

alta.live is a HeartBadge program. Viewers earn rewards while watching. Creators earn from their audience's engagement. Participation on both sides is recognized and rewarded.

A community or organization uses HeartBadge as its membership layer. Members participate, contribute, and build recognition that's verifiable and portable — not trapped inside one platform.

What a program shapes

Each program is configured by its operator. They set:

• Branding — the visual identity that appears on your badge card in that program
• Experiences — events, locations, and activities where your participation is recognized
• Rewards — what you earn for different activities, and any restrictions that apply
• Challenges — multi-step activities with objectives and bonus rewards
• Tiers — different membership levels with different access and benefits

What a program cannot touch

Your badge is yours. Not the operator's.

• Your ownership. No operator can take your badge, transfer it, or revoke it without your consent.
• Your status. Your status level is protocol-wide, not program-specific. It carries across every program you join.
• Your transferable rewards. Once rewards are unlocked and transferable, you can send them to anyone. No program can reverse that.
• Your identity key. The operator never has access to your private key. They see your badge. They don't hold it.

Joining more than one program

Your badge works across programs. You can join a festival program, a venue program, and a streaming program — each one is a separate experience, but your identity and your status travel with you.

Each program's rewards and benefits are scoped to that program. But your status level and your transferable rewards are yours across all of them. The badge is the thread that connects every program you join into one continuous participation history.

See Multi-Membership for how managing multiple badges across programs will work.

Related

• Earning at Events — how check-ins and rewards work inside a program
• What Is MaaS — the operator-facing view (if you're thinking about running a program)