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HeartBadge docs

What Is a Badge

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Your badge is an instrument — it registers the resonance of the moments you showed up for, and keeps receiving long after the moment has passed.

Your HeartBadge is an instrument.

Not a ticket (tickets get scanned and thrown away). Not a loyalty card (loyalty cards are about the next transaction). Not an NFT profile picture (profile pictures are performance, not memory). An instrument — something that registers the resonance of the moments you showed up for, and keeps receiving long after the moment has passed.

When you scan your badge at an event, you're not checking in. You're playing a note. When someone sends you rewards, you're not receiving points — you're receiving a frequency that the instrument will hold and carry forward. When your status rises because you've been present at enough gatherings, the badge isn't leveling up; it's developing tone. Everything the badge does is reception, resonance, and memory.

What the instrument carries

The badge holds five registers. Each one is a different frequency the instrument can receive on.

  • Identity. A 20-digit, Luhn-checksummed identifier that's unique to your badge. Safe to share. Verifiable offline. This is how the instrument knows itself. See Badge Identifier.
  • Rewards. Balances across three states: available, transferable, and restricted. You can send rewards to other members, receive rewards from programs, and spend rewards on content. This is how the instrument exchanges value. See Understanding Balances .
  • Status. Your multiplier — the product of when you arrived and how often you show up. Status determines how much you earn from every activity. This is how the instrument develops range. See What Is HRTB.
  • Proofs. Attestations that you were at an event, completed a quest, or co-signed a presence with another member. Proofs travel with the badge and can be verified without an internet connection. This is how the instrument remembers. See SPV and Offline.
  • Communication surface. Your badge identity is also your messagebox identity. Other members, operators, and your own tools can reach you via authenticated messages — without needing your email or phone number. This is how the instrument transmits. See Horizon.

Why it's built on a chain

The chain isn't a ledger. It's a medium — the way light travels.

A centralized server is a copy. It can be edited, shut down, or sold. A medium carries. The badge exists on-chain because that's the only way to guarantee that the moments it registered are still verifiable six months later, from São Paulo, by someone who wasn't there. The chain is how the resonance keeps propagating after the source is gone.

This is why the badge is a CAT-721 token minted to your identity key. It lives in a UTXO with a derivation path that encodes which program you joined, at what tier, and in what sequence. The technical details matter because they're what make the instrument durable: the badge is yours because the medium says it's yours, not because a database has a row with your name.

What the badge cannot do

An instrument has limits. These are the badge's:

  • It cannot be duplicated. One badge per identity key. If you lose access, you recover — you don't clone.
  • It cannot lie about where it's been. Proofs are cryptographically signed. The instrument can only register what actually happened.
  • It cannot inflate your status. Status is earned through participation. There's no shortcut, no purchase, no inheritance.
  • It cannot be taken from you. The badge is non-custodial. HeartChain Labs doesn't hold your keys. If we disappeared tomorrow, your badge would still work.

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