Verifiable Presentation
A verifiable presentation is the tamper-evident package a holder assembles from one or more verifiable credentials to share with a verifier in response to a specific request, rather than handing over a whole credential.
A verifiable presentation can combine claims from several different credentials into a single response, and is bound to the holder presenting it with its own signature, so a verifier can confirm the person presenting it is the one it was issued to. It is what a wallet actually sends over OpenID4VP: a purpose-built response to one request, not a copy of the underlying credentials themselves. The verifier first states what it needs, typically as a presentation definition listing the credential types and specific claims it will accept, and the wallet matches that request against the credentials the holder already holds before assembling a presentation that answers it exactly, nothing more. This request-response shape is what keeps a presentation minimal: a rental company asking only for an over-18 flag and a licence category receives a presentation containing just those two facts, combined from the underlying mDL, rather than the full credential with every field it carries. The holder-binding signature is what stops a presentation from being replayed by someone else: even a copied, valid credential is useless without the private key tied to the original holder, since that key has to sign the presentation itself at the moment it is created. Presentations are typically short-lived and single-use, generated fresh for each request rather than cached and reused, which limits how much a verifier can correlate across separate interactions with the same holder.
Related terms
Does a verifiable presentation reveal the whole underlying credential to the verifier?
No. A wallet can build a presentation that includes only the specific claims a verifier requested, combined from one or more credentials, rather than handing over the whole credential each claim came from. A car rental kiosk asking for an over-18 flag and a licence category, for example, receives just those two facts, not the holder's full date of birth or address.