Openbadges and Mozilla Persona

I apologize especially for the Web-Payments group for this post, as it is
not strictly related to web payments, but mentions a technology which has
been discussed in the group.

I would like to write a project proposal for a city municipality which
would promote self-directed learning and citizen science.

It is quite ambitious and may never take off.

The idea would be heavily based on Openbadges [1].

According to the site, Openbadges uses Mozilla Persona.
I think to remember that Mozilla Persona has been heavily discussed in this
group, and I also think to remember that there were some rumors circulating
of a possible demise.

I searched the web and found contradictory information.
What do people here think about using Mozilla Persona for identification
today?

Ideally I would like to propose an identification system run by the city
itself, and not by Mozilla (there may be privacy and legal issues). This
would probably mean having to run Mozilla Persona through the city's IT
infrastructure, which seems to be possible.

Nevertheless based on the rumors I would like to know if it's wise to build
on that. I could very well think of some custom identification system which
could be linked to Openbadges.

[1] http://openbadges.org