Author: Zen, PANews
On August 3, Isabel, the co-founder of POAP, announced that this digital collectible project, which has been running for over five years, will cease further development.
Following the news, many early users reopened their wallets. There still lay badges from Ethereum conferences, hackathons, community meetups, and online events they participated in. Some are from a conference that has already been discontinued, some belong to projects that have long faded into obscurity, while others mark industry moments like Ethereum completing its merge upgrade.
The badges are still queryable and displayable, as if the past has not left. But the team that created these mementos has decided to say goodbye.
POAP is not a failed product that is unused and unloved. It grew from an experiment within the Ethereum community into one of the most representative participation credentials in the crypto industry and entered brand events, concerts, and major industry gatherings.
In fact, this is not the first time the internet industry has attempted to transform memories and commemoratives into a business. Over a decade ago, a startup named GetGlue invited millions of users to check-in to TV shows, movies, and books, collecting digital stickers, only to see all digital records vanish after the servers closed.
POAP has rewritten this story with blockchain and has once again stepped into the same river.
POAP Leaves Denver Plateau
In February 2019, thousands of developers gathered in Colorado for ETHDenver. The conference took place during a low point in the crypto market, with Bitcoin having significantly retraced from its previous bull market peak, and “NFT” was far from being a buzzword.
During this hackathon, early members of POAP, including Patricio Worthalter, first tried distributing ERC-721 digital badges to participants. POAP stands for Proof of Attendance Protocol, where attendees can receive an on-chain badge to prove they were present at a specific time and place.
A year later, the pink ribbon badges with QR codes had become a striking symbol at some Ethereum conferences. Participants could scan the QR code to claim the POAP to their Ethereum address. Those who could demonstrate via mobile app that they participated in various events such as Paris EthCC, Osaka Devcon, Berlin DappCon, or Denver ETHDenver were the trendsetters of the crypto circle.
By March 2020, POAP had covered over 100 events, with approximately 7000 badges claimed. Later on, POAP gradually evolved from an internal Ethereum community experiment into one of the most representative digital participation credentials in the crypto industry.
Essentially, POAP captures a long-standing commemorative habit.
Travelers collect fridge magnets, postcards, and tickets; sports fans treasure game tickets; concertgoers keep wristbands; and attendees may take home badges and commemorative tokens. Most of these items are not expensive; what truly matters is that they carry moments of experience, the people who were there, the places they were in, and the emotions that arose.
POAP's core approach is to convert the emotions and memories represented by tickets and badges into an on-chain credential held by the user themselves.
By 2022’s Metaverse Fashion Week, POAP had even become a key factor in attracting crowds at the event. As participants entered the venue, they would ask each other if they could claim a POAP. Even if some events themselves were lacking substance, as long as a POAP-claiming segment was set up, queues could still form.
Beyond industry events and forums, POAP also started gaining favor among brands.
Adidas distributed limited POAPs to certain users, who then gained priority to purchase “Into the Metaverse” NFT; Estée Lauder built a virtual space in Decentraland inspired by the Advanced Night Repair “little brown bottle,” allowing visitors to unlock POAPs and claim NFT wearables.
POAP's brightest moment came in September 2022. At that time, Ethereum completed its historic upgrade from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake. During the merge, over 41,000 people watched the official viewing party, where participants had collectively placed over 366,000 pixels on the POAP collaboration canvas. The minting information for the commemorative POAP from the merge painting party was announced during the live broadcast.
An irreplaceable historical event was recorded as a digital badge that can be preserved in a wallet for the long term. For a project that has long revolved around community rituals and shared memories, this is almost the ideal application scenario.
From Cultural Experiment to Economic Rights Linkage
As the NFT market heated up, POAP transitioned from being a cultural experiment and volunteer project in hackathons to becoming a formal company. In September 2021, POAP Inc. was registered in the United States. Just four months later, the company announced it had completed a $10 million seed round of funding, co-led by Archetype and Sapphire Sport.
POAP's self-definition extends far beyond “event badges.” The team envisions that every meeting, course, community, and project one participates in can gradually compose a social relationship map and become a digital identity that does not rely on name, nationality, or identification number.
Since every badge and its holding address can be queried on-chain, communities and project parties can also recognize specific users based on POAP holding conditions, granting them access to raffles, event tickets, exclusive content, whitelist eligibility, as well as issuing NFTs or token airdrops.
This potential benefit significantly enhances POAP's appeal. For project parties, distributing POAPs to event participants can cost-effectively record early users and community members and reward them later based on holding records; for users, claiming a free badge involves almost no cost yet may serve as credentials for entering subsequent events, receiving airdrops, or proving early identity.
Therefore, the motivations for users to collect POAPs are not entirely uniform from the start. Some hope to preserve an experience, seeing it as a community identity; others simply speculate on the potential rewards that the badge may bring. This dual nature helped POAP spread rapidly within the crypto community but also laid the groundwork for long-term contradictions.
When badges potentially correspond to airdrops or other economic rights, public claiming links can attract numerous users who did not genuinely participate in the events, and individuals may use multiple wallets to claim them in bulk. With airdrop brushing, witch attacks, and reward arbitrage gradually becoming common issues in the crypto industry, POAP's situation has also become increasingly awkward.
For project parties issuing rewards, a POAP that can be claimed at low cost and collected in bulk becomes a poor basis for assessing community contributions and user quality. When project parties no longer wish to allocate rights based on POAPs, users who mainly came for potential rewards will also leave quickly.
POAP thus finds itself trapped in a difficult-to-exit cycle. A product originally intended to record genuine experiences is increasingly at risk of losing its most essential value as it is integrated into the incentive systems of the crypto industry.
Stepping Into the Same River: The Web2 Version of “POAP” That Died Over a Decade Ago
Before the emergence of blockchain and NFTs, there was already a highly similar experiment in the Web 2.0 era that attempted to transform people's everyday experiences into collectible digital badges.
In August 2010, a viewer of the popular TV show “True Blood” could sit in front of their television, open the recently launched GetGlue app, and click to check in to the episode they were watching. Seconds later, a digital sticker designed by HBO would appear on their personal homepage.
If users check in consecutively, comment, or complete certain hidden tasks without public rules, they could unlock rarer stickers like “Truebie.” After collecting a certain number, users could request GetGlue to send physical versions of the stickers for free, which they could then stick on laptops, bookshelves, or walls.
GetGlue initially began as a browser plugin that provided social recommendations based on webpage content but gradually shifted towards “entertainment check-ins.” Users could tell friends what TV shows they were watching, what books they were reading, what music they were listening to, or even what drinks they were having and what topics they were thinking about. Each check-in would accumulate points, unlock stickers, and sync to Twitter or Facebook.
GetGlue, aimed at socializing TV viewers, achieved rapid growth in 2010. At the beginning of that year, it had only about 30,000 users; by October, the number had surpassed 650,000, with monthly check-ins and ratings exceeding 10 million.
At the beginning of 2012, GetGlue completed $12 million in funding, supported by institutions like Union Square Ventures, RRE Ventures, and Time Warner Investments, raising a total of about $24 million. Its user base also expanded to 2 million, with cumulative check-ins exceeding 100 million.
Additionally, GetGlue had partnerships with numerous major media companies, with dozens of film and publishing institutions such as HBO, Showtime, PBS, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros., and Random House issuing stickers and discounts to fans surrounding hundreds of programs. Organizations like Fox, NBC, HBO, and DirecTV also integrated GetGlue's data and functions into their own websites and apps.
At that time, the business logic appeared to be very smooth. User check-ins expressed interest while also promoting the shows; television networks obtained data about when viewers watched live, on-demand, or recorded content. GetGlue could earn from brand partnerships, membership rewards, product promotions, and advertising. On the surface, GetGlue seemed to possess all the elements of a successful consumer internet company.
However, the problem is that what users truly want are the TV shows, movies, and books, not the check-ins themselves. GetGlue also recognized that the little check-in stickers that originally attracted users were insufficient to sustain the business. By 2012, it had shifted from focusing on stickers and attempted to utilize users' check-in records to rebuild an electronic program guide to recommend content worth watching in future slots.
In 2012, competitor Viggle announced plans to acquire GetGlue for $25 million in cash and stock, but the deal later fell through. In 2013, GetGlue was acquired by the television app company i.TV; in early 2014, the company was renamed tvtag, changing its interface from blue to red, while continuing to retain check-ins, stickers, and real-time discussions. Less than a year later, users received farewell emails: tvtag and its accompanying apps would shut down on January 1, 2015.
After the servers closed, GetGlue users' check-in records, discussion content, and relational networks disappeared too. Those physical stickers that had been stuck on laptops, notebooks, and walls may have long been damaged, fallen off, or lost.
Digital accounts’ check-in records, discussions, and relational networks vanished along with the servers' shutdown. Those stickers stuck on computers and notebooks may also have been damaged, lost, or discarded a long time ago.
More than a decade later, POAP has reworked this story of digital memorabilia using blockchain, facing essentially the same commercial challenges as GetGlue. The difference is that, upon reaching the end point, POAP digital badges that have entered wallets will continue to exist as on-chain records.
Emotional Value That Cannot Drive Consumption
POAP and GetGlue's similarity fundamentally lies in the product structure they both face. What users truly value are the activities, programs, and communities behind the mementos, while platforms provide additional records after an experience is completed.
GetGlue users loved “True Blood,” the Oscars, or certain novels. POAP users cherish an Ethereum conference, a hackathon, a concert, or a community meetup. Stickers and badges can enhance memories but rarely become the primary reason for people to participate in events or watch programs.
This kind of product can be popular but is difficult to monetize.
For POAP collectors, the most attractive aspects of the badges are their free, low barrier, and gift-like attributes. Small communities, schools, or open-source projects are willing to issue POAPs but often do not have a sustainable software budget; large brands have the capacity to pay but are more likely to see it as a marketing project for a new product launch rather than a necessary long-term infrastructure.
This creates a divergence between product value, users, and payers.
Furthermore, POAP faces a contradiction that GetGlue never encountered — it was born in the NFT market yet continually attempted to keep distance from NFT speculation.
During the peak of the NFT market from 2021 to 2022, the most effective user distribution methods often involved price hikes, airdrop expectations, and secondary market trading. Projects issued tokens or NFTs, rapidly expanding communities through scarcity and wealth effects, then converted transaction fees, royalties, or token appreciation into revenue.
POAP does not wish to develop along this path. It emphasizes that badges represent shared experiences rather than tradable assets. POAP should only be issued when an event is truly worthy of commemoration. If users claim badges merely for future airdrops or trading value, the record itself would lose significance.
This restraint protects POAP's brand but limits its commercialization space.
Isabel stated in the farewell that, the fundraising cycles and distribution mechanisms in the crypto industry make it difficult for POAP to establish a sustainable company without eroding its original spirit. In other words, the most valuable parts of POAP stand in stark conflict with the most mature monetization methods of the crypto industry at that time.
The closure of POAP does not prove that digital memorabilia lack meaning. The millions of badges still left in users' wallets have already demonstrated that it once created genuine cultural value. However, there is no automatic conversion channel between cultural value and commercial value.
Sadly, POAP ultimately preserved the past of many but could not find a sustainable future for itself.
免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。
