What is POAP? Proof of presence protocol explained

If scrapbooks are a way to preserve a lifetime of memories, then POAP, or Proof of Attendance Protocol, can be seen as a new way to digitally record a person’s experiences.

Many people and organizations now use POAP to prove that a particular individual was present at an event or to distribute rewards to attendees, using blockchain security to preserve this information.

In this article, you will learn:

In 2012, shortly after the emergence of Bitcoin, app developer Dan Novaes wanted to use a blockchain-based app to reward people for attending events, similar to how video games would award digital badges. to players for new achievements.

Event attendees would receive a badge for attending, and possibly get another one if they stayed for the entire event.

Many years later, this idea led to a decentralized protocol called Proof of Attendance, which was first used by the POA Network team at the ETH Denver convention in 2019. The organizers held a hackathon, rewarding its participants with the very first POAP tokens (POAPs). The public, already passionate about digital collecting and non-fungible token (NFT) collectors, viewed these POAPs as additional valuables.

Now that we know that POAP or POAP tokens are actually collectibles, we look under the hood and see that POAPs are technically non-fungible tokens (NFTs). These collectible NFTs are minted under the Proof of Attendance Protocol smart contract.

Like all NFTs, each POAP is a digital record held by collectors as digital proof that they have attended or participated in physical, spiritual or virtual events. The POAP held by a participant can even serve as a token qualifying its collector for possible future use, as we will explore in the following sections of this article.

The first use of POAPs at the ETH convention in Denver turned out to be a new form of utility for NFTs in the physical world – remember that POAPs are actually non-fungible tokens.

As more businesses, organizations, and events have begun to use POAP, the range of potential applications has expanded, from proof of attendance at conferences to auditing the presence of employees at work.

Here are some of the ways people can use POAP:

As the ETH Denver convention demonstrated, NFT POAPs were a great way to help individuals provide proof that they attended the hackathon, while allowing convention organizers to track down and verify their attendees. on a public ledger (POAPs are registered on Ethereum).

Using the scrapbook metaphor we started the article with, an active participant in a particular community could also collect POAPs throughout their engagement with their community. This way, they would create a digital scrapbook displaying snapshots of all the events they attended or the accomplishments they made at those events.

POAPs can also be used as a gift from issuers to collectors, recognizing the intangible but invaluable contributions that members of its community can make to the collective. Whether in the form of time spent, energy invested, or even just care and support, all of these social interactions contribute to the long-term health of a community.

You could think of POAPs as different forms of upvotes or likes — the way Reddit has karma, gold, points, and other badges to reward posts that have been helpful, original, fun, or even empowering. .

A sender can then send all kinds of POAPs to:

These collectibles can be thought of as digital badges, implying or providing a level of social value and reputation. Going further, they could even be bearers of corresponding privileges. For example, a POAP issued for proposal voting could also qualify them to access private chat channels to view and engage in conversations that can help shape future proposals.

The operation of POAPs can be reduced to the following process, which is fully available on the POAP platform at POAP.xyzwhich has everything needed to mint (or craft) and issue these NFTs.

You can view your POAP collections as you would to search stored NFTs from any Ethereum wallet, although a gallery layout is possible with the Popscan app and on supported media. NFT marketplaces like OpenSea.

A simple way is to display them from MetaMask:

The most obvious benefit of holding POAP is to prove your attendance at an event or gain recognition for your accomplishments. A POAP collection can be displayed similarly to an NFT gallery, commemorating experiences and even as a way to fondly reminisce about happy memories. Being able to show them visually is also a big bonus!

But there are other benefits that tend to only become apparent much later, as organizations also use POAPs to distribute future (as yet unannounced) rewards to continue to appreciate and recognize valued members of their community. .

Some crypto company customers have benefited from airdrops of new tokens to their accounts simply for holding POAPs, while other companies offer larger rewards, matching the number or type of POAPs held.

Learn Crypto, for example, provides a Learn Crypto POAP Airdrop for early risers on its Discord server – with the idea of ​​providing special content and features only available to POAP holders.

From a technical perspective, POAP is a more efficient way to timestamp and securely protect digital records than proof of work. It requires far fewer resources, making it more suitable for personal devices such as smartphones that have limited storage and computing capacity.

Although it has been in use for about three years now, POAP is still relatively new with a lot of potential yet to be tapped. Early adopters include Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, who already has many POAP badges.

If nothing else, POAPs provide an interesting exploration of how NFTs could be used beyond their traditional speculative use and could become a crucial part of the modern Internet’s security and recordkeeping infrastructure. .