What is a Proof Of Attendance Protocol?

28 Oct 2023 by Harry Newman 4 min read

Projects within the crypto ecosystem are always looking to innovate, one such innovation is POAP or Proof of Attendance Protocol. This is a blockchain-based protocol that enables the issuance and management of digital tokens known as POAP tokens. These serve as a way to prove that an individual attended a specific event or location.

What is a POAP?

Proof of Attendance Protocol is a blockchain-based protocol that issues digital collectables referred to as a badge that serves as a way to prove that an individual attended a specific event or location in the form of an NFT.

What sets POAP apart from traditional event attendance records is that it leverages blockchain technology, making proof of attendance immutable and transparent.

Each POAP token is a unique piece of digital art, as you have to attend an event, virtual or physical and collect the POAP token it can be considered a form of digital collectable.

POAP allows an ecosystem for the preservation of memories, over time people can accumulate a collection of POAPs to tokenize their life experiences and this can be proven on the blockchain, lasting forever.

How Do POAPs Work?

All POAPs are created using the ERC-721 NFT standard, however, for them to be classed as a POAP they need to have a few more features.

The POAP token must be minted through the official POAP smart contract, you can create one on the POAP website here.

It must also contain the metadata related to a specific time or date within a year and have an image associated with it.

POAPs were on the Ethereum blockchain, but this is a costly blockchain with its high gas fees, which are the transaction fees.

POAP moved to xDai in 2020, which is now called Gnosis Chain, an Ethereum sidechain that has significantly lower transaction fees than Ethereum.

You can easily migrate from the Gnosis Chain to Ethereum but would have to pay a gas fee to do so. Most users leave them on the Gnosis chain where you can view them on the POAP app.

POAPs can be used to preserve things that are important to individuals. Each one represents a non-fungible, part of your history, with the POAP being a collectable proof of what you did to earn it.

Why Collect POAPs?

POAPs help to increase engagement within a community and can even give benefits to users who own certain POAPs, such as receiving a POAP when you join a new project as an early investor, this POAP can then give additional benefits to that user as a result.

For POAPs to be viewed as highly reliable, decentralized identity issuers must ensure that people do not receive more than one POAP each and non-attendees cannot receive them.

Claiming a POAP can be done in a few ways. Such as when users sign up to an event and provide their Ethereum wallet address, organizers can airdrop their POAP directly to the wallet.

Users can also scan a QR code at physical events which will send you a POAP badge.

The use of POAPs as one example is from Ethereum Devcon, where they did a virtual conference and issued POAP tokens to all attendees, allowing them to showcase their participation in the event.

Yearn Finance a DeFi platform uses POAPs as a reward to users who participate within the community, for example here is a POAP for users who were among the original people to help launch the yearn.finance protocol.

The potential applications that POAPs have with their low barrier to entry may help to redefine digital identities within crypto.

Final Thoughts

Proof of Attendance Procol or POAP represents an innovative approach to being able to recognize and commemorate event attendance.

The ability to create unique, verifiable digital badges has made it a valuable addition to the cryptocurrency ecosystem.

The use of POAPs within the digital world can only increase in popularity, changing the way we interact in the digital world.

POAPs help to foster a sense of community and reward active participants within an ecosystem, the use case for them is nearly limitless.

POAPs aren't intended as an investment, money is not the goal for these types of NFTs, they are made to show where you've been and the communities you are in.

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