POAP reimagined
Proof of attendance, grown up.
POAP taught a generation to collect proof that they were there. ProofOfMeetProtocol keeps everything people loved about it, and fixes the one thing it never did: prove that a real person was actually in the room.
POAP is a trademark of its makers. ProofOfMeetProtocol is an independent project and is not affiliated with POAP.
“POAPs are bookmarks for your life.”
The legacy
What POAP got right, and we refuse to lose.
From 2019 the Proof of Attendance Protocol turned attendance into something you could hold. Millions of badges later, six habits it taught are worth keeping.
A drop took minutes
Title, description, one piece of art, dates, a number of codes. Nobody saw a wallet, a chain or a fee.
Six ways to claim
Mint links, a secret word, a website claim, delivery to a list, a kiosk at the door, and bots in the chat. Every room had a way in.
A proof you kept
Every drop had its own artwork. Collectors had a gallery, a timeline and a graph of who they had met.
It opened doors elsewhere
Gated channels, votes with weight, raffles. Holding a badge did something, so people collected them.
Curation gave it meaning
A review body checked that the event happened and the art was original. Fake drops stayed rare.
Sharing was the engine
Posting a fresh badge was the default. Every claim advertised the next drop.
What faded
The idea was right. The proof was weak.
POAP did not fail for lack of love. Four structural problems wore it down, and each one is a design decision in ProofOfMeetProtocol.
A code was not presence
Codes leaked, bots farmed them, and badges were resold. A POAP proved that someone had a code, never that a person was there.
Collectibles became assets
Transferable tokens drew speculation. A memento with a price is a memento people fake.
Curation did not scale
Reviewing every artwork and every event became a queue, a bottleneck and a source of disputes.
The chain stood in the way
Gas subsidies, migrations and wallet onboarding cost users at every step and tied the product to a market cycle.
“What people wanted was never the token. It was the memory, the proof, and the door it opened.”
What we kept
Every habit POAP taught, rebuilt on a stronger proof.
Side by side. The left column is the POAP you remember; the right is how the same thing works in ProofOfMeetProtocol today.
| POAP had | ProofOfMeetProtocol has | What changed |
|---|---|---|
| A drop in minutes | A meeting in a minute | Title and start, the rest defaulted. The emblem is generated for you, or uploaded with a copyright attestation. |
| Mint links, a secret word, kiosk mode | Slot links, open links, three-word codes, kiosk QR | Same rooms, same ease. Every code is time-boxed and rate-limited, and the kiosk QR rotates every thirty seconds. |
| A gallery of badges | A collection on your handle | Emblem, date and grade per meeting, series marks like “attended 8 of 12”. Public only if you opt in, per series if you like. |
| Drops that formed a series | Groups with roles | A school, a faculty or a community owns its series. Owner, organiser, member and viewer roles, assigned by the creator. |
| Token gating and votes | Signed claims and webhooks | “At least ten verified meetings since January” as a signed claim your community can check. No chain, no wallet. |
| A curation body | A humanity score and standing | Every attester clears a humanity threshold. Organisers are in standing, and verified organisers carry a mark. |
| Share your badge | Share your card | Every meeting and every attestation renders a card with the emblem and a link to the verification page. |
What we added
Six things POAP never had.
Proof of presence
Attesters pass a Cubid humanity threshold and state the span of time they were present. Distinct humans, not distinct codes.
Proof of the record
Each person endorses an exact version of the notes or transcript. Who acknowledged what, preserved forever.
Anonymous by default
Handles and a humanity score. Names, affiliations and verified identifiers appear only when the participant chooses.
Append-only, anchored to Bitcoin
Nothing is edited or removed. Daily roots are timestamped on the most secure ledger there is, through OpenTimestamps.
Open at the edges
A signed vCon for every meeting, a published protocol, an Apache-2.0 SDK and an MCP server. Take your proofs anywhere.
Free for participants, always
Attesting, viewing your meetings and setting disclosure cost nothing. Organisers pay, and only at scale.
A meetup, today
From “we met” to “we can prove it” in three steps.
- 01
Open the group, add the meeting
Your community’s group already has the emblem and the members. A new meeting takes a title and a start time.
- 02
Show the QR or say the words
The kiosk QR rotates on the screen at the door; online, you read out three words. Attesting takes under three minutes on a phone.
- 03
Everyone’s collection fills
A new emblem lands in every attester’s collection, the series shows one more attended, and the share card is ready.
What the page proves
- Distinct real humans, above the organiser’s humanity threshold, attested to being present.
- The span of time each of them stated.
- The exact version of the record each of them endorsed.
- That the record has not changed since: a Merkle root anchored to Bitcoin.
What it does not claim
- That anyone was in a particular city or building.
- That any statement in the record is true.
- Who a participant is, unless they chose to disclose it.
- Anything about people who were present but did not attest.
Bring your community.
Meetups, chapters, courses, faculties, DAOs. Tell us about the series you run and we will set up the group with you.