Analysis of POAP reserved by email + suggestion

[whiskey]

Gm ,

To deep dive in reserved poap issue I created this Dune dashboard .

• 6,224,246 poaps are minted while 777,298 of them are minted from emails . This means about 12 % of all poaps were minted from emails .
• They are 1,031,120 poap users while 362,653 of them had used reserve by email function at least once .
• Mint poap from email function were used 677,938 times . this mean some of those 362,653 users had minted poap from emails multiple times !

Now if you look at this table :

batch_mint_email means the number of times user minted poaps from email
poaps_mint_email means the number of poaps user minted from email

if you look at this user :

This user has minted 2130 poaps using email option 856 times !

You can look closer with this query :

What I understood is :

• some users prefer minting with email for every poap they mint , for example this address 0x77a8703db1aeee04405f8a37fde59f669adfa429 used mint from email 23 times, each time to mint only one poap !

This could be an indication of secret groups selling poaps. another reason could be that user bypass gnosis chain limited tps to reserve poap to email instead of asking to mint it real time . this could help user to avoid errors when an popular poap drops . the first case is kinda illegal and the second case is not fair .

• some users are minting big batch of poaps from email to their address , but some poaps are duplicated . this is clear sign of farming/selling/buying poaps

what would help us to find abusers onchian ? an EmailID ! just like I described here in discourse .

cheers

[yeysus]

Hi @whiskey. I agree with you that in many cases minting the same POAP with a different eMail sounds like grabbing the same POAP for the sake of selling it later. Not a good thing per se, using the hard work of POAP Inc to get $$$. But your reasoning, however logic it may sound, is not based on data. You don’t really know the motivation for people to having done this. Maybe people do not like to mint using the ETH address in their mobile phones, only laptop, so they enter an eMail in their phones always, and mint later at home with their laptops. Or the other way around. Or they deleted Metamask from the iPhone for lack of space. Or they don’t want to have any wallets at all because they used their corporate phones. Or, in the case of a few POAPs at least, they are testing something, like I did with a POAP.fr member a few days ago with 3 or 4 different emails from mine (the POAP was labeled as test anyway, we were testing a new official POAP internal process for minting), or a colleague that wanted to onboard later her family members and minted via eMail like 3 times I think her own I’ve met POAP to drop it to them as a surprise. She didn’t have the mint codes. Or they don’t want to have an ETH address at all, they are happy seeing that POAP popping on the website and that’s it. These are only a few examples, I am sure there are zillions of other reasons why people would mint using eMail all the time. And I don’t know if in dune you are seeing all primary-reserved-by-eMails cases or only those that mint later using their ETH address. I think POAP Inc should write clearly in their terms and conditions “rules for acquiring POAPs”, what is allowed, what is not allowed. They can change those rules anytime anyway. I think it is brilliant that POAP allows eMail minting, this is a very important bridge for users who are not into Web3. Which is the vast majority of the world. Maybe, just maybe, there will come a point where POAP changes the model and allows users to use eMail instead of ETH, gulp!, and the POAP app will get a login via eMail and password :-D, then we will have your EmailID in the chain :-).

[whiskey]

@yeysus

Hi @whiskey. I agree with you that in many cases minting the same POAP with a different eMail sounds like grabbing the same POAP for the sake of selling it later. Not a good thing per se, using the hard work of POAP Inc to get $$$.

thanks for sharing your idea with me . I agree with you and Im trying to highlight an issue and suggest a way to protect honest genuine poap users agains farmers .

@yeysus

But your reasoning, however logic it may sound, is not based on data. You don’t really know the motivation for people to having done this. Maybe people do not like to mint using the ETH address in their mobile phones, only laptop, so they enter an eMail in their phones always, and mint later at home with their laptops. Or the other way around. Or they deleted Metamask from the iPhone for lack of space. Or they don’t want to have any wallets at all because they used their corporate phones.

To mint poap via POAP app you don’t need to have metamask or any other crypto wallet installed on your phone . user does not need to connect any wallet to poap APP . pasting your wallet address or ENS is enough . I know many people don’t have their public address saved in their phone but we all remember our ENS .

That’s actually one thing that I admire about poap app and that’s why I suggest it to everyone. it’s designed in a way that no one need to connect any wallet or confirm any transaction on it which gives a very good user experience and security .

@yeysus

in the case of a few POAPs at least, they are testing something, like I did with a POAP.fr member a few days ago with 3 or 4 different emails from mine (the POAP was labeled as test anyway, we were testing a new official POAP internal process for minting), or a colleague that wanted to onboard later her family members and minted via eMail like 3 times I think her own I’ve met POAP to drop it to them as a surprise. She didn’t have the mint codes. Or they don’t want to have an ETH address at all, they are happy seeing that POAP popping on the website and that’s it. These are only a few examples, I am sure there are zillions of other reasons why people would mint using eMail all the time.

In case of new users like your collogue it’s exactly why mint by email is available by poap. to serve non web3 users . I can actually come up with some more scenarios of people using email reserve in good intention . what I’m trying to say is that the email option is very good and beneficial but it’s mechanism needs changes . for example right now for us that working on onchain data , the amount of poaps reserved by email and not minted yet is a black box . and lets say a team wants to create reward /utility for it’s poap holders while there is unknown data of reserved poap that can be minted any second and get the reward or the utility .