POAP Issuer Guidelines

[isabel]

Dear POAP,

As a first step along the path to sustainable usage of the Proof of Attendance Protocol, the POAP Curation Body is releasing the POAP Issuer Guidelines. These intend to be a jumping off point for discussions on POAP Curation Body Policy, and eventually, the rules of the road that we all agree to play by.

We hope that in releasing a formalized set of Guidelines, we can come into better alignment with the broader POAP Ecosystem on what constitutes good usage of POAP, as well as best practices for distribution and drop sizing.

POAP is conceived as a technology that will steer the next decade of human social evolution, and your participation in its stewardship and governance is critical to the project’s success.

We want your thoughtful feedback on direction, and suggestions for improvement. These might take the form of recommendations around process; recommendations around content; or other things entirely! In any case, this thread exists to open a dialog around the topic. Here are some initial questions, for use as a jumping off point.

1. What’s the best way to structure conversations around POAP Guidelines?

• How should the POAP Community contribute to the conversation around Curation Body Policy?
• Where should conversations take place?
• How should conversations look?

2. Who should be involved in establishing guidelines for POAP Protocol usage?

• Who should be informed?
• Who has skin in the game?
• What should be accounted for?

3. How should guardrails be set up for new POAP Issuers?

• How can we protect the protocol without hindering adoption?
• How can we support new Issuers while they learn about POAP?

4. What should be revisited by the POAP Curation Body in preparing the next edition of the Guidelines?

• What’s unclear?
• Where does supporting material or rationale need to be provided?

Read the Guidelines here, and join the conversation!
POAP Issuer Guidelines

We will also be discussing the topic on our Community Call tonight (Wednesday July 6th, at 7pm EST), so please feel welcome to stop by and share your thoughts. We look forward to building a better POAP with you.

[iDecentralized]

It’s awesome to see more transparency into the curation body and how they operate!

I think for many (including myself), we are learning that the curation body is one of the most powerful forces for actually protecting the POAP protocol!

I’ll throw my hat in the ring here:

1. What’s the best way to structure conversations around POAP Guidelines?

I think there should be both casual and formal conversation. The casual conversation being the day-to-day that happens in both real life (events, in telegrams/discords, community calls, etc) but the formal being something with more transparency. I think starting with open dialogue on Discourse is great and in the future, maybe even the Curation Body hosting an “AMA” of sorts where anyone can send in their random questions to help them understand things better. This could be on a text (reddit), audio (spaces) or even video (webinar)!

2. Who should be involved in establishing guidelines for POAP Protocol usage?

I believe that while all are welcome to give input, the ones with the most skin in the game are the serious Issuers, Collectors and Builders…in addition to traditional stakeholders connected to POAP Inc (investors, employees, etc), since they are the ones helping to shepherd the protocol.

I think the community can likely come up with novel ways of judging “how much” skin in the game a community member has:

• Amount of Posts on Discourse (or Discord)? ( (collectors/issuers/builders)
• Amount of Community Calls Attended? (collectors/issuers/builders)
• Number of POAP’s Issued? (issuers)
• Amount of Tools / Integrations Built for POAP? (builders)
• Number of POAP’s Collected (collectors)

Important to note, these are just quantitative (and not always high signal), that doesn’t even get into qualitative measurements!

3. How should guardrails be set up for new POAP Issuers?

Protecting the protocol is one of the most important things this early in the ultimate lifecycle. I expect Ethereum and POAP technology to be around for hundreds (possibly thousands) of years, and we are just a few years into the experiment.

I like the guidelines laid out in the “Drop Sizing and Distribution” section and feel this is a great start. Obviously, the more healthy distributions an issuer has done, the more positive reputation they should have and thus more leniency by the curation body.

4. What should be revisited by the POAP Curation Body in preparing the next edition of the Guidelines?

No strong opinions here, I think these new open lines of communication are awesome and looking forward to seeing what comes from it!

[CPoP]

As a user/community member I’ve enjoyed my memories that have been captured by the POAPS ive collected. They are reminders of where I’ve been and where I’m going in the space as i learn and grow. No other protocol is providing this service and its crutial as we further explore blockchain technology. I’m very grateful for the forward thinking! Let us all get more bankless!

[ebi1989]

Everything was great and we hope for a good future

[MaaRii74sd]

I register my opinion as a real user. My opinion is that Discord is a good place to hold poap meetings. Another opinion I have to give is that the poap team should act in such a way that its valuable poap reach real people and not bots.

[Milad91]

I like poap and hope all platform use poap for community ama

[Saraferdousi]

i think using some filters is so great. becouse it makes poap s more valuable

[Samagraphico]

In my opinion, the established rules are completely fair and reasonable, in my opinion, the more difficult it is to prove the presence, the more the rights of real users will be protected.

[muktana]

This is a good way to find real people who deserve this memorial

[VDizzle7]

Hey!

Something I’d like to see added to the guidelines is what is the recommendation for POAPs used for education.

@profwerder is someone who I know is using POAP in her classes she’s teaching at the university. She can’t attend to the community chat tonight, but I’m sure she can go more in depth of how she’s used it.

But I myself have taught students aged 13-19 years old on an e-learning platform educating them about the use of blockchain technology, POAPs being one of them as I have found it the easiest way to onboard more individuals into our community. I’ve taught them about the protocol, how to use it, and issue them a POAP at the end of the course.

I know Prof and myself do believe POAPs will be used for higher education more and more.

On a separate topic, something else I’d like to see in the future is a discussion for POAPs being used for IRL loyalty rewards program and discuss what should the guidelines be.

I launched the Ciao Ciao Piadina, an Italian restaurant located in San Diego, CA., NFT POAP loyalty rewards program. As far as I’m aware, we were the first use case to do so. The costumer spends a minimum of $20 at the restaurant and receives a POAP at checkout. Upon collecting every 6 POAPs they receive rewards like a lifetime of 20% discount, free appetizers, etc.

As myself and Lauren Turton, co-founder of the restaurant, continue to move this use case forward, I feel that POAPs could potentially be used for loyalty rewards program for other restaurants & companies.

[Show1lie]

Everything was great and we hope for a good future

[afra688]

I think A program should be developed to identify bots

[somayememar]

As a real person I demand that poap be given to real people.

[greyhame]

Thank you for the thoughtful community interaction and for the chance to provide our thoughts!
To answer your questions in general:
I am fond of discord functionally speaking. Conversations should be inclusive and geared towards protecting and benefitting the protocol, obviously.

Serious consideration and efforts should be devoted to helping not only individuals but also organizations looking to help grow POAP culture and usage in responsible ways.

The materials that you have produced and maintain already do a good job of providing guardrails and guidance for new users. I might suggest a link for community based/curated resources to help the community shoulder the burden of supporting new POAP users.

Certainly your discord can accomplish this if well managed. I recorded a ‘how to request a POAP event token’ just a few days ago, be happy to help from a community perspective.

I have enjoyed my conversations with your integrations team - I feel like there is great potential for large scale adoption by organizations, assuming this meets with the POAP mission. This is certainly our mission, and we appreciate the chance to work with folks at POAP to make it a reality in a free public good ‘tokens as a service’ utility.

Any clarity you can provide to service organizations regarding this sort of service level, high volume, professionally administered generation, will be very valuable. As service providers ourselves, clarity and consistency from the ‘manufacturing side’ if you will are crucial, so that we can plan to provide high quality experiences that benefit everyone.

There are folks with ‘skin in the game’ as you say. We are building tools and infrastructure in an open and free manner. Changes to infrastructure given such a model are quite impactful. It would be great if POAP users who have API keys and especially auth tokens to create custom POAP delivery experiences could be given notice if changes are imminent!

Thank you so much for what you do, and for the opportunity to provide our feedback. We are big fans!

Michael
BlockGurus.xyz

[NFTA]

Thank you @isabel for sharing these guidelines and starting the conversation around how we as a community can begin to organize our collective thoughts and opinions. We have a lot of work to do as a community.

One of the first things I would like to reflect on from the community call last night, is the different communication platforms that we have to choose from to begin the needed discussions that will allow us to contribute to POAP as a community.

Some of the platform options discussed last night:
Discourse
Discord
Reddit
NftyChat
Commonwealth

This is not an exhaustive list of all possible platforms, but a start of collaborating together, a list gathered from the community call last night.

All of the suggested platforms have short or long form style threads and some are a little more web3 native than others. As a community we will need to start talking, somewhere, I am generally one to favor the “let’s start where the people already are” route, ie Discourse or Reddit (Or at some point the Discord feature being released) for these long form discussions. Below are a few quick notes on the different platform suggestions, I would love to continue this conversation with the community and find a place where people feel comfortable coming into the community and throwing their two Matic into the conversation.

Platform	Web3/Web2	Current State	Pros	Cons
Discourse	Both	In Use	-Walled garden to begin POAP Community discussions -POAP Comms is already set up there	-Another app to log into
Discord	Both	In Use	-POAP Community is there somewhat	-Fast conversation style
Reddit	Both	In Use	-Open channel for anyone	-Open channel for anyone
NftyChat	Web3	No Threads	-POAP gated chats	-ENS needed for chat name
Commonwealth	Web3	No Threads	-POAP token gated community discussion	-Conversation non-existent at this time

Happy to start with these options to begin the next step of our community discussion around the published Issuer Guidelines and how we can begin to develop a cohesive feedback process for POAP policy as it develops.

One other point to leave off with, a reflection on the community calls, last night we saw 2,000 community members attend the call, there were about 10 speakers and around 30 community members active in the discord chat; 1,591 collectors were given the #26 POAP Community Call token. I would like to take this opportunity to encourage those that collected this particular POAP to feel empowered to join this conversation or start a conversation on one of the platforms we discussed last night. Your voice is a part of our community and a big part of what makes the protocol so special.

Thanks for taking the time to troubleshoot communication platforms with us. Let’s get to building!

Sincerely,
Amanda

[amir1366t]

I like poap and hope all platform use poap

[yulkor]

Hey @NFTA, great summary Looks like a Telegram channel is missing and could be added as an alternative
It’s also open for anyone (though could be restricted to “invite only”) and web3 folk is already there, so most people won’t think of it as of “another app to log into”.

[Warfire]

Good job Team, keep progressing

[julian]

i think the guidelines are good, I especially like the categories for the different kind of events for poaps

[ElCoco]

I was first extremely skeptical that the rules were getting more strict because I’ve created a couple of POAPs and hope to create more in the future. After reading the guidelines though, I think they are very reasonable. Kudos