MetricsDAO pod leader Gab_riel#9582 recently compiled his experiences with the use of POAPs into an insightful Discord post.

Since these gems tend to get washed away in the steady stream of conversations, this article preserves them for future reference. Either by MetricsDAO or other POAP authors. Ready? Let’s go!

What are the benefits of POAPs and why are they growing in popularity?

TL;DR: POAPs have much of the functionality of traditional NFTs but they also allow for a curated and decentralized method of recording one's life experiences. Organizations can easily and cost-effectively track member engagement and reward members for their engagement. This sets POAPs apart from traditional NFTs and is part of the reason they are growing in popularity. 

Now, why do POAPs seem to be so popular? 

There are multiple factors to consider here:

On The Surface a POAP is a blockchain based ticket stub or collectible. People like swag, cool art, and memorabilia from events and POAPs share some of those characteristics but are living on a blockchain. This alone is attractive for people interested in Web3. 

On a deeper level, POAPs offer a lot of opportunities for both the organizations that release them and the individuals who collect them.

For organizations POAPs are a great (and cost-effective) way to gauge and track community engagement. Orgs can then use this data to further reward community members with perks, air drops and more, based on their level of engagement, by measuring how many and what kind of POAPs each member has. Other DAOs have used POAPs to allocate airdrops to their active members and I believe SushiSwap has even implemented perks to members with specific POAPs. 

In MetricsDAO, POAPs have a formal organization or pod, that oversees their implementation and minting, the POAP Curation Body, which endows an extra level of trust and communication. Specifically, we see POAPs as an ideal and native method for tracking member involvement and contribution. Since a lot of what we do is about education, POAPs also work nicely as certificates of achievement and competency. For example, getting the Harmony Data Curation POAP is a good way to show proof of your data curation skills. 

For collectors POAPs can open up a lot of opportunities outside of just being collectable memorabilia. They have many of the functional benefits of traditional NFTs, like allowing access to chat rooms, special services, or collectable art. Where they differ from NFTs is that they are linked to unique events or timeframes, so they can function as a decentralized and reliable tool for identity building, not unlike a resume. Let’s not overlook the fact that they are essentially free to collect and mint as long as you don’t plan on trying to trade or sell them. 

For farming… When talking about the hype surrounding POAPs we would be remiss not to mention POAP farming. Farming occurs when individuals attempt to fraudulently acquire large amounts of POAPs. Or when they attend events only for the POAPs , but with little to no interest in the content of these events. These actions are frowned upon by the POAP Curation Body because they go against the spirit of the creators. 

Some of the hype surrounding POAPs has to do with farming. I suspect this has become so prevalent because people are speculating on the value of these items. POAPs are a special kind of NFT and other kinds of NFTs have historically had value. While POAPs were never intended to be sold or traded, they are still NFTs and people are hoping they will be worth something in the future. 

You can compare it to Halloween candy. There is always that one house who leaves their Halloween candy out in a bowl and relies on everyone taking only one serving. But there is usually one bad actor who comes along and takes the whole bowl. POAPs are having a similar issue, and there have been measures to vigorously combat this over the past year. 

Gabe was kind enough to distil our experiences with POAPs on MetricsDAO into coherent thoughts.

WHY are we using POAPs in MetricsDAO?

We use POAPs to achieve multiple goals. First, we use POAPs as a means to reliably track the quality and quantity of member engagement and work. POAPs which track work effort and deliverables can later be used to allocate payment and other rewards. This is particularly relevant for us at our current stage as we are still finalizing our treasury. POAPs provide a good option for tracking and rewarding work until the treasury is fully operational and documented.

We leverage the idea of POAPs as collectibles and use them to drive interest in our events through unique and exclusive artwork for each POAP and we increase community involvement by sourcing our artwork from the community whenever possible.

We see POAPs as having the possibility of becoming an industry standard feature for DAOs and crypto-themed events. MetricsDAO wants to stay on the forefront of this technology.

How are we using POAPs in MetricsDAO?

The POAP Studio pod, a semi-autonomous group of members, is responsible for all things POAP. This includes managing requests, creation, communication with the POAP Curation Body, as well as distribution. 

This process starts when a pod leader formally requests a POAP for an upcoming event through our POAP Request Form. The form collects any and all relevant data about the event. Once we have the request, an artist is assigned to handle the art creation and the best distribution method is determined based on the nature of the event. 

When the art is finalized, we formally create our event on POAP’s website and then we directly contact their POAP Curation Body to sort out the event and distribution method approvals. This last bit is important for us since we want to make sure that we are implementing POAPs correctly and in line with their specified ethos. 

We use POAPs for (or plan to use POAPs for):

• Community calls

• Workshops

• Challenge or bounty participants (data curators, question sourcers, question solvers, question reviewers)

• Community members participating in a season

• Referrals for hiring

We currently track monthly/seasonal work done by our contributors. That work is periodically reviewed by pod leadership and depending on the quality and quantity of work, the contributor is awarded a bronze, silver, or gold contributor POAP.

Where are the main pain points in the use of POAPs, or are we good here?

Overall I feel that our jump into POAPs has been successful. POAPs have clearly added value to our organization, both for our leadership team and our members. POAPs provide our leadership team with a novel and web3 native method of tracking and rewarding participation. For our members, POAPs are a fun piece of swag for attending our events and they give formal recognition for their time and effort. The inclusion of quality artwork within our POAPs also creates hype for our events and projects. 

As for pain points, I think there are a few but none of them are so severe that they overshadow the value POAPs provide. The most prevalent is POAP farming. The trouble with farmers for us has been trying to use POAPs to reward and incentivize honest participation in our events while simultaneously avoiding to artificially inflate our participation numbers with POAP farmers. We want to make sure our POAPs get into the hands of those who genuinely care about our events and our community. This means finding a distribution method that balances ease of access for our honest participants with security checks to prevent farming and exploitation. We have tested a number of distribution methods so far and we will be testing one or two more in the coming weeks.

What about the future of MetricsDAO’s POAP Studio pod?

As MetricsDAO grows, we are starting to see a greater need for designers and artists across many of our operational pods. With our POAP Studio pod containing the largest share of creative contributors, we plan to eventually transition our POAP Studio pod into a broader Design Studio pod, of which POAPs will be just one of its many functions. 

If you are excited about analytics, POAPs and want to meet great people join our Discord and follow us on Twitter. If you're a designer and are interested in getting involved, join our Discord or reach out to Gabe. We want to hear from you <3