POAP co-founder says funding and distribution dynamics made the business unsustainable

Proof of Attendance Protocol, or POAP, will wind down after more than five years of operations, according to co-founder and general manager Isabel. In a post on X, she said the project had minted millions of commemorative badges across hundreds of communities and worked with organizations including Coinbase, Amex, Warner Music Group, and Bayer. She also pointed to POAP issuing more than 8,000 badges during a single week at Devcon and running an airport-themed activation. Isabel said the crypto industry’s funding cycles and distribution mechanisms made it difficult for the team to build a sustainable business model without compromising POAP’s original purpose. She added that a fragile and fast-changing underlying tech stack made those problems harder to manage, especially during periods of industry hype. Looking back, she listed three takeaways: customer communities are a company’s most underestimated asset, a sense of connection is the core value of the product, and long-term thinking plus brand building remain the last defensible moat as development and launch cycles keep shrinking. She said she has not decided what comes next and is now thinking about go-to-market approaches in the age of AI.