Co-founder Isabel Gonzalez said POAP could not build a sustainable business without undermining what made the project matter, ending a protocol used by Coinbase, Amex, and Warner Music Group.
Posted August 4, 2026 at 7:02 am EST.
POAP, the Proof of Attendance Protocol, is shutting down after more than five years, co-founder Isabel Gonzalez said Monday. The project turned conference attendance, hackathons, DAO votes, and classroom sessions into onchain mementos, and by its own count minted nearly 7.6 million badges across more than 46,210 issuers.
Gonzalez attributed the closure to a business model that could not be made sustainable without damaging what the project stood for, writing that crypto’s funding cycles and distribution dynamics made it hard to build a company “without cannibalizing the ethos that made POAP mean something.” She said building on a fragile, fast-changing stack during a hype cycle compounded the difficulty. Her closing lesson was that longevity and brand equity are the only remaining moats, and she said she is now thinking about go-to-market in the age of AI.
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Coinbase, American Express, Warner Music Group, Bayer, Adidas, Porsche, and TIME all used POAP. Existing proof-of-attendance badges remain onchain and tradable.
Monday’s announcement completes a wind-down that began earlier this year. POAP entered maintenance mode on March 16, blocking new issuer signups while leaving existing drops, integrations, and collector tools running with reduced resources.
POAP dates to 2019, when badges were issued at an ETHDenver hackathon, with a formal project established in 2021. POAP later moved from Ethereum to Gnosis Chain, then the xDai sidechain, to cut transaction costs as issuance scaled. Commemorative POAPs marked Ethereum milestones including The Merge.
The shutdown lands in a stretch of closures among projects. Leap Wallet and DeFi dashboard Zapper both cited market conditions and the difficulty of raising fresh capital. DEX aggregator Odos went read-only in late July. Most prominently, BitMEX set a shutdown date last month, retiring the exchange that invented the perpetual future as volume migrated to Hyperliquid, Binance, and OKX.
Related Listen: The Chopping Block: Wind Downs, YC’s Nemil Dalal, & Will Every Failed Crypto Idea Eventually Work?
AI-assisted content: This article was produced with the assistance of AI tools and was reviewed, edited, and fact-checked by a member of the Unchained editorial team before publication.
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