Only Arweave

After 5+ years, we're winding down POAP. Over the years, we: * minted millions of collectibles across hundreds of communities. * did incredible collaborations with world-class organizations - Coinbase, Amex, WMG, Bayer, and a long tail of others, including countless in crypto. * ran one of the biggest activations at Devcon, minting 8000+ collectibles over the course of a week. * built an Airport Rally to let collectors get POAPs at airports around the world. POAP meant something to a lot of people. Unfortunately, crypto's funding cycles and distribution dynamics made it hard to build a sustainable company without cannibalizing the ethos that made POAP mean something. Building on a fragile and quickly evolving stack, in the middle of an incredible hype cycle, only added to the challenges. Still, there are some big lessons I am carrying from the POAP story. First: Customer communities are the most undervalued asset a company can have. If you build something with soul, people who use it and love it will take your brand everywhere. Do not underestimate the power of customer communities. Second: Connection is still the point. It's easy to lose that thread when the conversation is about the latest bubbly tech or price speculation, but the people using POAPs at events, in classrooms, at hackathons were getting something real out of it. Third: Longevity and brand equity are the only moats left. With the time to building and shipping something new collapsing quickly, and distribution becoming increasingly an engineering problem, customers increasingly want to make sure they can trust that the things they are buying will grow and evolve with the market, without changing radically. Grateful for everyone who believed in what we were building. It's too soon for me to say what's next, but for now, I'm thinking a lot about what GTM looks like in the age of AI.