Jamie Thingelstad

I shared this introduction on the POAP Discourse server on January 8. I’m publishing here on my blog as well for posterity. I’m still a big fan of POAPs. It is my favorite project to introduce people to crypto with.

gm all! 👋

I first discovered POAP’s with the ENS 4th Anniversary Snapshot Vote on 04-June-2021 and I was instantly intrigued. I have always had fun collecting things and particularly find it interesting having digital tokens that capture things. Photos stop time. Geo coordinates stop motion. POAPs are a time capsule of something of note.

I created my first POAP to give to the members of my book club when we read Klara and the Sun. Mindblown! I think it was shortly after that that I joined the POAP Discord. I’m also a proud holder of the Early Issuer POAP. I’ve since created 12 POAP events for a variety of uses.

Special POAPs, that have a place in my heart.

• The ConstitutionDAO POAP… we didn’t get there, but I will always remember the event with the POAP. This is the only POAP I have migrated to Ethereum just to have it front and center.
• The POAPathon USA Holiday Spectacular I nabbed during the POAPathon this year… that got me exposed to POAPathon, more on that below…
• My Weekly Thing #200 POAP that I created when I sent the 200th issue of my Weekly Thing newsletter. Each recipient of the newsletter got a claim code.
• And perhaps my most favorite of all, my 50th Birthday POAP. On Jan 3 2022 I turned 50 and I wanted to give something to friends and family. I created a POAPathon Challenge for a design and had over a dozen design submissions! It was an amazing process and yielded what is currently my most treasured POAP! ❤️

I’ve become quite a fan of the project. I think it is a great way to curate memories. I also love it as a way to introduce people to crypto as a totally non-economic activity.

I didn’t realize how bad farming was until we issued our Reading Things First 100 POAP. We have a family newsletter called Reading Things that is all about, well, reading. My whole family writes in it and we send quarterly. We sent this POAP because we hit 100 subscribers. I didn’t know at the time how to do a unique claim code to each subscriber (like I did for the Weekly Thing 200 one)… so I just put a POAP.website link in… it was farmed terribly. I honestly wish I could “burn” that whole event and destroy all those tokens because they are trash… the farmers destroyed what should have been a cool memory for us to celebrate with these 100 first subscribers…

This got a bit longer than I was expecting… It is fun to continue to see the growth of the POAP ecosystem! You can see my collection of POAPs as well…