POAP co-founder Isabel Gonzalez announced the platform’s shutdown after operating for more than five years, saying the decision was driven by the challenges of building a sustainable business in the crypto industry.
Over the years, POAP issued millions of NFT badges for hundreds of communities and partnered with Coinbase, American Express, Warner Music Group, Bayer, and many other companies, including dozens of crypto projects.
One of the platform’s biggest initiatives was its presence at Devcon, where attendees collected more than 8,000 digital badges over the course of a week. The team also launched Airport Rally, allowing collectors to claim POAP badges at airports around the world.
“The crypto industry’s funding model and the way products are distributed made it impossible for the company to build a sustainable business without abandoning the principles on which POAP was founded,” Gonzalez said.
The team also faced additional challenges while building on a rapidly evolving technology stack during a period of rapidly growing interest in cryptocurrencies.
Key Takeaways
Gonzalez said user communities are the most underrated asset any company can have. According to her, a product that users genuinely value can spread organically through the community itself.
Her second major takeaway was the importance of human connections. Gonzalez said users found real value in collecting digital badges at conferences, hackathons, and educational events, even when the crypto market’s attention was focused on new technologies and price speculation.
The third lesson, according to Gonzalez, was brand longevity and user trust. She noted that building new products is becoming faster than ever, while their adoption is increasingly shaped by technological capabilities. As a result, users expect the services they choose to evolve alongside the market without sudden or disruptive changes.
The project’s co-founder thanked everyone who supported POAP over the years and added that it is still too early to discuss what comes next for her.
“It’s still too early to talk about what comes next. Right now, I’m spending a lot of time thinking about what going to market will look like in the age of AI,” she wrote.