<aside> <img src="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/06db1b4c-8dc2-4987-b8c6-f147d4b8a48b/og-image-512x512.png" alt="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/06db1b4c-8dc2-4987-b8c6-f147d4b8a48b/og-image-512x512.png" width="40px" /> You've worked on an open source project and they recently onboarded to GitPOAP. Naturally, you have a lot of questions.

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At their simplest, GitPOAPs are badges that say “Hey, I worked on this project”. They offer a way to show your work in a standardized and easily-showcased way.

The more complicated answer (and you don’t need to understand this part to use them) is that they’re blockchain-based attestations that you verifiably contributed valuable work to a project. These ‘attestations’ are tokens issued by the POAP protocol.

What’s a POAP?

“POAP” stands for “Proof of Attendance Protocol” and it’s an application on the Ethereum blockchain that gives people keepsakes for having done something, been somewhere, or participated in an event. There has been a huge amount of hype around collecting these, and they’re generally considered value-less. They’re currently difficult to trade, so most people collect them as a sort of reputation system or sentimental keepsake collection.

Why would I want a GitPOAP?

Incentives

There is great variability in the difficulty of acquiring a POAP. One can be acquired by simply attending an online event or by traveling across the world to solve a difficult puzzle with a team. GitPOAPs are among the more difficult to earn. You get them for actively contributing in valuable ways. Folks have POAP collections that range anywhere from 10 to 1500 POAPs. The most GitPOAPs any one person has at the time of writing this is 23.

It’s not just their scarcity that’s the reason people work to collect them - GitPOAPs function as a digital resume for people who work in web3 and a way for project maintainers to selectively reward or communicate with their contributors. If you ever want to transition to web3 or hire in web3, GitPOAPs are a great place to start.

Reputation

Conferences ask to see your POAP collection to see that you’re active in the ecosystem. Communities gate their forums, votes, or documents with certain POAPs that indicate that someone has been active in their community. When I was applying to my own job, they asked to see my POAP collection.

Integrations

Mazury.xyz, a web3 talent platform, recently integrated GitPOAPs as visible and searchable reputation.
Guild.xyz, an app that automates membership management for many different platforms, has integrated GitPOAPs as a gating tool.
Raffles can be conducted on poap.fun to give something away only to someone who’s been active in your project.
One-time payments can be made by maintainers to every single single person who has ever contributed to a project (or maybe just the 2020 or 2021 contributors) in one single transaction with disperse.app.
Or they can continuously stream payments to their GitPOAP holders with app.superfluid.finance!

This is just a handful - GitPOAPs are built on top of the POAP protocol and there are a lot of wealth of resources and integrations in the POAP ecosystem. View a directory here.