POAP Shuts Down After Five Years of Digital Badge Issuance

The shutdown follows a period of stagnation for the platform, which entered maintenance mode in March. During that time, the company halted active development and blocked new issuer onboarding, though existing integrations remained functional. Despite a $10 million funding round in 2022 led by Archetype and Sapphire Sport, the firm struggled to transition from a largely free service to a revenue-generating model that could support its long-term infrastructure.

Since its inception at ETHDenver in 2019, the protocol facilitated the minting of nearly 7.6 million digital collectibles by more than 46,000 issuers. High-profile organizations, including Coinbase, American Express, Warner Music Group, and Bayer, utilized the platform to verify participation in conferences and community events. While these tokens are minted on public blockchains and will remain in users' wallets, the future of the company’s gallery, APIs, and metadata services is currently unclear. Gonzalez has yet to provide a definitive service cutoff date or a migration plan for the infrastructure supporting these assets.