POAP v SBT: Similarities, Drawbacks, Use Cases

Consider this scenario. You receive an award for Employee of the Month. You eagerly add that award to your Linkedin profile. How does someone know you got that award? They simply have to trust you.

Do you see the problem here? We need a system where people can get credit for their work while also being able to trust that these credentials are accurate. Unfortunately, there is no fully fledged-out stable trustless system (although there are many people working on it), but POAPs and SBTs are two tools that are trying to help get us there.

What is a POAP?

A POAP (Proof of Attendance Protocol) is essentially a NFT. As the name suggests it is a way to keep an immutable record of major life events. Right now, they are mostly being used as a way to “prove” that someone has attended a blockchain related event, for instance, hackathons and conferences.

How do POAPs work?

POAPs work by using an issuer and recipient system. Imagine I am running the Consensus Blockchain Conference and I want to issue POAPs to each attendee. I can do so by gathering every attendees wallet address and creating an app that only allows people with one of those wallet addresses to receive the NFT.

Wallet Address: Think of a wallet address as a blockchain account id for an individual

What is a SBT?

A SBT or Soul Bound Token is essentially a non-transferable NFT. It’s a concept that has existed for a while but has only been recently talked about after Vitalik wrote a blog post about it and renamed them to SBTs.

How do SBTs Work?

SBTs also work by using an issuer and a recipient system. An issuer, let's say a college, wants to issue SBTs to each student that is currently enrolled. They can do so by gathering each students’ wallet address and sending them an SBT. After that student has graduated, the college can burn that SBT.

Burn: Think of burning a SBT as throwing it in the blockchain trash

Benefits of POAPs over SBTs

The major benefit of POAPs over SBTs is that they contain all of the functionalities of a regular NFT. In particular, POAPs can be transferred and no one can take away your POAP unlike SBTs, where the issuer can burn them. Hence, once you get the POAP it is yours. Moreover, if I own multiple wallet addresses, I can move my POAPs from one wallet to another.

Benefits of SBTs over POAPs

Ironically, the benefits of SBTs over POAPs is the same feature that leads to its drawbacks: its non-transferability. Since SBTs are non-transferable and POAPs are not, they cannot be sold on secondary markets. Currently, numerous rare POAPs are being sold to the highest bidder as collector items. Although you can check to see if a POAP has been sold or transferred on the blockchain, the fact that it can be sold can lead to people creating misleading digital identities.

Also, sometimes it's necessary for the issuer to be able to burn a SBT, especially for trustless identification. You can consider the previously mentioned case of the college and its students. With POAPs you simply cannot do that.

Use Cases of POAPs and SBTs

There are plenty of use cases of POAPs and SBTs and some are more suited for SBTs while others are better for POAPs. Here is a short list of them below.

Proof-of-attendance for events Awards and certificates On-chain referrals On-chain resumes On-chain social identity Non-transferable ticketing (only works for SBTs) And more

On-chain: On-chain means on the blockchain

Wrap-up

Overall, POAPs and SBTs are two tools designed to create on-chain trustless identification. These might end-up being heavily altered or replaced by better tools, but are important for paving the way for an on-chain social identity.

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