To introduce digital objects in society, I want to reward people, who donate to a good cause, with a digital memento. More specifically, donors can claim a digital souvenir, if they gift 10 euro via YoLie vzw to a Flemish or Dutch Alzheimer charity.
To dispense digital souvenirs, I use the infrastructure of the Proof Of Attendance Protocol (POAP). Organizers can easily create and distribute digital memento’s to collectors, who attend a physical, virtual or spiritual event. A “POAP” is a non-fungible token (NFT), whose ownership is reliably registered on the smart contract platform Ethereum, via Gnosis.
A POAP functions as a digital version of a physical souvenir related to an experience, like for example a festival wristband. Despite it is no necessary quality of a (non-fungible) token, POAP requires a visual component for its digital memento’s. This implies that anyone, knowing the collectors' Ethereum wallet public address, can behold the (animated) image attached to the POAP. Furthermore, organizers can grant additional digital utility to POAP collectors, like for example voting rights.
YoLie vzw is a charity from Flanders, with a focus on people suffering from Alzheimer disease. Through several means (books, music, games, …) YoLie vzw reconnects people suffering from Alzheimer disease with their social surroundings, predominantly by reminiscing. YoLie vzw donates some proceeds of its books to Alzheimer charities in Flanders and the Netherlands. With this initiative, people who gift to an Alzheimer organisation via YoLie vzw, will receive a digital souvenir by means of a POAP.
This specific ambition functions moreover as a proof of concept for other charities. They can also use the infrastructure of POAP to augment the extrinsic motivation of its donors by publicly rewarding benevolent actions with a digital souvenir.
Organizers can demand a POAP by filling out an online form. It is especially important to determine the image and distribution method of the POAP’s. After submitting, the POAP team checks your application and delivers the asked mint links (a URL, by which the digital memento can be minted), if approved.
For this project YoLie vzw offers digital souvenirs for 10 euro via its online shop (no fiscal attest of gift possible). If you buy one, than YoLie vzw mails you a mint link and a prove of your donation to an Alzheimer charity. By receiving a mint link, you don’t own the POAP yet, but you possess a reservation in the shape of a URL, by which you can mint a digital memento.
To mint your POAP, you need an Ethereum wallet. You can create software wallets with for example Metamask or Rainbow and hardware wallets with Ledger or Trezor. Dependent on the value you attach to your digital objects, you can choose a more cheap and user friendly (software) or a safer (hardware) alternative. Irrespective of the type of wallet, write down the mnemonic seed phrase, that functions as your wallet’s backup. Pseudonymous twitter profile Punk6529 provides more elaborate security guidelines .
By surfing to a mint link in your web browser and selecting your Ethereum wallet, you mint a digital souvenir. The POAP infrastructure relies on Gnosis side chain, built upon the Ethereum network. That is why you can mint POAP’s for free, because you don’t need gas (transaction costs) for making use of Ethereum. As a side effect, blockchain explorers, that only consult Ethereum and not Gnosis, like Etherscan, won’t automatically show the POAP’s in your wallet. You can observe POAP’s via Rainbow, Gnosisscan and POAP.