GitPOAP Raises Over $4.2 Million USD in Seed Funding To Memorialize Professional Contributions and Accomplishments As Blockchain-based Badges

GitPOAP, a contributor recognition platform that provides software projects with a novel way of recognizing and nurturing their communities through POAP issuance on Github, has announced the close of a successful $4.28 Million USD seed funding round.

Demonstrating significant interest in the project across the blockchain and emerging technology sectors, the round was co-led by Inflection.xyz and Libertus Capital and saw participation from major players including Avalanche VC, Protocol Labs, and, POAP, as well as notable angel investors including former CTO of Coinbase and General Partner at a16z Balaji Srinivasan, POAP Founder Patricio Worthalter, and industry names Anthony Sassano, Superphiz and Mariano Conti amongst others.

GitPOAP is dedicated to bringing people’s professional reputations on chain by bridging the space between existing off-chain contribution platforms such as GitHub and the on-chain world of DAOs and decentralized identity. It does this through the representation of meaningful contributions as POAPs, which are blockchain-based badges, minted in celebration of remarkable moments.

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GitPOAP can be used by two sets of users: contributors and project leaders. Contributors can create public, immutable, and unbiased records of their work. While project leaders can recognize, nurture, and grow their communities of contributors in a novel way. First, a contribution is made – GitPOAP is configured to identify meaningful contributions that match a configured pattern. Then, a GitPOAP is awarded to contributors as an award that is claimable by signing into GitPOAP with their GitHub account.

Colfax Selby, Co-Founder and CEO of GitPOAP said:

“People’s POAP collections say a lot about who they are, and we’re extending that by adding professional contributions and accomplishments. POAPs not only serve as mementos of things you’ve done, but are also a gateway to a vibrant ecosystem of social and professional applications that you can participate in with on-chain reputation. People’s current online representations are very limited but the future of Web3 necessitates more in-depth, nuanced online reputation and we’re aiming to facilitate this through progressing POAP’s capacities.”

“Many DAOs are currently relying on token holdings for their governance but imagine if you could easily poll the people who are actually contributing to your project? Project funding is also inherently difficult – wouldn’t it be nice to have a unified and verified record of who has contributed, so you can channel the funds effectively? Finding collaborators is another challenge. People are multidimensional, and understanding whether someone will be a good collaborator requires going much deeper than a resume. Our team is aiming to solve real-world challenges we have personally faced while bootstrapping and growing other open source projects. Through GitPOAP, we’re laying the foundation for a trusted, queryable record of contribution that will enable new ways to connect with potential partners.”

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GitPOAP will use the seed funding to grow its team, onboard more projects, and build deeper integrations to bring value and utility to the GitPOAP ecosystem. Its goal is to become the go-to place for memorializing professional contributions and accomplishments. GitPOAP is launching tools to equip maintainers with the ability to reward all contributions to their projects, no matter what they are or what form they take. From there, the team plans to expand beyond open source software and become a unified platform for any project or organization to use.

Users of GitPOAP are already experiencing value. “We’ve seen an increase in the number of meaningful contributions to Hardhat since issuing GitPOAPs,” says Patricio Palladino of the Nomic Foundation.

Skylar Weaver, a member of the Ethereum Foundation’s Devcon team, also reports that “contribution based POAPs were very helpful in identifying active builders in the community, which are exactly the folks we want at Devcon.”

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