Crypto
Forays into blockchain, NFTs and POAPs live here. I write about minting POAP tokens at family events, celebrating Ethereum’s 10‑year anniversary by creating an NFT and even using monitoring services to keep my POAP feeds up and running.
- As someone that issues POAPs a lot I would love to subscribe to the RSS feeds for each of my events and see via the feed when a new token is claimed.
- It would be powerful to use automation on claims along by connecting the RSS feed for an event to IFTTT or any of the hundreds of services to take an action when an RSS feed is updated.
- There are several friends that are active in the POAP ecosystem and I can aggregate a feed of all their claims in the POAP Home app, but I would rather subscribe to an RSS feed of each of their addresses and get updates that way.
- Celebrating life’s special times with POAPs: weddings, anniversaries, birthdays and birth days, graduations, family trips, and all the other moments that make life precious.
- You can see the early inventory trend drops quick which is a reflection of preorders that folk sent in.
- True North was the first scent to sell out and sold just as fast as Winter Wonderland until they were all gone.
- Just Crackle was popular with people buying many candles as gifts.
- Old Fashioned had more than other scents but still sold out quickly.
- Apple of My Eye underperformed and was the least popular scent until the end when there wasn’t as many options.
- Winter Wonderland seems to sell faster when it is on display and people can see there are so many of them. On Saturday we kept 5 of each candle on the table and added more as they were sold. The rate of sales were slower. On Sunday there were 30+ of them on the table. Do people buy more when they see there are so many?
- We sold out! Inventory went negative? Indeed we ran out of candles and I sent an email to let folks know if they were still planning to come. We did have a few people show up after we were out and I realized I had a couple dozen candles downstairs I had poured for myself. I brought them up and we kept raising more money for our causes!
Support the Web via Open RSS
I recently discovered Open RSS via an article on Lifehacker highlighting how the service can provide feeds for some services that don’t do it themselves. I clicked through and was delighted to read more about Open RSS.
Open RSS is a non-profit advocating for the use of RSS. I read their about page in detail and it strongly resonated with me. Open protocols like RSS are an enabler to the open web and a way to create connection without all of the downsides of consolidated media platforms driven by a desire for data and engagement.
Open RSS also provides capability to discover and bridge RSS feeds for different sites (this is what the article was about). I’ve already suggested connecting POAPs to RSS. 🤓
I’m a care deeply about the kind of work this organization is doing. It is super small and grass roots. I’ve already had a few emails with Mark, one of the founders. This is a great opportunity to donate to a cause that is focused on the open Web. I think I just found the next organization that Weekly Thing Supporting Memberships can support!
POAP + RSS = Awesome?
Update: I created POAP2RSS to fill this gap!
I’m a big fan of POAP, and I’m a big fan of RSS. Sadly, these two things don’t know about each other, yet! This blog post is my take on a great start for RSS and POAP. Maybe there is a chance that the amazing folks at Open RSS could bridge this gap in the meantime!
First, why should POAP add RSS? I think there are dozens of use cases, but some examples…
There are two items that RSS feeds would be useful for: Events and Collectors. There is a POAP API that would make both of these pretty simple to get, and avoid any screen scraping. An API key would be needed but I think that would be easy to get. These use cases are all read only as well.
Events
Anybody can create an event the RSS feed would be specific to that event. Events have a simple ID, and there is a Token Event API method for /event/{id}/poaps that would get exactly what is desired. The URL’s for an event are https://poap.gallery/drops/{eventid}, my 53rd Birthday POAP is at https://poap.gallery/drops/183305 is an example.
In this case, the eventid is easily found and using the API could get the data to populate the RSS feed.
Addresses
Getting an RSS feed for new tokens that people claim is centered around a wallet address. Here we are looking for an address or ENS name. An example of this is my collection at https://collectors.poap.xyz/scan/0x111accebf9d70d9c06de2d38f9392522e82ecf29. This can also be accessed via the ENS name at https://collectors.poap.xyz/scan/poap.thingelstad.eth.
The Token Scan API method /actions/scan/{address} returns the list of tokens for that address and could build the RSS feed.
I’ve been sharing my 53rd Birthday POAP with friends and family all day today. I thought it would be fun to share a few with readers of my blog.
It’s my birthday tomorrow! Noting my rings and version number the day before. 😊
I’ll be sharing my 53rd Birthday POAP. Want one? Just ask.
POAP Event Trends
It has become a tradition for me to create a POAP for my birthday. I’ve been doing it since my 50th Birthday and now have 51st, 52nd, and now my 53rd. Since POAP uses a simple sequential number for events I can easily see how many POAP events have been created for those years.
| Year (Approx) | Events |
|---|---|
| 2022 | 74,298 |
| 2023 | 71,285 |
| 2024 | 16,826 |
That is a big drop in 2024, however it is still 46 events a day. I love what POAP is doing and they are slowly getting their whole offering easier to use and more streamlined. My guess is that they are not actively pushing to create more events right now while they improve the product. I’m rooting for them to be massively successful. I think POAP could be one of the products that shows the path for blockchain adoption.
POAP 7284931 at Jamie Thingelstad's 53rd Birthday.
POAP 7281029 at Weekly Thing Christmas Blogs.
I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to make a POAP — created Weekly Thing Christmas Blogs to send to the five people that got a year of micro.blog under their Christmas tree this year! 🎄🎁
Tyler and I decided to redeem the Pokemon 2014 #69 M Charizard EX card that we bought via Collector Crypt. Collector Crypt stores the graded card securely and you hold the NFT as proof of ownership. We burned the NFT and withdrew the card. It arrived today and is great!
The 2024 Year in POAP is out and I was proud to again (see 2023) have one of my POAPs highlighted — our Thingelstad Ireland 2024 was the family trip mention.
There are so many cool things happening in the POAP world and this annual roundup is a great recap. I 💛 POAP!
POAP 7276968 at Things 4 Good Scent Survey.
Nice treasure when I opened my chests from last week’s missions on Famous Fox Federation. By far my favorite NFT project still thriving.
Bitcoin crossed $100,000 USD for the first time ever on December 4, 2024!
Alby is deprecating their shared Bitcoin Lightning wallet service. I don’t want to host my own node or use their cloud hub so I transferred the satoshis I had there via lightning to my Strike wallet. Still amazes me how fast and simple Lightning is. ⚡️
Things 4 Good 2024 Fall Fundraiser Insights
We had a great time hosting our 4th annual Things 4 Good Fall Fundraiser. We raised $7,010 in donations for our four non-profits. I also like to take a look at the data from the sale to learn more for next year.
We made 252 candles in preparation for the sale. We had 72 Winter Wonderland, 36 Old Fashioned, and 24 of the other six scents. We really had no idea what to do for inventory since this was the first year we sold to the public at the Mt. Olivet Holiday Boutique.
We had 78 candle purchases which is a huge 42% jump from last year. On average people purchased 3 candles, down from 4 last year. However averages don’t tell the story. Most people got one candle, and there are a smaller number of people that get a large number — usually as gifts for the holidays. We had 5 transactions for more than 8 candles, accounting for a whopping 76 candles, 30% of our inventory.
This year we had eight different scents, the exact same as last year. We renamed Plain Jane to Just Crackle, and it was similarly popular for folks wanting an unscented candle. We did fine tune the scents though and increased the scent load on some of them. Here is a look at rolling inventory as sales were happening.
Some observations:
We offer folks a number of ways to donate and again Venmo was by far the most popular method, 3.5 times more popular than cash. More people knew what Zelle was this year. I continue to be surprised at how few people have Apple Pay setup. Three checks! I did not offer a method to pay via crypto this year. We’ve only ever had one candle sale in all the years we’ve done it using Bitcoin Lightning.
We are already keeping notes for things we want to do to make next year’s Things 4 Good Fall Fundraiser even better. Send us an email if you have any suggestions!
Also see 2024 Fall Fundraiser Results.
POAP 7230509 at Weekly Thing 300.
I burned four of the runes I collected along with 75,000 FOXY to mint my Summoned Fox #9569! Famous Fox Federation is still a super fun NFT project.
The Things 4 Good 2024 Candle Fundraiser POAP is ready to share with folks at this weekends event! It is a good example of how I’m not a designer. 😬
