6P 612 POAP Challenge

The 612 POAP Challenge was a citywide scavenger hunt that ran from the end of May through Labor Day 2025. How to Play listed 31 Minneapolis locations in five themed categories, each with a location POAP that could only be claimed in the POAP app within 100 meters of the spot. Two hidden easter-egg locations were left for the curious. Completing a category earned a Category Collector POAP, and collecting all 31 earned the top award.

I announced it on 2025-05-31. It joined two things I loved: geocaching, and the 612 Series of Minneapolis NFTs by Erik Halaas and StayNftyMpls, which I had collected in full; I had interviewed Erik in 2024. Six days earlier I had made my first location POAP, at our family’s Charlie Brown Tree, and wanted to build something with the new feature. The challenge’s tokens were illustrated in the spirit of the 612 Series. “I love that I was able to create an entire activity on the POAP platform.”

The challenge had its own Buttondown mailing list, and from July its site, hosted on Micro.blog, posted each claim as it happened through POAP2RSS. The first Collected Them All! award went on 2025-07-20 to @quinntchrest, who speed ran the challenge by bike with a friend. The challenge closed as Labor Day ended on 2025-09-01, and the final awards were sent a few days later. The site remains as its record, and the experience led me to set up poapchallenge.com for future challenges.