The communication toolkit for web3, Huddle01 enables open & seamless cross-chain a/v calls and messaging for wallets, dApps, DAOs, NFT Communities and users. The toolkit includes a feature-rich sufficiently decentralised meeting platform, plug-n-play video conferencing SDK for dApps and dRTC protocol to power the future of real-time communication.
One of the exciting features that our Video Conferencing Platform includes is the ability for organisations, DAOs and NFT Communities to host token-gated meetings. This gives you the ability to conduct invite-only virtual events/calls on the Huddle01 Platform for your web3 fam.
Now let’s deep dive into the details of how you can token-gate your meetings using POAPs, NFTs, Tokens and Lens ⤵️
🔐 First, what is a token-gated meeting?
Let's understand what ‘token-gated meetings’ are by first deconstructing the word:
Token-gated: A mechanism where an event is accessed by only tokens. Here, ‘token’ means tokens in your crypto wallet.
Meetings: A video conference between users.
Token-gated meetings solve a crucial problem in organisations, guilds, and communities that want to connect and collaborate virtually with complete privacy.
⚒️ How does token-gating work?
Token-gated meetings are an upgraded version of the usual meetings when it comes to utility. In terms of how things work in the backend, it is similar to how any authentication tool works.
The differentiating factor here is that verification is less painful on the user side as compared to web2 meetings. Also, the host doesn’t need to privately share links and go through a complicated procedure to just set up one call.
Now let’s first understand the problems with the web2 workflow to know the current landscape and why we need token-gated meetings.
🚨 Issues with current infrastructure
Fundamentally both web2 and web3 work in a similar fashion to authenticate identities, but the variables used are different, and that is a key differentiator. Let’s dive into what the exact issues are in the web2 space:
Credentials for verification: Web2 uses different credentials for verification. That usually involves setting up an email. That email has a verification method once it is set up. You need to set up passwords for the video conferencing service that is going to be used, and so on. This also creates an issue where you have to remember many passwords, and then your mailbox looks like a mess. Token-gated meetings just need their wallet to be connected to verify the existence of the existing tokens. If you have them, then you can enter; or else not. No need to create accounts on third-party services and plague your inbox with spam mail.
Setting up meetings: It is tough to set up exclusive meetings. You either collect everyone’s email addresses to create a meeting in everyone’s calendar, or you can use tools like Luma that ease the last part, but it’s hectic. For token-gated meetings, you just need to let users mint a specific token as they become a part of your exclusive organization. That token becomes an identifier for your attendees during meetings.
Hard to track exclusive events: Your inboxes are always full of invites, and your calendar always has some pending approval to set up a meeting. It also becomes difficult to hunt for specific links in email for those meetings.
With tokens, everything is abstracted! Just share the link on public channels. Only the folks with a token can enter, so no worries about maintaining secrecy around links.Difficulty in repeating events: Once you set up an exclusive event, there is always a threat that if someone external gets the link, the exclusivity of the event is instantly lost. You’ll need to repeat to schedule a new meeting with a new link.
Difficult to maintain anonymity: The current infrastructure needs you to reveal your identity in some or the other way. With so many layers of verification and authentication involved, it is really hard to maintain an anonymous identity. At Token-gated events, you can be either completely anonymous or pseudo-anonymous as only your wallet and token are required for the verification.
✅ Advantages of Token-gated meetings
Token-gated meetings are helpful in a lot of specific use cases. Let's see how:
Influencer events: Influencers can add layer of connection with their fans. People who want to get in touch with a lot of folks but want to filter out the crowd in tiers to give them access to specific content based on the token they hold.
Easy setup: Unlike the tiresome web2 setup, web3 token-gated meetings take just 2 quick steps to be scheduled. You first have to set up a process to mint certain tokens for the call, or you can use already existing ones to filter out the attendees. The second step is to just schedule a meeting and share the link on public channels. And it’s done! You’ve successfully hosted your first-token gated meeting.
Reusability: The links for exclusive meetings can be reused for recurring events. The same tokens and links can be used to host regular community calls.
Organisation-friendly: The good part about token-gated meetings is that they work with all kinds of organizations. People in hierarchal organizations can be given links to different token mints so that they get access to different tiers of meetings, which provides every user with variable access to the organization. Just a basic subdomain and landing pages would do the trick instead of setting up the entire organization on Microsoft Teams or Google Suite or any other tool.
🪙 Huddle01 and Token gating
If you are wondering if Token gated meetings are awesome, we have good news for you - you can now host Token-gated calls for your organisation or community using the Huddle01 platform. Here are the tokens we currently support:
POAPs: We support token-gating using POAPs (Proof of Attention Protocol) tokens, ensuring that only users who have the required tokens can access the calls.
Token:
a. Ethereum: We support ERC20 and ERC721 tokens for token-gating an event on the Ethereum chain.
b. Polygon: Similarly, we yet again support ERC20 and ERC721 for token-gating on the Polygon chain.
NFTs: You can token-gate Huddle01 meeting for your community with NFTs live on Ethereum and Polygon
Looking at the impressive growth of the Lens Community in the previous year, we’ve also introduced Lens Social Graph support on the platform, you can now token-gate your meetings and soon live streaming, using Lens Handle 🌿 and attributes like:
Followed a particular profile
Collected a particular post
Mirrored a particular post
We are also working on adding more chains so that you can invite diverse attendees to your meetings or calls.
That's a wrap! ✨
Now that you know how easy it is to host token-gated meetings, go ahead and schedule one for your community. In case you have some doubts or need help setting that up, feel free to reach out to us on Discord or Twitter, and keep up with everything at Huddle01 🎥
Try out Huddle01 for a quick meeting 🎥