The future of ticketing with GET Protocol

Since all cultural and festive events have been canceled or postponed due to the various planetary confinements, the world of concerts seems to be only a distant memory. Yet who said culture was dead?

You only have to browse the web to realize that there are still a lot of virtual events and also some even in the real world!

But then how do you attend or organize the sale of tickets? A good old PDF with a QR code is ok but risks being exchanged or duplicated very quickly, everyone is aware of the power of the internet to distribute content that is supposed to be confidential! In addition, if the event is eagerly awaited and all seats have been sold out quickly, it is difficult to know if the ticket on the second-hand market is truly authentic and valid..

‘Blockchain fixes this’ – GET Protocol solves the lack of transparency and trust in the ticketing world, using a variety of innovative technology, including NFTs.

Presentation of GET Protocol

The history of GET Protocol dates back to well before the 2020 global lockdown! Indeed, already in 2016 the idea of distributing tickets whose origin could be traced on the blockchain was alive and kicking in the team’s mind. Not long after the idea was conceived, they received their first funding to develop a smart ticketing solution.

After some local testing and a proof of concept, a new kind of ticketing company was born: GUTS Tickets! The purpose behind this new type of ticketing was clear and announced in their Whitepaper – to prevent scalping and fraud and to make ticketing honest.

Since 2017 the application has picked up steam and GUTS Tickets has been used by more and more artists and events. To quote a few at random: Dead Can Dance, Kensington, Jochem Myjer, ZAZ, Dutch Blockchain Week, Oerrock Festival, Woodkid…the list is long and is only expected to grow in time to come! 

In 2020, the year that marked a sudden halt in the event industry, GET Protocol focussed on international adoption. It managed to find suitable integrators for its whitelabel solution, resulting in the fact that the protocol is currently being used by ticketing companies in Germany, Italy, South Korea as well as Holland. 

According to the team there are advanced talks with other whitelabeling parties.

Since their beginning, tickets issued by GET Protocol are registered on-chain (ETH). Over the years this registration approach has been optimized in order to provide a competitive service to their thousands of users. You can track along with all ticket activity of GET Protocol on this handy, community-made datasite. 

GET Protocol is what you might call “blockchain agnostic” but be aware: it is not a stop gap between several blockchains, but rather a user-focussed solution that evolves its approach as the blockchain industry grows.

As such, recently GET Protocol launched NFT ticketing – every ticket issued by the protocol is an NFT, unlocking countless new possibilities.

Next level ticketing

In the team’s own words:

‘If an event is created by an event organizer the details about this event will be stored/pushed to the blockchain as soon as the event is published.

This means that if a lot of events are registered on a single day, the community will be able to infer what events these are and what can be expected of the subsequent future sales!

The fact that each ticket is an NFT opens many doors for new innovative features. For example, after scanning tickets of events can become collectibles, lottery tickets or playing cards.’

On top of this, the team is planning to use NFT tech in a DeFi feature that will allow artists to pre-finance their own events, later this year.

As mentioned earlier in the introduction, there are many issues with current ticketing systems today, whether for concerts or sporting events:

• Ticket traceability and validity
• Visibility and price control of the secondary market
• Fraud management
• Fair price of tickets
• Ticket security against hacks
• Guarantee of data confidentiality

Fortunately, thanks to the use of one (or more) blockchains, it is possible to overcome all these problems! These issues are encountered by any organizer and where GET Protocol innovates is precisely by guaranteeing a transparent system for the end user who will not realize they are using NFTs.

On the other hand, from the organizers point of view, it is possible to track all their tickets in real-time, assign certain limits such as resale prices, and ensure the best possible management of their ticket allround.

It is in a way the “magic” of the blockchain. No one will be able to say it is easy to set up but that is why GET Protocol has strived all these years, to make the process as easy as possible for all parties involved.

Everything has been thought through to strike a balance between the economy behind the tickets, the functionality offered by the protocol and the ease of use for users and ticket resellers.

Tokenomics

Now that we’ve seen the different features of tickets, it’s time to understand how the economy of GET Protocol works. Indeed, this is the cornerstone for the distribution of tickets and while it is easy to understand that a ticket = NFT, let’s see how the tokenomics of the project’s fungible token works.

First of all, be aware that each ticket is “fueled” by GET tokens in order to function. The more complex a ticket is (with reselling or added features), the more GET is required. Today the team manages the loading aspect on behalf of the organizers, but in the near future it will be up to event organizers themselves to buy the GET token from the open market to fuel their tickets.

After a ticket is scanned at an event, a portion of the used GET is burned and taken out of circulation forever. 

You can see the past buyback-and-burn data compiled here.

Important to note that the team has announced an update to the tokenomics, to include new token utility, such as NFT and DeFi.

Conclusion

GET Protocol has continued to develop its product despite the lockdowns, in particular to allow artists to sell digital access to their virtual concerts but are already ready to anticipate the return of concerts in a transparent and open manner.

It is undeniable that ticket distribution systems using NFTs will become more widely spread and several renowned artists have been interested in them since the beginning of the year. (Mark Cuban for the Dallas Maverick show, King of Leon distribute an album in the form of an NFT, Matthew Panzarino tweets about the interest of NFT ticketing and so on)

GET Protocol have a transparent system that:

• For the end user who will not realize they are using the blockchain
• Ensures data security and confidentiality
• Greatly limits fraud
• Works in a circular and decentralized economy

is very clearly a use case with a very bright future ahead! For lovers of physical concert tickets who like to remember the various events in which they participated, they can be reassured at least on one point: NFTs will be on the blockchain forever!

Disclaimer: This is a sponsored article. No content or article should be considered as financial advice. We strongly recommend you to conduct due diligence and always do your own research before investing in a project.