AVT — The Aventus utility token
The use cases for AVT are listed below.
Voting on event legitimacy
In a decentralised platform where anyone can add events, the network needs a mechanism for detecting fraud and removing illegitimate ones. In a central context this is easy, all it requires is validating supporting documentation of those trying to host an event. In a decentralised context the same must be achieved with a stake weighted consensus mechanism. This is an important aspect that some in the ticketing industry have not quite got their heads around yet.
When creating an event on the Aventus network a deposit must be paid in AVT. Thus, preventing people from spamming the system with numerous events that won’t be taking place. Additionally, this means that the event organiser has a stake at play that can be lost if they are found to be fraudulent.
This deposit is proportional to the rate of fraud in the network (e.g. the more fake events that are found over a time period, the more any subsequent event has to stake) and the value of an event (e.g. multiply number of tickets by ticket price and sum over all categories, this gives a “value” for an event. The higher that value, the more potential revenue can be expected and therefore the deposit needs to be higher in order to appropriately penalise the organiser if their event is deemed illegitimate).
At any point, an AVT holder can match the deposit, initiating a vote of AVT holders. The outcome determines if the event remains on the Aventus network. More details on this module will be published in the next months, but it operates much like the already released voting component, which can be found at https://vote.aventus.io.
Voting on ticket seller legitimacy
The Aventus protocol could be seen as a “global pool” of events with certain unavoidable rules defined. Significantly, since any application can tap into this pool, go through a validation process and end up selling tickets, it is vital to include an anti-fraud mechanism for these applications.
Much like with events, ticket sellers will have to list their application and various details including the domain they use and their public key from which all events will be owned. For primary sales ticket ownership transfers will be signed off at the blockchain level. Subsequently, sellers can apply to be a sales channel for any of the events listed in the “global pool”.
Once more the stake required upfront will be proportional to the application fraud rate in the system and the total estimated value of ticketing inventory sold through the application.
At any stage applications can be reported, much like events, at which point a vote is initiated resulting in the reporter losing the deposit they matched or the application owner being penalised and potentially banned from the network. The AVT stake required for listing will grow proportionally with the sales made by the application.
Voting on protocol governance
This module has already been released and we have given a full description, which you can be read here.
The takeaway in this section applies to all voting modules. Anyone with a stake in the network has an incentive to hold AVT to be able to shape the outcome of votes and thereby and work together to maximise the utility of the Aventus network. Without the network participants governing the protocol it has no value.
Matching Process
Our matching process can again be thought of in terms of aligning incentives by putting up stake (much like proof of stake). Matchers (i.e. those performing the non-deterministic settling of buyers and sellers in a secondary market) put up a stake, which will affect their probability of being selected to perform the matching. If they behave honestly they are rewarded, if not they are penalised. The stake is locked up for the duration of the time they’re acting as matchers. We will go into this in much more detail once the module is closer to release, but we thought it worth mentioning here at a high level.
Ticket Sales
Tickets sales on the Aventus network can be completed in AVT, any ERC20 compatible standard or ETH. The reason being that in this context a token mealy functions as a means of exchange. Since we genuinely want the protocol to be as widely adopted as possible we felt it essential to allow any token (within reason) to be used as the medium of exchange.
Moreover, some believe that purchasing tickets with crypto will not be a viable option for mainstream consumers. However, it is very simple to provide a wrapper around this exchanging from fiat to crypto before buying the ticket. A customer spends fiat, buys the token of choice, sends it to the event organiser for the ticket, the event organiser does not wish to have the volatility exposure and therefore exchanges out immediately within the span of minutes (i.e. it is merely a rail).
The Aventus Network Effect
The more event organisers and ticket selling applications adopt the protocol, the more value it has to them. Aventus is not purely a technological solution to the problems of counterfeits, fraud and touting in the event industry. Blockchain allows for the creation of scarcity online, with scarcity comes value, with value comes the ability to create economic incentives. We merely align the incentives of the economics actors (i.e. the AVT holders) to solve the mentioned problems. Aventus is here for the long term and we are focused on driving fundamental value of the Aventus network i.e. the adoption of the protocol.
Furthermore, it should be noted that AVT is essential and the network could not be governed by, for example, ETH. The reasoning should already be clear: If voters in a network have an incentive outside of that network they will not necessarily act to maximise the network’s utility, as there may be conflicting incentives.
For example, if votes were ETH weighted then the outcome of any vote would not be in the best interest of the Aventus network. If the Aventus network had a great deal of existing fraud its utility would decrease, but it would be unlikely that the ETH holder would see a material difference in the utility of Ethereum. Therefore, making votes AVT weighted, voters are directly influencing the utility of the Aventus network. Since AVT has no use outside of the Aventus network, the token has no value without the joint efforts of the token holders.
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