Tokenproof — Ticketing the Web3 way is now a reality and it has benefits!
I used Tokenproof during NFT NYC for my first time and it blew my mind. We all know there is massive potential for disruption with blockchain technology but this product came from the d-low and became a game changer in no time. Wallet experiences aren’t great, MetaMask and the rest of them require a certain level of tech competence and effort. To build a realtime highly reliable NFT token gating software solution might have felt a stretch until I saw this product in action in the summer. It had a fast and seamless launch and was simple and elegant to use. The experience was easy and once you use and understand the benefits it seems like a no brainer.
Agnostic and frictionless experiences are what Web3 is screaming out for. Many of the runaway successes have focussed on making user onboarding as easy as possible with layers of abstraction often aiding that goal. If you take the Dapper wallet and its early NBA Top Shot success for example it allowed people to use the blockchain and wallet to buy NFTs with ease and a few clicks of a button. TokenProof is a solution that seems built for the user and delivers a practical easy to use consumer solution for setting up and having a Web3 powered ticketing app ready to go in your hand. It elegantly solves verification of ownership in real time and after you complete the prior onboarding it fuses Web3 ownership with in real life (IRL) token gating without the user having access their wallet there and then which is the real game changer!
What are the benefits of Web3 ticketing for creators and fans?
Cutting out resellers and ensuring a high fidelity audience is a big one.
Artists like Taylor Swift have used techniques to ensure the most loyal fans get access to tickets in their fight against bots mass buying and reselling to fans in trad Web2. Web3 helps solve this with its ownership model. Fans can prove their fandom or loyalty by owning relevant NFTs and this ownership can unlock tickets or advantages to getting access to these IRL events. This allows creators like the musician Taylor Swift to issue tickets to all fans who currently own any official Taylor Swift NFT for example. For the fan it gives them a fairer playing field to access and delivers better experiences by distilling a higher quality fandom at live events.
Added safety also comes for free with this solution detaching the user from having to carry around expensive NFT assets in hot wallets and bridges the process into a safe interstitial space.
tokenproof delivers a seamless token-gating solution for real-world and online use cases, packed with customizable access policies, granular configuration options, ticketing features, and powerful analytics.
Consumers will enjoy the benefit of safety while being able to unlock token utility.
Does this just shift the reselling behaviour to the NFT.
Yes and no. NFTs are already traded and speculated on. If consumers want to attend a IRL event and there is enough demand that can impact the price of the NFT but by having a process whereby the NFT cannot be used to generate a ticket and both assets be sold on you could argue this process minimises short term speculative interests and optimises towards true fan participation. Also its worth mentioning the project controls its supply and alongside strategy and marketing can choose their approach in managing supply demand and hype.
A deeper dive into the tokenproof experience.
This was pretty much my experience.
Step 1: Onboarding to tokenproof
Setting up an account on tokenproof.xyz and signing your wallet(s). That is the only step that required wallet connection and now tokenproof has the power to monitor the assets (NFTs) stored in your wallet and map them to your account.
Sign a message once to prove you are in control of the wallet
Step 2: Ticket allocation
It sounds like issuers using the system have a granularity of options to control how they choose to issue tickets. My experience included logging into the account and registering for a draw. Once the draw happened tokenproof notified me and the tickets were issued.
Step 3: Attending the IRL event.
Much like many ticketed events it was as simple as presenting the QR code to be scanned from the app. At this point the issuer validates the QR code is legitimate and the token is still held in your wallet.
Sounds kind of simple now!
The myriad of use cases
Not all NFTs are the same.
It’s easy to consider this has a limited use case with the sole purpose of gating IRL experiences for people who hold expensive NFTs — but nothing could be further from the truth! There are lots of creative ways to approach this, creators can easily issue low cost NFTs to their communities and that would be a great way to grant them access to an IRL event. You could query wallets against criteria like owning a specific quantity or owning a series of NFTs across collections. Access could be granted based on owning specific POAPs (proof of attendance protocol NFTs) issued from prior IRL events. The use cases are endless and high cost of ownership isn’t a deciding factor.
I’m also excited by the idea of wallet collation detailed in Step 1. Similar to Paypal in Web2, on tokenproof you can collate your wallets together in Web3. You wouldn’t directly transact from here but it creates an omni-wallet verification layer that would enable a transactional layer on top. This is a powerful abstraction that can help reduce friction for token gated online experiences and has potential to tap into providing online solutions for platform agnostic communities along the lines of what guild.xyz is doing right now.
As NFTs become more mainstream it makes sense this omni-wallet verification and ticketing approach can grow, prove long-term viability and become the foundation to strengthening and growing communities. By providing easier solutions to connecting more Web3 community members together this can provide more optimal online and IRL interactions and in turn make engagement more valuable and the communities founded on these values stronger. Very exciting stuff!
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Thanks,
David