With July well underway, we’re eagerly approaching the release of our launch iteration of the platform. Our team has been focused on growing departments that will be integral to supporting our business process and broadening the overall catalog offered at the initial release of the platform. This week’s post will feature some detailed feedback from our CTO on the Engineering team’s latest advancements and the latest on our growing teams in the US and South Korea.
U.S. Team Additions
In addition to finalizing key partnerships that will support the launch of the mobile app, core business teams spent the last week developing our data and analytics infrastructure. Headed by our Director of Advanced Analytics, Alex Patino, this team will be responsible for ensuring the integrity of the various financial and mathematical data that drives the execution of platform and the company’s business model as whole. Alex’s work will guide critical decisions on both Vezt as a business and the overall functioning of our marketplace within the app.
On Vezt South Korea:
Steve and Robert are headed overseas this weekend to join Timothy Kim in launching our South Korean offices which will officially open on July 9th. After much planning and preparation, we’re ecstatic to take these foundational steps towards creating a truly international platform with IP rights from around the world. Our app for Vezt Korea will also support the sale of merchandise and concert tickets in addition to our traditionally offered song and IP rights. This version of the app is being developed by our team in South Korea with the goal of releasing shortly after our U.S. launch.
Engineering Updates:
Our Engineering team has been putting in hours on holidays and weekends to finalize the upcoming platform release. The following is the latest update from our CTO, Enrique Canals:
Vezt engineering is working hard to get the mobile and web applications ready for release. We’re building an app that will change the way music industry participants look at royalty income and we’re doing it using bleeding edge, blockchain technology.
Over the last 6 months, we have overcome several technical/engineering hurdles regarding how we intend to conduct our business using our smart contract infrastructure. First and foremost, how users handle and use our VZT token on the platform using our mobile application.
The Vezt application allows users to create an ERC-20 compatible wallet that will handle that user’s VZT tokens for making purchases on the platform. That said the wallet is not a requirement for using the platform — we expect most users will not interact with the wallet at all. We believe that most users will be making purchases on the platform using fiat currency, which will in-turn make contributions to a chosen Vezt offering via an administrative wallet(s) intended solely for making authorized requests to our smart contact.
With the launch of the Vezt app comes the launch of the Vezt platform which is backed by the various services handling user interactions and contributions. One of these core components to our platform is the Vezt Offering smart contract which handles the recording of user contributions on the Ethereum network.
The Vezt Offering smart contract was designed with the sole purpose of recording rights offerings and users contributions in an offering, regardless of whether or not they choose to contribute using fiat or their own VZT. As a result of our research and development, we have built the smart contract with an administrative component to allow for proper functioning of our business in regards to the rights which we administer.
The contract creator is able to appoint administrators that will be able to make certain calls that regular users cannot, such as listing an offering initially.
When an offering is listed on the Vezt platform, an entry is created for the offering that has information such as a unique identifier for the offering and information on the rights pertaining to the offering. Afterwards it is written to the Vezt Offering smart contract by an administrator with the following information publicly available:
- The reversion period start and end date for the rights being offered.
- The unique identifier for the offering.
- Whether or not the offering is able to accept contributions.
- The total amount contributed to the offering.
- The ERC-20 compatible wallet address storing contributions made for the offering.
Once the offering has been listed, an administrator is able to start the offering’s contribution period, allowing users to contribute to the offering and purchase their rights.
Whenever a user participates in a rights offering, an immutable record is stored on the smart contract which contains the following information pertaining to the details of the contribution:
- The Vezt platform identity of the contributor.
- The wallet address used to exchange funds for the contribution.
- The amount of the contribution.
This data is in-turn used to verify a user’s ownership stake in the offering.
The offering’s contribution period ends when all the stake in the offering has been purchased, or when an offering’s contribution period ends. In the latter, an administrator is then able to close off the offering’s contribution period.
Although we rely on certain centralized components such as our platform’s unique identity for contributors, we do this with the intent to one day be able to abstract these portions to a more decentralized system. Maintaining this information allows us to identify both fiat and direct ERC-20 contributors. By providing an identifiable wallet address as the origin of where a fund’s contribution came from, we can help service fiat users who’s contributions will originate from a Vezt administered wallet, while maintaining their anonymity through the unique id provided.
We are excited to show you and the rest of the world what we have been building and look forward to hearing your firsthand feedback just as soon as we release.
Catalog
This update already has some length to it, so we’ll share more details on this topic in the next update. For now, I’ll just leave this here:
Events
Vezt is proud to be the official music sponsor of the Venice Beach Tech Startup BBQ! This event, hosted by Podshare’s beautiful Venice location, is cosponsored by Getaround and Boochcraft. Vezt affiliated artist Rich Priors will be providing the soundtrack with a combination of summer throwback tunes alongside live music production.
Our next Blockchain Music Conference is being held in collaboration with WeWork at the Musician’s Institute in Los Angeles. Tickets are on sale now at bit.ly/veztmusic. Last month’s event featured a panel discussion centered on emerging talent with feedback from active music industry professionals. Next week’s conference will include a panel discussion between Grammy Award Winning Producer and musician Walter Alfanasief (Mariah Carey, Whitney, Kenny G) and our own Steve Stewart and Andreas Carlsson. If you live in Los Angeles and would like to attend either of these events, reach out to us at support@vezt.co for a special discount code!
Stay tuned for more updates on the world’s first music rights marketplace!
