GET August ’23 — Off to the races

Greetings everyone!

August is officially drawing to a close and despite the dreary wet and windy (not so summer) weather, there’s been rays of sunshine across the protocol this month as the Digital Twin officially gets its largest integration case study to date with the Zandvoort Grand Prix.

With plenty of background developments coalescing with this exciting usecase, we feel it’s the Digital Twin’s time to shine so let’s tuck into another update blog & showcase all that’s occurring with GET Protocol.

Stats

During the month of August, a total of 177,558 tickets & collectibles were issued by protocol partners across 333 events. To fuel this ticketing activity, partners utilized roughly 12,453 GET which has been locked into event smart contracts.

Psst, by the way, this month we crossed the magic milestone of 1 million GET used as fuel for protocol-issued tickets!

Own The Track — Zandvoort 2023 Grand Prix

On August 27th and the surrounding weekend, over 300.000 attendees eagerly made their way to the Zandvoort Grand Prix to experience the talent and adrenaline put on the line for victory.

This year’s race marked an extra special 75th anniversary of the Zandvoort track, which over the years has witnessed all that racing has to offer, from nail biting moments between stiff competition to pure euphoria in pursuit of racing excellence.

It’s safe to say that everything has been put on the line at Zandvoort over the years.

An Ambitious Plan
Given the uniqueness of this year’s race, the DutchGP team were keen to offer attendees an extra special way of capturing this historical moment & there was no better fit than to do so through Digital Collectibles.

We were fortunate to be tasked with helping the DutchGP team bring these collectibles to life, thanks to the scale afforded by the Digital Twin and it’s ability to issue collectibles tied directly to the Grand Prix’s tickets.

With the pieces of the puzzle coming together, that naturally left the biggest question — what would the collectibles revolve around?

As the DutchGP team were keen to center the campaign around the track itself, the idea was put forward to link each collectible directly to one of the 100,000+ co-ordinates that make up the track.

This was something we were incredibly excited for as it’s an exemplary way of showcasing what NFT Metadata can offer — that’s how the Trackside Treasure collectibles were born.

The Execution
From March of this year onwards we began assisting the DutchGP and a part of the CM.com team whom handled the ticket issuance and DutchGP app. The core ethos was to make the end user flow as simple as possible, which we aimed to achieve through a direct link to the ticket purchase & baking the collectible access within the app so that the flow felt as intuitive as possible for everyone no matter age or technical experience.

A week before the race began, the ticket personalisation process ended which marked the beginning of the collectible issuance process. Whilst the integration was capable of handling an issuance of collectibles to the entire attendee base, the DutchGP were keen on providing an active claim to gauage attendee interest in the feature. As such emails were sent out asking attendees whether they’d like to claim their collectible. Once confirmed, a collectible was issued onto a fresh wallet for the attendee, which was then accessible from within the DutchGP app.

To keep the campaign suspenseful, the collectible was not revealed until the day of the race and before hand was hidden with a ‘Loader Collectible’ that simply showed the Zandvoort logo. An hour before the race began, as fans eagerly awaited the countdown, an app notification was sent out to all, announcing to fans that they could unwrap their collectible. Take a look at the final design below:

Media
The campaign was given a warm welcome from press in both the Web3 space and traditional sports & events publication.

Some highlights from the coverage:

• Blackbook Motorsport — Zandvoort to offer ticket-linked digital collectibles at F1 Grand Prix
• NFT Now — F1 Dutch Grand Prix Unveils Ticket-Linked Digital Collectibles
• TicketingBusiness — Dutch Formula 1 Grand Prix attendees to receive digital collectible
• BeinCrypto — Dutch Grand Prix Adopts Term ‘Digital Collectibles’ as NFT Market Struggles
• NFT Evening — NFTs on the Racetrack: Zandvoort Grand Prix’s Cutting-Edge Collectibles
• SportsBusinessJournal — F1 Dutch Grand Prix offering ticket-linked digital collectibles
• TheCryptoTimes — F1 Dutch GP Introduces Ticket-Linked Digital Collectibles
• SportingCrypto — 🏁 Dutch Grand Prix is Using Digital Collectables

Follow-up
We’ve already received very positive feedback from this usecase, both at the Grand Prix itself from other organizations in attendance, and from parties around the world who have come across our approach. We’re confident the simplicity and straightforwardness of this integration will set the tone for many applications to follow.

You can expect a case study from the event to release in the following weeks, which we’ll showcase to the world & draw more attention to the project!

The Ticketing Revolution DAO Representatives

This month also saw the (re)ignition of the Ticketing Revolution DAO, with a vote around instating two community members as DAO representatives, in charge of fleshing out the first steps and processes that will allow all stakers of GET to participate in collaborative initiatives.

Snapshot vote:
https://snapshot.org/#/ticketing-revolution.eth/proposal/0x8967ba979a8eb55b302487fa7476f962e10f7c402ff6b7da6eda7831d228a1e7

Discord discussion channel: https://discord.com/channels/889431643494944768/1143462534427451466

After a seven day voting period, the proposal passed; meaning Brom and Kyozu are officially DAO representatives, starting September 1st, 2023. As promised in the proposal, the new reps were asked to share a message to the wider community in this blog:

From Brom:
‘I’m both humbled and excited to step into this role as one of the Ticketing Revolution DAO representatives alongside Kyozu. A sincere thank you to each of you for entrusting us with this responsibility.

For those of you who are not familiar with me, I’ve been a passionate member of the GET community for quite some time. From using the transparent data offered by ticketing on the blockchain I started my personal development journey by building the community website and dashboard. My commitment to this project is far from done. This hasn’t just been a mere venture for me, but a labour of love and belief in the success of the GET Protocol within the ticketing industry.

Also, being an active member of the Legion project, which was a beacon for community engagement gave me an understanding of the sheer dedication and collaborative spirit of the community… this should be rewarded.

Given the outlined pillars of the Ticketing Revolution DAO:

• Community outreach for widespread awareness.
• Amplifying internal community activities, particularly within our bustling Discord.
• Fostering educational endeavours about the Ticketing & Event industry.
• And encouraging the development of beneficial community tools and products.

I am committed to furthering these tenets. As representatives, we’re not just here to do a job, but to listen. We want to ensure that every member feels empowered to share their ideas, contributing to the growth of the Ticketing Revolution DAO and GET Protocol alike.

And as we aim to roll out the new rewards program this month, we’ll be making key decisions on the distribution of rewards like xGET, NFTs, GET Protocol Integrator Tickets, and exclusive merchandise. Your inputs, as always, will be invaluable.

Should you have any thoughts, concerns, or innovative ideas, please don’t hesitate to share them. Let’s not just change the game; let’s redefine ticketing for generations to come!’

From Kyozu:
I’d also like to extend the gratitude to the community for this opportunity.

Similarly to Brom, I’ve become very passionate about the mission from GET Protocol to truly revolutionise the ticketing industry on a deep level. Which, as we all know, is plagued by opaqueness and backdoor deals.
I’ve stuck around for a few years now and no other project has captivated me as much as GET Protocol. What started off as becoming one of the most active Legion members turned into researching the field and bringing in potential leads to the Foundation. I’ve no intention to turn my back anytime soon.

Updates from around the Protocol

Bridging xGET

One of the main overhanging challenges with the current staking system is the ability to keep the rewards aligned between networks and this presents itself both as a technical challenge and an economic one. The vast majority of GET is staked on Ethereum however certain rewards such as Uniswap trading fees are localised to a single chain and the fees collected aren’t as imbalanced as the staking ratio between Polygon and Ethereum. Or in other words Polygon currently receives a greater share of trading fee rewards than the share of staked GET across both the Polygon and Ethereum networks, causing an imbalance in the xGET exchange rates between networks.

Perhaps the cleanest way to resolve this is to let the market handle it. Greater rewards on Polygon? Stake your GET there to receive the additional rewards, thereby also correcting the balance. However it would not be possible to bridge xGET directly as a standard ERC-20 token since xGET needs to operate independently on each network and doing so would only move the amount of shares for vault and leave the underlying assets within the staking contract. Taken to its conclusion this would mean that users could deposit tokes on one network and withdraw on another causing a permanent imbalance in the staked GET for other participants.

Solving this means that we must instead bridge the underlying GET and we do so by burning the xGET on the source chain and re-staking the bridged GET on the destination chain although this is slightly easier said than done. Over the coming weeks we will launch the custom bridge contracts on both networks as well as hold a governance vote to allow these contracts to be exempt from the instant withdrawal fee, allowing stakers to bridge between networks without paying the fee. [Technically the implementation requires that stakers perform a withdrawal and then a redeposit but since the GET is guaranteed to be re-staked on the destination chain no withdrawal occurs overall]

We hope that this release will have multiple benefits and not just the obvious that it allows existing stakers to capture better rates between chains but also to allow stakers portability of their xGET in case their preference for blockchains change over time.

Memories

The Memories project which provides a replica collectible reward to stakers for highlight protocol events is still ongoing & nearing the finish line, we’re aiming to have our first distribution by the end of September so stay tuned & have your xGET at the ready!

Wallet UI

Our Wallet UI system which provides a central hub for accessing digital collectibles is making steadfast progress. With the design & build now entering final stages, we expect to reveal more in the coming month & perhaps even give you an opportunity to use it!

That’s it for August! As always you can stay up to date via the GET Protocol twitter or through the Discord channel, and we’ll see you back here for next month’s blog — until then.