GET January ’23 — Eyes on the Prize

Published in

Open Ticketing Ecosystem

11 min readJan 31, 2023

Greetings one and all to the first monthly blog of 2023.

As the chapter of 2022 is firmly closed, we’re left wondering what the new year has in store for us. Will it be filled full of adventures with partners , exciting developments and unique events along the way? We certainly hope so and we’re ready to embrace whatever comes our way with a smile (and a witty quip or two).

Starting with January, it’s certainly been a busy month. We’ve kept our heads down, working towards developments on both our product suite and community facing infrastructure. It’s been a time of welcoming new partners and gathering internally to align on our business strategy across our products. There’s plenty to unpack.

But first things first, you may be wondering what we meant by ‘community facing infrastructure’ as surely it can only mean one thing.. right?

Oh yes it’s that time. Staking is ever so near the horizon and as such the road ahead has revealed itself with a golden ray of light, beckoning us to walk the road ahead together..

The Golden Road To Staking

It’s time to get serious about staking so from this moment on we’re walking through our rollout of the full staking platform. There’s a term in software development known as the ‘big bang’ release and it describes when a complete new software project is released into the public domain in one grand event, the ‘big bang’. This time we’ll not be doing that for a number of reasons.

The main one is the obvious one; certainty. As GET token holders this will be the first time we’ll have been given the choice to deposit our tokens into a smart contract and leave them there rather than have them just sitting in our wallets while we keep them company. For the record this is how all staking contracts work, so we’re not unique in that regard, but the point remains; we’re flexing new muscles this time around so we’ll be warming up first before getting to the heavy lifting.

That’s not to say that we won’t be shouting from the rooftops about it either because we absolutely will. As far as we’re concerned this is the first time ever that token holders will be rewarded with a claim on fees because of a ticket being scanned halfway across the world, in real time. Whether it’s someone going to see a concert in Colombia or a student night out in the UK, long-term stakers will be rewarded when their tickets are checked-in at the door. Real-world assets bringing real-world token utility if we’ve ever seen it.

From here we’re going to be operating in two phases, a public test and then a full launch. So here’s the plan. The contracts are audited and the staking contracts are deployed, the front end is ready to rock and roll but even so, we want to ensure that all the community feels comfortable with the system before it fully swings into gear.

Phase 1 (Public Test) — Monday 6th February

For those that have been following along you’ll be aware that deposits into the staking system will be subject to withdrawal conditions, initially 6 months for a standard withdrawal and 15% for an instant withdrawal. We don’t want the first time you interact with staking to feel like an intense experience, and we also want a risk-free way to collect some feedback before these conditions are applied.

So for the first two weeks you will be able to deposit and withdraw freely while you get used to how the system operates and therefore the instant withdrawal fee will be set to 0% for phase 1. This is vital for us as well, because we’ll be looking for feedback and asking you to report this on the #🥩-staking discord channel. We want to collect your experiences of the deposit and withdrawal mechanisms before you commit to the long-term vision of the protocol.

Do you use a wallet and browser combination that doesn’t work as you expect? Let us know! Have you noticed some data to be different to what you expect? Or is the app slow in certain areas? Hop on and tell us about it. Just want a play around to plan your strategy? That’s encouraged too! If you spot any edge-cases or strange behaviour, let us know, that’s what this test phase is for after all.

A crucial key difference to note within this phase is that rewards will not be active during the trial. Fees don’t apply and in turn no rewards will be distributed. That will happen in…

Phase 2 (Full Launch) — Monday 20th February

Barring any showstoppers we’ll be driving to a full launch two weeks after the launch of the trial, at which point reward distributions will be activated and fees will be switched on. Therefore any GET remaining on the contract will both be eligible for rewards and subject to withdrawal conditions.

We’ll confirm an approximate date and time in which these will be activated, but if you decide not to commit just yet then be sure to withdraw no later that 00:00 UTC on Monday 20th February — you have a full two weeks to make your mind up after all.

The Future

Arguably, from this point on is where it gets interesting. Over time we’ll be introducing more rewards, data, and tooling to maximise the staking experience as well as starting to transition governance voting to use xGET. The staking system and the tokenomics are here to stay and we’re excited to embed this into the GET ecosystem as a key example of real-world utility for the token and blockchains at large.

A Note on Security

It’s good to mention the importance of vigilance and security when interacting with the GET Protocol staking system. There’s a few best practices to keep in mind:

A) The team will never DM you asking for any private wallet details or send links to a staking system outside of public official GET Protocol channels.

B) Always verify that you’re on the correct staking website by checking the URL.

We’ll be publishing the official staking website URL through the official GET Protocol Twitter and Discord announcement channel. If the URL doesn’t match exactly then do not proceed with staking your GET.

Business Development Strategy 2023

Every year we take the chance to refine our strategy when it comes to approaching the prospects that fit our ticketing products the best.

These ‘Ideal Customer Profiles’ as they’re dubbed are aimed at reaching parties that can utilise our infrastructure most effectively to solve their current problems or open up new avenues that were previously not possible.

Benefits such as control over secondary market revenue, customer data or future proofing their operations with blockchain-based tech. Whilst many ticketeers both existing and starting up could in theory benefit from our infrastructure, these ideal candidates are ones that are:

A) More likely to switch over and use our infrastructure
B) Able to scale quickly & put large ticketing volume through GET Protocol
C) Operating within countries and verticals most suited to our current infrastructure

With such a tremendous amount of community involvement over the last few months in gathering potential leads and putting us in touch with prospects, we wanted to share insights from our ICP refinement to give the community a sense of the business development strategy and better ammunition for targeting prospects that fit our ideal customer profiles.

These insights are split across, the White-Label, Digital Twin, Event Financing and GUTS Tickets:

The White-Label

Regions: North America, Europe, UK
Verticals: Venues, Festivals, Existing Ticketeers
Types of events: Music, General Attendance, Live Performance

The Digital Twin

Regions: Globally (anywhere with sufficient digital consumer behavior)
Verticals: Sports, Festivals, Venues, Museums
Types of Events: High attendee engagement and fan loyalty

GUTS Tickets

Regions: Largely NL
Verticals: Mainly for new use cases & verification of features and services, with a base layer of revenue.
Types of Events: 2023 will see a lot of proactive business development in order to establish specific use cases, highlighting the competitive advantages of our tooling.

Event Financing

The infamous Event Financing Module is continuously being worked on. It’s a curious product to put out into the world, because there is a theoretical infinite demand. (Who doesn’t like money, right?) The onus is truly on our DeFi devs and product teams to ensure a slow & steady roll out, for which they are charting out a clear course. This week, our DeFi wizard Kasper shed some light on the topic in the #Technical-Discussion channel on Discord:

Want to Send us over a Ticketing Prospect?

Whilst the business development channel in Discord is a tremendous place to share leads or suggestions on suitable candidates for the GET ecosystem (special shout out to community member Kyozu, who has helped keep our business developers off the streets) we’ve now set up a targeted Google Form for prospect submissions that we’ll be able to sort and filter to match our ICP criteria.

If you have a lead on a prospect ticketing partner or event that you believe would fit these profiles then please send it along! Of course we’ll let you know if a tip ends up becoming a deal. (And we might throw in a reward here and there!)

View the prospect form here.

TakkTixx — White-Label Community Introduction

Earlier in the month some eager eyed community members spotted a new White-Label partner in the form of TakkTixx. Along with the spot they noticed a fresh new website: http://takktixx.com/

Whilst we’ll let TakkTixx reveal their full ambitions over the coming months, we’ll sneak in the fact that they’ll be operating within the Canada region to bring control back to event organisers and artists in their region.

Kaydo Tickets — White-Label Community Introduction

But what’s better than one new white-label partner? Well two of course. Introducing Kaydo Tickets who are also based in Canada. The team at Kaydo are eager to share more with you all soon about their ambitions and how they’ll be using our white-label infrastructure.

Keep your eyes peeled for more information soon!

Buzzvite — Digital Twin Community Introduction

With the White-Label welcoming new partners, it’s only fair the Digital Twin could say the same. We’re pleased to introduce Buzzvite a forward thinking, tech native ticketeer that’s a perfect fit for our Digital Twin.

Based in New York City, Buzzvite host concerts, parties and holiday events in and around NYC. We look forward to seeing how they’ll be using Collectibles for their event ticketing.

https://buzzvite.com/

As we alluded to in our end of year blog in December, we have high ambitions for the Digital Twin and its ability to unlock a Collectible layer for existing ticketeers. 2023 is a year where the full exploration of possibilities will be on offer so we hope you’ll be just as excited as us to welcome Buzzvite and future partners onboard!

Notable Ticket Sales During January

NFT Paris — 24th to 25th Feb

NFT Paris takes place next month in the Grand Palais Ephemere in Paris. Facilitated by GUTS Tickets, NFT Paris is quickly becoming one of the most talked about events this calendar year, with a number of large communities being represented and participating at the event.

You can check the shop link here.

DI-RECT & Residentie Orkest

Rock sensations, Di-Rect launched new ticket sales through GUTS Tickets for events in December this year. At the events they’ll be joined by The Hague based orchestra ‘Residentie Orkest’ for evenings that will paint a unique soundscape across rock and classical compositions.

You can see the shop link here.

Web3 Berlin

This month the ticket sale for Web3 Berlin will go live through GUTS Tickets. Taking place in May of this year, Web3 Berlin will become a premier destination in the 2023 Web3 event calendar.

We’ll be at the event to discuss how GET Protocol’s NFT Ticketing benefits the events industry & what better example than facilitating the ticketing for the very event!

Stay tuned for the ticket shop.

Pandora’s Box

Last month our resident NFT fanatic (and borderline degen) Colby set to work on showcasing some unique uses for post-event NFT Tickets aka Digital Collectibles.

These ‘Pandora’s Box’ threads highlight a new utility each week that an event organiser or artist can make full use of should they wish to.

Having these threads not only helps showcase what NFT Tickets offer to the wider Web3 & music scene on Twitter, but acts as a reference point that we can showcase to prospects and partners.

We’re also working on making these threads bigger guides for partners when the usecase needs arise for their events.

Take a dive into the series:

TicketTalks

Our integrator NeonOx took up an awesome initiative this month, launching TicketTalks — a bi-weekly Twitter Spaces where they´ll discuss the future of ticketing, the urgent need for innovation and have on guests to share anecdotes from the industry. Check out the most recent episode, featuring Colby, below:

https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1vAxRALzrAyJl?s=20

Let’s get into it!

We are looking forward to the next few weeks in which staking will come to life and perhaps another surprise or two will see the light! As always, if you want to ask a question to a team member, discuss protocol developments or just chat with other #TicketingRevolution minded folks, you are more than welcome to join the GET Protocol Discord server.