GET Update December ’20 — Ready for the (re)launch
After a year of building, expanding and diversifying, it’s almost time for 2021. Look ahead with us and see what we’re looking forward to.
Here we are again friends. Let’s not waste time sharing blanket statements about this past year. Especially since there is so much to look forward to. I hope after reading this blog you will be as excited as the entire GET team is about what’s to come.
To avoid being overly hyperbolic; it’s safe to say 2021 is not going to be boring.
In keeping with last year’s tradition, in this last update of the year you will hear from key figures from the company as they reflect, project or both.
Here’s what you have to dig into:
How we did not waste this crisis
By GET & GUTS CEO Maarten BloemersThings to look forward to for GET Protocol in ‘21
By Kasper Keunen & Olivier BiggsBusiness development Q&A
By GET Protocol business developer Sander RegtuijtSales team learnings
By head of sales Tom RoetgeringChecking in with development
By Product Owner Frans Twisk
How we did not waste this crisis
By GET & GUTS CEO Maarten Bloemers
Recently my calls go something like this:
Them: “Hi Maarten, times must be really tough for you and the organization. How are you holding up?”
Me: “I know it sounds weird, but apart from not selling a tickets for real life events we’re doing really good.”
Them: “How on earth … “
Let me elaborate on the reasons why we’re in a good place and explain to you, what I explain to them.
HODL
We’ve managed not having to sell any of our positions in ETH/BTC. Do you know how many of our competitors own crypto? That’s right, zero.
All hail the government
Normally I have enough to complain about when it comes to the Dutch government, but the swift way businesses got help during this COVID crisis is commendable. We got extra lucky because of the way the NOW regulation is structured. 90% of our labor costs are covered and these make up the vast majority of our total costs.
Adapt or die
The ticketing industry is ruled by a few major players. Big corporations tend to suck at adapting to new realities quickly. We don’t.
We’re a small and young team that loves these kinds of challenges. We went straight to work:
- Instead of a few large events we saw the need to be able to service a lot of small events for musea, amusement parks and what not. This resulted in building everything needed for ‘recurring events’ as we tend to call it. Because of the COVID-crisis we were able to build functionalities for an entire new business vertical to attack once real life events are allowed again.
- Instead of real life events our clients expressed the wish to perform online events. Because the way our application is set up, we were able to accommodate quickly resulting in our biggest success during the pandemic; livestreams. It’s not so much we’re making a lot of money with them, but it has proved itself to be the perfect introduction towards new clients. Because of livestreams we’re onboarding the most new clients at an unsurpassed speed. All we need to do is make it stick.
- The pandemic creates a need for more new functionalities in a ticketing system. Something we are more than happy to build for our fresh new clients.
Contactless payments, crowd management that can detect social distancing hazards, easy refunding and decentralized pre-financing of events. We’ve built it all.
Speeding up the process
Another very important observation is that already initiated trends are developing faster due to the crisis.
We’ve always believed that a ticketing system should be a tool for the creators of content to pre-finance events, build communities and engage with their fans.
Thanks to livestreams and some bad experiences with ‘old school’ ticketing, creators of content are agreeing with that vision. Traditional ticketing companies are a redundant middle man and their exit is accelerating because of Covid-19.
Sunshine and rainbows
All it is not. I miss having the team around in the office, I hate Zoom, Meets and (especially) Teams. I’m fearful about how the events industry is going to recover and a lot of tickets we were going to sell this year will have to wait. I’m not entirely sure that the 2021 festival season is not at risk of being cancelled. All this would have been fine to handle if it was not for the enormous amount of unnecessary deaths. I’m really enthusiastic about the RNA vaccins; it’s quite amazing what kinds of possibilities this technology brings to the table. Let us hope that it will swiftly protect those most vulnerable.
2021
Is going to be a hell of a ride and we are ready on every level.
The things to look forward to for GET Protocol in ‘21
By Blockchain Developer Kasper Keunen & his trusted interpreter Olivier Biggs.
Besides just your regular old ticket sales (which will be undoubtedly be picking up drastically), several new components have been announced that will significantly expand and diversify the application of the GET protocol.
Though both have been covered in recent blogs, we wanted to take this opportunity to briefly crystalize what certain exciting new developments are going to look like and, perhaps more importantly, when you can expect to see them in action.
getNFT tickets
We are happy to say that getNFT Tickets are right around the corner. In fact:
By Q2 of 2021, all GET Protocol-issued tickets will be NFTs!
Not sure what this means? Here’s a quick refresher to get you excited:
Brief Summary of getNFT
Introducing getNFT — Enabling true ownership of a unique and scarce digital asset; smart tickets.
getNFTs are indivisible, meaning that a getNFT can only be held by 1 address at the same time. This ensures that whomever owns a certain NFT will be the only one to decrypt the QR code.
By encrypting the QR code seed with the public key of the owner of the NFT at activation, the GET Protocol ensures that only 1 wallet will be able to generate the QR code.
In other words, getNFTs allow a ticket to become personalized, without the owner having to show their ID card to a bouncer.
We are also closing in quickly on our NFT ticket explorer seeing the light of day. Our blockchain devs have been working hard to get the first version of the NFT ticket explorer up and running.
We expect the first version of the NFT ticket explorer to go live in Q1 of 2021.
Bounty incoming
We have been massively impressed by the earlier contributions from our community, such as the incredible GET community insights page.
Which is why we are offering a bounty total of 10,000 GET for anyone building upon the NFT ticket explorer when it is released.
Don’t worry, we’ll give you a heads up with more details when the time comes, but we wanted to plant this seed already so you can start thinking of ideas for contributions.
Putting DeFi to use in the event industry!
Without a doubt one of the most promising and exciting things to look forward to in 2021 is the introduction of decentralized event financing to GET Protocol.
If this is news for you, here’s some recommended reading to put things in perspective:
The pre-financing of events for event-organizers is not a solution looking for a problem; it’s a widely known and used tool that enables event organizers to make the investments needed to get their shows or festivals off the ground.
In the past we have encountered Event Organizers who select their ticketing partner solely based on the amount of money and loan conditions that they are offered up front.
With this addition around the corner, GET Protocol doesn’t only introduce the exciting world of DeFi to an enormous real-life usecase; it offers all users of GET Protocol a strategical advantage.
Bottom line GET X DeFi
With decentralized financing the GET Protocol offers ticketing companies a set of tools to tokenize /securitize the inventory of events. These ‘inventory NFTs (invNFTs)’ will collect a principle amount (agreed upon upfront) when they are sold in the primary market. This allows event organizers and ticketing companies to collaterize their financing effectively, efficiently and transparently. As all the settlement takes place on-chain, this system allows for the entertainment industry to tap into the liquidity of DeFi.
In other words*:
If the concept seems complicated, here’s what you need to understand about our decentralized financing solution:
1.) Event organizers will be able to easily pre-finance their events. (Something they desperately crave.)
2.) Investors will be able to invest in events of their choice, at a risk & reward level that they feel comfortable with.
3.) The $GET token is an integral part of the financing process, as it is required for ‘skin in the game’ from
Expert mode explanation
For those of you who are extra curious and already well-versed in the world of DeFi, here are two original KasperKeunen® flow charts showing how this process is going to work — don’t worry if this goes over your head, this is definitely not need-to-know material.
(Reading glasses recommended for those over the age of twelve.)
Risk & reward: zooming in on the tranchePool
On the investors side specifically, the concept and functioning of tranchePools might be the most interesting facets of the process.
The tranchepool liquidity tokens represent a future expected value of the ticket sales of a specific tranche. This presents an investment opportunity for investors interested in event financing.
Here’s another juicy behind the scenes diagram to bite into:
Don’t worry if these diagrams seem daunting or confusing. All will become clear soon enough.
So when can we expect this to take place?
Here’s the best part: We’re almost there.
The first decentrally financed event is expected to take place in the first half of 2021.
Pending the results and some potential finetuning of the first run-through, we expect to quickly pick up steam. Following this first event, we will reach out to relevant parties and outlets to spread the word.
Now more than ever, event organizers are both strapped for cash and looking for a way to put their next event on the calendar.
GET DeFi’s approach solves both those issues. We’ve shared our plans with veterans in the entertainment industry on many levels (organizers, ticketing companies and some other very big players), every single one of them has not only grasped the concept, but confirmed our suspicions that this might be a massive feature for the industry as a whole.
Stay tuned, we will (loudly!) share any advancements on this front.
Tokenomics update
If you didn’t know, now you do! With the protocol in perpetual evolution thanks to topics such as DeFi, liquidity, burning and more, the $GET tokenomics are due for an update.
We will release the new and improved token economics for the $GET utility token in all its glory before the end of the first quarter of 2021.
This will be a refreshing, all-inclusive take on the workings of the protocol and the token for at least the foreseeable future. (Can’t promise we won’t keep innovating!)
Aimed at providing clarity and as wide a scope as possible in one place; it will also include clear insights on the state of token allocation and purpose moving forward with regards to the Stability Fund and User Growth Fund.
Post-Covid event capabilities
As Maarten alluded to in his part of the blog, the team has actively been developing tools that make it easy for event organizers to set up their events, even with the lingering COVID restrictions that will undoubtedly be among us for a while.
The Token Stamp is one feature that was launched a few months ago:
Just a few weeks ago, it was announced that GET Protocol is one of the partners of the newly released ‘Corona Toolkit’.
To get the event industry back on its feet, Unlimited Productions is partnering with specialists from several fields to offer a variety of unique tools that enable the safe and speedy return of live events.
Our digital ticketing technology brings some interesting opportunities to the table within this context and we look forward to what this partnership might bring.
Check out the (Dutch) Coronatoolkit website here.
With all these new features and growing client list that we are no longer the new kid on the block. We are the annoying techie on the corner that’s constantly wanting to show everyone his new gadgets and ideas.
Various partnerships & integrations
Alongside our own developments and made progress, a variety of not-yet-public or wrapped up deals for both GUTS and GET are in the works. These will be made public at the moment they are cleared to share.
Note on liquidity mining
One of the big plusses of the past year has been the rise in popularity and usability of decentralized liquidity tools, most notably of course Uniswap.
It has been great to see the way the liquidity of $GET on Uniswap has held steady, allowing for larger transactions of GET, as well as a welcome change of focus from centralized marketmakers (who are expensive and deliver mildly satisfying results at best), to a for-the-community-by-the-community process.
We feel this approach is far more in line with our philosophy and business strategy, that’s why:
We will be continuing GET Liquidity Mining Program on Uniswap throughout Q1 of 2021.
Liquidity Providers for the GET-ETH pair on Uniswap V2 receive periodic rewards in $GET. Want to know how to participate in the liquidity mining program? Check out this explainer:
The STRAW Lottery
Don’t think we forgot! The straw lottery will be conducted a little later than planned; on Thursday January 7th we will publish the 5 winning addresses through the GET Protocol announcement channel.
The 5 winners will be determined according to a shuffle of the participants using the ETH blockheight at 12.00 noon CET, January 7th.
(We’ll share the code used for the shuffle at that point as well.)
Don’t have a STRAW? Don’t worry, there might be something new on the horizon for liquidity providers on top of the current rewards.
Quick note on the GET whitepaper
In line with the upcoming tokenomics update and the innovations to the protocol, we have made the GET whitepaper a little less prominently featured.
We regularly receive questions from newcomers about details of the white paper that are no longer relevant. So we thought it better to avoid confusion about things written in 2017 that have since long been phased out or updated.
Question from the community
Q: When do you think GET can become fully decentralized (with governance by the token holders)? Once it’s decentralised and open source, what stops others from just copying everything and lowering the price / statechange?
Kasper: In the long run the GET Protocol aims to be fully open source and decentralized in its governance. However the road to this end state will likely take several years. The reason that this process is so lengthy is the answer on the second concern/question posed.
Open sourcing only makes sense when moats are established that ensure that the majority of the value isn’t in the code but in the ecosystem and network.
Ethereum for example is fully open source and can be forked by anyone however all the Ethereum forks have been far less valuable and useful as the real network. Only when the GET Protocol is certain that there is more value in its users, liquidity of its native asset and the protocols reputation with end users should full open sourcing be considered.
Fully decentral governance over all issues and pricing will only work when the token holders (those that will be voting) are properly diversified. At the moment the token is mainly held by open market actors — who have an important view on policy in regards to liquidity (so price, demand, usage). For governance to work the opinion of the users (ticketeers) must be represented as well. These users will want a native asset that is liquid, but they do not want to overpay for this liquidity. It is our aim to introduce the users of the protocol to governance in the years to come. One should not expect this to be a fast or swift process. Decentralized goverance is very hard, only a handful of crypto projects can make a case that they have the process figured out (and in all cases where it is working, the protocol is crypto-meta, meaning that those that govern are crypto-native — a luxury we do not have). TLDR: Soon but not too soon.
Question for the community
As you will hopefully see from this blog, the team is working overtime on all fronts to improve and expand the scope of everything GET Protocol does.
A lot of news, features and developments will be released in the months to come, all hopefully increasing the appeal of the protocol. We can use all the help we can get in spreading the word.
Every tweet, Reddit post, Telegram message contributes to the visibility of GET and is very much appreciated. We honestly feel that with everything we have in the works; this upcoming year should be when GET receives the recognition it deserves.
With your continued support it’s sure to happen!
Business development Q&A
By GET Protocol business developer Sander Regtuijt
Q.) Do ticketeers who use GET know about the GET token? Do you think these parties are interested in investing in the tokens to hold? If not yet, what could make it more interesting for them?
A.) Users of GET Protocol obviously know about GET. Some parties reaching out to us to show interest in our ticketing products are not familiar with blockchain tech and when that’s the case we inform about the workings of GET Protocol right away.
A recent development is that parties are keen on obtaining GET in order to pay for ticket fees in the future.
With the current relative low GET rate such parties are potentially going to enjoy a large stock to fuel future ticket sales at a relative low cost.
Q.) There were a lot of expectations from the Korean market this year. Obviously it was a special year but how come we haven’t seen a streamed event there?
A.) 2020 certainly was a special year, for ticketing startup getTicket as well. South Korea has been locked down most of the year and I believe the country is currently dealing with the third wave of infections.
The ticketing company has very big events in the pipeline, that were postponed until further notice. Handling rescheduling of events of this scale does take time, especially with a small team in completely unknown circumstances. There is a reasonable chance these events will still be taking place, albeit at a later stage.
As for livestreams, we have suggested using the system to provide livestreams, however the local didn’t find clients and aborted seeking for them and chose to focus on clients for physical events. It’s their own choice in the end; we can only provide suggestions for how to use the system and will always do so.
Q.) How does the process of vetting a ticketing company go? What are the primary reasons why some ticketing companies are declined to use the protocol (if any)? What % are declined and what % accepted?
A.) Any party out there that is interested can integrate with the protocol. Besides the blockchain component within GET Protocol, many functionalities derive from the fact that tickets processed by GET Protocol are fully digital.
It’s blockchain tech in tandem with fully digital ticketing that makes our ticketing disruptive.
Only a few existing ticketing companies are already fully prepped for a fully digital ticketing future. Many tickets are still paper based. Although many in the ticketing industry foresee that tickets will become less and less paper based in upcoming years, it takes time for existing ticketing companies to adjust their ticketing services to fully digital ticketing services.
On the other hand there are start-up ticketing companies that are interested in GET Protocol, especially in the whitelabel offering we have. Again, any party could use this solution, although there are a few requirements in place to mitigate our risks, such as a setup fee and an annual ticket volume.
Q.) How many ticketing firms are currently interested in/piloting GET?
A.) Currently a few dozen. Not only ticketing companies, but also independent event organizers, artists and other companies that somehow are active in the event management industry and do or don’t have an in-house ticketing branch already. We have used the relatively calm period in terms of ticket sales in 2020 to streamline the onboarding process and whitelabel products and feel we are even better positioned to serve the market right now, and especially when events are taking place more often and on a wider scale again.
Needless to say we are very much looking forward to that as we are ready to scale aggressively.
The sales team learnings of 2020
By GUTS Tickets’ head of sales Tom Roetgering
When the first lockdown of March ’20 came around in Holland we immediately reached out to our existing contacts and clients, but we also actively made connections with organisations and entities that we had never spoken to before. Museums, offices, even municipalities.
We’ve always been on the lookout for applications of our system. With the world upside down, we had to ask ourselves ‘what is possible right now and where is the current demand?’
We knew our digital tickets could be of some use with the tighter lockdown restrictions. To give you a brief recap of their features:
- Direct communication with all ticket holders
- Real-time insights into attendees’ status
- Community building
- Relevant data collection, also of friends and family who share tickets
- Controlled management of capacity in a closed environment
- Guiding attendance flow in certain timeslots
- Controlled and socially distanced ticket verification
Relevant blog from Maarten, written earlier this year:
Our system was built to process large amounts of tickets for big events. During the pandemic we were forced to think differently and focus on recurring events with limited capacity. After finetuning our strategy we focussed on museums and livestreams.
Museums
We dove into the museum industry head first; by picking up the phone and asking what they needed. It became clear that museums could open again if they were able to sell tickets in advance in timeslots.
While a clear enough objective, this would require us to build new features that would allow for the creation of templates for recurring events and a scheduler that made it easy for attendees to pick the day + timeslot of their visit.
Our Prime minster said on May 6th ‘Museums can open on June 1st, if they can sell tickets in advance and ensure 1,5 meter distance between visitors.’
Our development team got cracking and the sales team got in touch with museums who did not have experience selling online tickets. Since June, 7 Dutch museum are working with GUTS, and we are still talking to others who are interested in using our system.
Livestreams
We were approached by rock band DI-RECT in March ’20 to ask if we could ticket a live-streamed performance of theirs. Of course we could, but truth be told we were also a little skeptical about the success of this type of show.
Would fans really buy tickets for a virtual concert? With no rowdy atmosphere, sticky venue floors and like-minded strangers to sing along with?
Turns out that they would.
DI-RECT showed the country that, with a little effort and creativity, you can give a memorable show that people love and are more than happy to pay for.
We’re thankful to have learned this lesson early on in the pandemic, as it allowed us to sign a total of 33 new clients with GUTS.
It has also allowed us to get acquainted with organisations who were hard to reach in the pre-livestream era. A good example is The Concertgebouw; who we had been in contact with before, but approached us about ticketing their livestream show.
Their first one, with Trijntje Oosterhuis and the Jazz Orchestra just took place on December 23rd.
All these new clients have a single point of contact and are actively assisted from our side while navigating this new event type. We have once again found that nothing beats positive word of mouth; so we are working extra hard to make every event a big success and to support our valued event organizers in every way we can.
There is still a big batch of prospects who are considering their own live-streams, as well as a number of potential new clients who are thinking about working with us in the new year.
More to come! :)
I’ll leave you with these learnings that were sent out to our prospects and current clients recently:
The things we learned while ticketing 171 live-streamed shows
At GUTS Tickets, we’ve tried to lean into the changing reality of the world by finding ways of connecting artists worldwide with their fans.
In doing so we have had the privilege of ticketing 171 livestreams for a variety of (inter)national artists. Some with big fan bases and followings, some smaller.
Since this has been mostly uncharted territory until 2020, we thought we’d share some insights that we have discovered. To share our findings with others in the live industry and hopefully inspire and improve the livestream experience for artists and fans.
1.) Trust your fans with setting their own price
A large part of our recently ticketed live streams have followed the ‘pay-as-you-like’ principle, which only requires a minimum payment of 1 or 2 euro’s to cover costs, and allows fans to decide whether they want to pay 5, 10, 25 or 50 euro’s on top of that.
What’s been remarkable about this is that this approach does not only make your show significantly more accessible (which tends to get noticed by the press), we’ve also found that over 70% of ticket buyers pay more than the minimum.
2.) More = more
There’s no need to limit yourself to just one event. In fact, your audience might really appreciate a variety of livestreams — it’s not like there are tons of other things to do these days. For one artist, an SMS was sent out immediately after a livestream to inform all viewers of a subsequent show that they could now buy tickets for.
40% of those who received this SMS purchased tickets for the next show within 24 hours.
3.) Maximize the experience where you can
Sure you could do a performance from your kitchen using your phone, but chances are this won’t be a permanent memory in your fans’ brains. Although options might be limited, try to impact the things you can control. Like streaming from a unique location, or adding cool up-sells to your ticketshop, such as beers from your local brewery or a Christmas sweater!
4.) Allow some time between your two most important days
We also dove into the moments-of-purchase data. For this, two days are important: the day on which the livestream is announced (and the ticket shop opened) and the day of the livestream itself.
Don’t be alarmed if you haven’t sold massive amounts of tickets leading up to your show: 30% of total ticket sales of a live stream occur in the last 24 hours.
5.) Don’t forget to invest in your fans!
If you already have loyal fans, you may already have customers who want to see your livestream. If you don’t have this or are not sure, you will still have to get the word out. It’s highly recommended to advertise and generate awareness around your livestream, just like you would for a physical event. So use socials and pay to reach your fans on your socials.
6.) Final learning: Data = King
Artists that already had their own fan data sold 90% more tickets than artists that didn’t collect fan data before.
So, no fan data available? We advise you to start building, maintaining and optimizing your fan database/relationship today.
Your “fan-problem” grows if you don’t start today, don’t rely on data from third parties. During this corona crisis, most artists found out that having true fans around you is very important when physical performances disappear.
Once a fan buys a ticket for your show using GUTS, you have the relevant fan data and a direct fan relation. With this you break free from social media, where you have to pay more and more to reach your own followers.
Checking in with development
By Product Owner Frans Twisk
I believe I ended last year’s product blog with: “We are ready for 2020!” …and boy was I wrong. Where to even start wrapping up this year… Like for so many people, 2020 has been a rollercoaster for our product development team as well.
As you may have read in our monthly blogs, we basically dropped our roadmap for 2020 as soon as we realised the seriousness of Corona. We started working on features for (new) verticals that would still be able to sell tickets: like livestreams, (smaller) recurring events, etcetera. It paid off in a way that we are still selling tickets on a daily basis and our product has grown in ways we didn’t predict at the start of the year.
It’s an achievement I’m personally very proud of: the full team was able to switch the short-term planning with the snap of a finger.
We held an initial “design sprint” where we came up with a new roadmap to deliver in the upcoming months and we delivered exactly that (as can be read in our 2020 monthly blogs).
Another major achievement this year is the launch of the GET Protocol White Label and (almost fully automated) setup. This allows anyone running a ticketing company to do so with the power of the GET Protocol and its apps, complete in their own branding, without having any technical knowledge.
That does leave us with the rest of our initial 2020 roadmap to focus on again in this new year: We have already picked up on the remaining work for our global Ticket Resale Market for instance, which is something we all look forward to launching in its fullness. It will really show the possibilities and advantages of the GET Protocol in a tangible and transparent way, for any Ticketeer using it.
2021 will also be the year we will redesign some core-features which have been in there from the start but don’t quite cover all use-cases (anymore): an improved cashier system through the dashboard, reservations, and so on.
We are at a point where we can offer all needed core features alongside our USP’s, and we can slowly focus more on the quality of these features.
Something I, as a UX designer, get really excited about. Of course there are also plenty of new things that we are planning to deliver! NFT’s anyone?
Lastly: we realise Covid will continue to influence the sectors we are working in, even with vaccines on the horizon. That’s why special Covid features are in the works, like social-distancing, crowd-control, new and better ways to communicate with your audience, you name it. Be sure to read the upcoming monthly blogs to learn more about them!
Dare I say: we are ready for 2021? I do.
And with that we have come to an end of the last blog of 2020. Stay safe and healthy, we wouldn’t want you to miss out on what’s to come.
More about GET Protocol
Feedback
As always, if you have comments, questions or suggestions, please drop in to our active Telegram channel, and be sure to follow us on Twitter.
How to help out
If you are a fan of our system and want to help out, you can do so by leaving a review about GUTS on Google, the iOS app store or Google Play store.
Where to buy GET
Want to get your hands on some GET tokens? Here’s an easy guide.
Korea
Our Korean Telegram channel can be found here, and our Naver page is here.
Learn more
If you want to know more about what we do, visit our website, or join the discussion on the GET Protocol Reddit.
Exchanges
If you would like to see the GET token listed on specific exchanges, the best way to do this is to (publicly) let exchanges know about the project. The more they hear about it from actual traders, the better!
