GET Update March ’21 —This time is different
Welcome back. There’s a lot that could be said about the past month, but the bottom line is that these have been some of the most exciting weeks in GET history, and things are only getting started.
As will be noted in this blog, there is a lot of attention flowing into our use case and our specific project. Cool things are happening and even cooler things are on the way.
Let’s get to it.
GET Business development update
By GET Protocol business developer Sander Regtuijt.
I have been asked to share with you an update from the business development side of the protocol, which I will gladly do. First off, as quite some newcomers joined the GET space recently, it might be wise to walk you through the rationale behind our strategy for expanding the usage of our tech globally.
- We believe the benefits of blockchain tech in ticketing are very clear and will be widespread if not everywhere in ticketing soon.
- For these benefits to come to full fruition and to support interoperability, there is a need for a blockchain based ticket standard.
- Our mission is to become this ticket data standard with GET Protocol
- More concrete, GET Protocol is a ticketing back-end that allows for issuance of fully digital and blockchain registered tickets.
- No ticketing company big or small in its right mind will adopt nor integrate with the protocol before the tech has proven itself.
- This is the reason GUTS Tickets exists. GUTS Tickets is the ticketing company that is, as a ticketing front-end, showcasing the possibilities of fully digital and blockchain registered tickets, processed by GET Protocol.
- GUTS Tickets established a strong foothold in the Dutch ticketing landscape. We are quite sure we are doing something right.
- Now, since I joined the company in 2017, a good part of my job has always been, and still is, being in touch with parties from all around the globe — be it venues, event organizers, independent artists, you name it — that wish “to do what we do at GUTS here in the Netherlands, but in country X or vertical Y”.
- At first, we couldn’t serve them as our system wasn’t ready yet. We have been building though, and sweating, swearing, failing and learning. Please note we will never stop failing and learning.
- We are now able to allow other parties “to do what we do at GUTS here in the Netherlands, but in country or vertical X”.
In essence this means any party out there can get their hands on a copy of the GUTS Tickets system and start managing, controlling and monetizing their ticket sales themselves. We call this the — Lingchi model — whitelabel proposition.
- Through whitelabel partners, usage of the protocol will grow. There will be partners targeting a specific geography or vertical. There will be independent artists who wish to engage with their fans in NFT-y, modern ways and finally start building their own fan databases. There will be newly created ticketing businesses that wish to start selling tickets from the get-go, without having to invest millions in a state-of-the-art ticketing system — we already did that for them, and we will continue innovating for them.
- Now, under my colleagues it’s sort of a running gag that I quite often say that I can imagine something. I can imagine that’s because of my philosophical and never-be-certain nature. Right now I can imagine that you or someone you know would be interested in the whitelabel proposition. If so, please let me know.
So, how are things going?
Some have already let me know and in a general sense on the business development side things are going great. Over the last few months we have had steady interest from all sorts of entities from all over the world. I have multiple new interested parties every single day, most of which are serious and eligible as whitelabel candidates.
There are several whitelabel parties approaching the moment of publication. I can’t wait for you to be able to check them out and Sherlock everything there is to know. We will likely be introducing at least one, quite possible multiple new whitelabel candidates to you in the month of April.
Last few weeks
These last few weeks have honestly been on another caliber. The types of talks we’re having and the organizations we are having them with are what we have been dreaming about since the early days. Again, this doesn’t mean that they will all necessarily lead to deals of any kind, but it’s obvious that we are doing something right and everyone knows how to find us.
To wrap up, I updated the image below that I shared in the past, also for the people new to GET to get an idea of the potential (that might be just there in your Metamask wallet). Personally, I’d like more green in Africa too.
That’s it for now. I am very much in favor of thinking in terms of abundance. Would you be or know parties that would be interested to learn more about the whitelabel proposition, please feel free to give us even more work.
Tokenomics update — the bigger picture
By GET marketeers Colby Mort & Olivier Biggs
As promised, this blog includes an update to the tokenomics. Rather than going into specific details just yet, we wanted to lay out the top-level route that influences every decision and strategy along the way. The long-term plan.
Oh, and what’s that smell? Did someone leave the stove on?
Now that there is a clear light at the end of the COVID tunnel and rapid expansion in terms of clients and whitelabelers is expected, it makes sense to zoom out and look at the bigger picture.
Like any foundation, the GET Protocol foundation has, at its conception, formulated a mission statement, which upon completion will lead to the annulment of the foundation itself.
That mission statement is:
Becoming the worldwide blockchain protocol standard for digital rights to enter an event, which could be a theatre, a live concert, a congress, a sports match, airplane… etcetera.
Once this goal is determined to have been met, the foundation will disband. An ambitious timeline for this is anywhere between 7–10 years from now, depending greatly on the rate of adoption.
But what happens then? The protocol just stops?
No. A DAO structure will have been set up way in advance, which will govern the protocol. This process will be guided carefully by the foundation itself to ensure a smooth and effective transition.
For those unfamiliar with the concept of a DAO or Decentralized Autonomous Organization, it is essentially an organisation created by a group of people that share a common goal and is enforced not through a chain of command or leadership, but instead through a set of rules that have been encoded as a computer program.
Thanks to the rise in smart contracts, this process has not only become a feasible possibility, it’s actually a successful reality. A great example of this is MakerDAO, which at the end of 2017 launched their DAI stablecoin and corresponding DAO through smart contracts. It’s arguably become one of the most successful projects, locking up $6.4 billion in its smart contracts at the time of writing. The community who hold Maker tokens are able to make governance decisions such as the annual borrowing fee, collateral needed and other DAI decisions. As can be seen through this example, these smart contracts are created with the goals of being open and transparent and thanks to running on a blockchain, decentralized.
DAO’s are formed in roughly four steps:
- A set of rules are designed and created around a shared goal, that will be coded into the DAO smart contract. This process involves heavy auditing to ensure that no security flaws are found.
- Before a DAO gets deployed, it is important for there to be a token structure in place, in which the community can become stakeholders and the DAO itself has a holding of tokens for organizational use and rewarding community activity. The community can use their tokens obtained in this stage to make governance decisions over the direction in which the DAO operates once the DAO is deployed.
- Once the core smart contract with all the rules has been audited and published and token funding has been completed, the DAO can be deployed so that it becomes fully autonomous. Since all rules, financial transactions and governance decisions are recorded on the blockchain, this means that the DAO can achieve full transparency, immutability and incorruptibility.
- In order for decisions to be made, proposals must be submitted and consensus is reached by having community stakeholders vote on the proposals that they wish to see implemented. The amount of votes a stakeholder has (or their voting weight) is often linked to the amount of tokens that they hold, with the percentage requirement needed for a proposal passing, coded into the DAO smart contract.
If this is the end goal, why is the foundation needed in the first place?
Essentially, centralisation during the first years speeds up the process of adoption astronomically. As we are currently seeing take place.
During the beginning phase of the GET Protocol’s creation, It has been important for us at the foundation to be very hands-on in ensuring that we focus on onboarding ticketeers and entrepreneurs who share the same vision as we do, to provide the best possible ticketing experience for everyone in the ticketing chain.
Since inception we have seen the number of requests from companies and people who wish to implement the protocol skyrocket. We enact a level of vetting for all interested ticketeers, so that the first pioneering companies to implement the protocol, are those that we fully believe will be successful in sharing the mission of the protocol and upholding standards true to our own.
However, as we have mentioned from the start, the end goal of the GET Protocol is to be a decentralised system providing open source tooling for anybody, be it artists, venues, promoters and aspiring ticketeers to build their own ticketing company using the protocol. It should be as easy to create a ticketing company as creating a website with wordpress for example. To get to this point however requires time, battle testing of all of our systems and a guiding hand to ensure that the protocol reaches levels of adoption.
That being said, we can now mark a pivotal moment in the lead up to a GET protocol DAO, by announcing the GET Protocol DAO Treasury.
The GET DAO treasury is going to be governed by GET holders, who will get to decide on its expenses and purpose.
Sounds nice, but what will the fund actually contain?
Good question. For that, we need to take a look at the distribution of the supply.
Recap of ‘old’ total supply distribution
As the usage of the protocol has grown, experience has shown that the Stability Fund as it was designed is not a crucial component of the protocol. In fact, we have seen it cause confusion for newcomers to the project, who are required to trust the GET team with these funds. (Something which is a lot to ask for in the current climate of rug pulls and scams.)
The remaining funds of what used to be called the Stability Fund will be allocated to the GET DAO treasury, to be governed over by members of the community.
New $GET token allocation
This new total supply hopefully gives a much clearer picture of the allocation of GET moving forward.
With this big picture stuff out of the way, we will be focussing on sharing the complete tokenomics, which we envision to consist of three utility clusters:
1.) Fuel
2.) Network
3.) Governance
Heads up: We will take our time with presenting these tokenomics elements, as we want them to be definitive and rock solid.
For those who are -understandably- a little nervous about dynamic tokenomics, rest assured:
These new tokenomics will contain additions to the token utility, on top of the ‘ticket fuel’ utility it has currently.
The arrival of NFT Ticketing
After years of talking to anyone who will hear it about the benefits of applying blockchain to the ticketing industry, it seems that the idea has reached the mainstream.
Largely lead by the NFT boom, the use case for digital ticketing with full control over (resale) profits and innovative fan experiences seems to be more graspable concept all of a sudden.
The proof of this is the recent public statements from several big shots in the US Sports market.
Here’s everyone’s favorite DeFi enthusiast Mark Cuban, laying out the specific benefits that he sees in NFT ticketing for his NBA team, the Dallas Mavericks.
It’s hard to describe the feeling of seeing big players with actual clout and decision power advocating for the very things we’ve been trying to get across since 2016, but if pressed I would say it’s a combination of ‘I told you so’ + ‘Thank you sweet baby Jesus’ + ‘Let’s f*cking do this!’
So in conclusion, my personal sentiment can be summarized as: ‘I told baby Jesus f*cking do this.’
The GET way or the highway
While the theoretical interest and understanding is fantastic, we are focussed on letting it be known that we are THE NFT ticketing project out there.
From our side, the GET NFT ticketing use case was highlighted by NonFungible.com, the most respected platform about all things NFTs.
We also published an informative piece about NFTs and GET’s approach on event industry outlet IQ Magazine, which is read by all major players in the live + ticketing business.
(P.S. If you are having difficulties reading the content, there is a Medium version of the article here.)
And in the blockchain space, here’s Chico Crypto speaking about our approach in one of his recent video’s. Here it is, timestamped to the part about GET:
From the talks we are having and the rapidly growing interest it’s clear that we’re doing something right. New, bigger doors are opening.
Introducing GET’s new marketeer, Colby!
Why hello there! My name is Colby, I’m a crypto fanatic with an IT and business background, I love to travel and meet new people from all walks of life, having the opportunity to experience different cultures is the best thing since sliced bread. I also have a hobby collecting butterflies for my wall — everyone has one weird hobby right?
I live in Wales which for those unfamiliar is a place with more sheep than people (seriously we’re outnumbered 3 to 1, send help.) I found out about the GET Protocol back in 2017 and decided to give the team a visit to see what it was all about. I became hooked on what they were setting out to achieve, however the trip did have a slight sour ending when I got absolutely crushed in multiple sets of ping pong by Kasper, there will be revenge one day!
I will be providing a supporting hand to Olivier and helping him with the fantastic work that he’s been doing on the marketing and communications side of the project! I believe that a key factor in the sustained growth of a crypto project is being able to foster a strong community that can align with the development team in order to achieve a shared goal.
I want to help enable the community to thrive as much as possible, setting up initiatives and maintaining the cornerstone of a friendly, welcoming community for everyone who discovers us. I will also find ways to highlight to the wider crypto community why the GET Protocol is a game changer and driving home the real world value of concepts like NFTs and DeFi.
I know the GET Protocol will be a shining beacon in the years to come that shows to everyone in the crypto space the overwhelming impact of taking blockchain, NFT and DeFi which are world changing technologies and applying them to an industry in dire need of change. There’s a saying in Wales — ‘A ddwg ŵy a ddwg fwy‘ which means ‘he who steals an egg will steal more’, I think this sums up the current state of the ticketing industry and its problems perfectly! Needless to say I share the team’s vision and my work won’t stop until there’s no more stealing or touting and world ticketing domination has been achieved.
GUTS Tickets has also made two new hires; Lars Wilbers will be doing HR and Recruitment, while Willem Pelle will be joining the sales team.
We are growing! (And then growing some more)
Both GET Protocol and GUTS Tickets are rapidly expanding. In all directions.
The current goal is to double the team over the next twelve months. And then to double it again.
We are looking for clever, ambitious people with an understanding of the event industry (either globally or in specific markets), to join our mission of worldwide adoption.
Check out the current listings for GUTS here:
If you don’t fit the above job descriptions but seriously think that you have something to offer either GUTS or GET Protocol in their respective missions, feel free to get in touch through the respective websites, or if you prefer, you can shoot me a message on Telegram.
A message from Italian white labeler Wicket!
The Italian team is now working to get the SIAE certification: SIAE is an Italian private company authorized by the Revenue Agency to verify that ticketing companies comply with some directives.
It’s all about bureaucracy, but Wicket is confident to be the first Italian blockchain ticketing company to be SIAE certified.
Once we have this document, there will be nothing to slow down the massive adoption of Wicket and Get Protocol in Italy.
On another topic, Wicket is investing on the marketing side: they have hired an experienced Marketing Director, Gian Maria Brega, who, from the very beginning, embraced the cause and loved the project. This collaboration just started and they are working to create an Italian community: Wicket will soon launch a Telegram channel, will implement a blog on Wicket’s web site and also there a new idea about the organization of live talks, to create awareness about Wicket and to talk about various topics.
Last, Hostaria Verona, the first Italian wine event adopting Wicket, has confirmed the company as a ticketing provider for the 2021 edition.
The wine sector is of interest for Wicket: they are working to allow wine producers to sell vineyard visits and wine tastings, creating a marketplace where visitors can directly buy a bottle of wine and pick it up on the day of the visit.
If you want to follow Wicket and be the first to receive their updates, you can do so on Twitter / LinkedIn / Instagram.
The GET Liquidity Mining program will be extended throughout Q2 ‘21!
Liquidity providers for $GET on Uniswap will continue to be rewarded for their efforts throughout Q2 of 2021.
Details on the program and how to participate can be found here.
A parting note
On top of everything we have loved to see the growing trading activity and social interactions over the past month. The growing interest is fantastic and we are truly grateful. We’re sure this is only the beginning and will be back with more cool news soon.
Oh, and don’t forget. Several people have committed to getting a GET tattoo when it hits $10, amongst whom Kasper Keunen, Olivier Biggs and Jochem Myjer’s manager Robert-Jan Veen.
Looking forward to it.
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 GET Protocol user 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.
