Update November ’19 — Taking the stage
Bringing the project the attention it deserves.
Another month has flown by, with another pile of events, developments and releases. This month a lot of work has been done on drawing attention to both GET Protocol and GUTS Tickets, of which you will already see some results below.
We’ll share the following:
Something about… housekeeping
The latest news in ticketing, a rockin’ event & digital exposure.Something about… marketing
It’s time to make noise.Something about… business development
Things are happening. Find your remote.Something about… a new website
A look at all the shiny new additions to the GET website (and a surprise.)Something about… tech updates!
Product Owner Frans takes us through the latest developments. And something about world domination?
Housekeeping
GUTS ticketed a show of popular rockband De Staat this month, at a sold-out Tivoli in Utrecht.
The show was great (our Product Owner Frans was there to confirm the greatness), and the ticketing went smooth.
Let’s hope for many more rockshows in the future!
Monopoly, anyone?
Viagogo, the favorite company of people who enjoy the terrible, dishonest and overpriced things in life, has made a major move this past month, buying ticket resale platform StubHub from Ebay.
The deal, worth $4 billion, instantly makes Viagogo the number one ticket reselling platform in North America, and gives it a massive amount of additional power in the global ticketing industry.
News of the deal was cause for a lot of push-back and concern, as Viagogo’s position grows and it seems to be getting away with murder.
Just a day before the news of the acquisition, it was announced that Google’s ban of aggressive Viagogo ads was lifted. The ads often mislead consumers into buying second hand tickets without knowing that original tickets were still on sale for way cheaper.
The ban, which was instated in July of this year, came with a clear statement from Google, saying they want to provide their users an honest experience, something which these ads do not do.
Within weeks it became clear just how effective this ban was, with visitor numbers to the resale platform dropping 80% in some countries.
But now, within two days, the ban has been lifted and the acquisition of StubHub is announced: Very bad news for consumers.
IQ Magazine has collected commentary from leaders in the ticketing industry, including our very own Maarten Bloemers:
“In five years I expect this to be deemed a total waste of money. It’s a joining of forces of two eerily similar entities, the main similarity being that they do not care in the slightest about the consumer they are supposedly serving.
Technological innovation is making these businesses obsolete, and will put the priority back with the consumer, where it belongs.”
— Maarten Bloemers
To read more reactions, check out the article on IQ:
As always, we’ll keep monitoring the shitshow that is the ticketing industry, and keep you posted.
This is not a drill: Maarten Bloemers goes digital
Our CEO Maarten Bloemers has finally been persuaded to join the virtual mayhem which is Twitter.
You can follow him here for all sorts of content, ranging from insights on the blockchain ticketing world, to behind the scenes content from our office, to comments on recent events such as the acquisition mentioned above.
His newly claimed digital fame has already gotten him more exposure, as he was interviewed on the CryptoBeadle Youtube channel. The conversation, which has already been viewed over 25.000 times, covers everything from central banking to GET token economics, to Will Ferrel. Check it out:
Blockonomi features GET Protocol
The good people over at Blockonomi have written a substantial article about GET Protocol. It covers a lot of ground, from the workings of the protocol to the most recent news and updates. Give it look or share with a friend!
But.. this kinda feels like marketing?
Yes, the above is all a part of an increased marketing effort, meant to establish GET Protocol solidly on the crypto scene. Following up on our recent growth and international adoption of the protocol, we are now also firing up the cylinders on marketing, because we feel the time is right to gain both exposure and recognition.
As you might know, up until now we have made a conscious decision to build our product and client base, which has now reached a significant threshold that (more than) proves our concept and approach.
We feel that our story, use case and traction deserve the attention of mainstream (crypto) media, and the attention of all crypto traders who value functional crypto utility and actual, measurable growth in adoption.
With our budding business in Asia, it is only logical that we will be marketing towards those markets -and traders- as well. We want to give GET the shine it deserves, so in the upcoming weeks you can expect more media, AMA’s and exposure around GET (and GUTS.)
Business development
There are several deals and developments in the works that we can’t wait to tell you about, but these unfortunately will have to wait a little longer. One was even already written out for this blog and ready to be shared, but it still requires final approval. (Sorry for the tease!)
We will try to get these announcements to you as soon as we can — unfortunately these things are not always up to us. Our (new) clients have their own agenda’s and marketing, which we have to respect.
One thing I can let slip is that if you still have a television (you filthy boomer), you may want to dust it off and see if it still works. There’ll be something interesting to watch (on Dutch TV) next week.
More soon!
New website!
After some hard work, we released a long-anticipated update to the GET Protocol website this month. Let’s go over some of the shiny new additions.
Real-time state changes are now shown in a counter on the homepage, giving a sense of the amount of ticket activity and the number of events that have gone on sale in the last month.
Just below that, you’ll see a ‘Check Hashes’ button, which links to an Etherscan address with batches of hashes. These hashes are issued hourly and record state changes of tickets on the protocol.
The other button (‘Hashes Explained’) leads you to the following blog, which provides some more insights about the hashes, their content and their purpose:
While currently obviously still very technical, we are glad to provide this first level of transparency regarding transactions and tickets. It is also an important step towards the ticket explorer. From the blog:
‘The ticket explorer will be a consumer-facing application that allows ticket holders to explore the history of their smart tickets by only using the blockchain as a data source.’
Feature-wise the ticket explorer will be similar to what Etherscan is for transactions on Ethereum, with the important caveat that the ticket explorer will be very easy to understand for anybody.
While this collection of hashes might not make too much sense now, this will change soon. In the upcoming months, we will release more detailed and technical information on how the community can play around and contribute to these features.’
Oh yeah, how about some tokenomics?
We updated the GET token page, along with a completely new token economics blog for GET. The purpose of this blog was to provide singular clarity about the GET token, why it exists, and how it functions within the protocol. It should give every reader, veteran or newcomer, at least a basic level of knowledge about GET. If you haven’t checked it out already, go for it:
Just in case you don’t feel like reading an entire other blog (can’t blame you), here’s a TL;DR of the GET tokenomics:
1.) GET Protocol is a blockchain-based ticketing engine, allowing ticketing companies to issue admission rights in a fully digital way. This innovative approach provides many benefits over traditional ticketing.
For example, one application of the system is eradicating fraud and ticket scalping. However, there is much more to it and the ticketing industry is on the brink of understanding this.
2.) Making use of the GET Protocol requires a fuel, called the GET token, or simply ‘GET’. For example: Tickets that are sold and resold by ticketing companies using GET Protocol require GET to perform their duties.
3.) After an event cycle is completed and all tickets are validated and processed, a portion of GET is automatically burned by the protocol, decreasing the total supply of GET that exists in the world.
4.) The GET needed by ticketing companies for their sales and events is provided up front by the protocol at a locked rate per event cycle, to provide a frictionless experience for the ticketing companies and their fans.
Also on the token page, we have added a GET scarcity calculator which you can use to make projections on the rate at which GET tokens are going to be burned, and how much GET is going to exist, depending on several variables.
We hope these blogs, tools and additions to the website provide clarity, information and fun for the community, and, perhaps more importantly, to newcomers to the project who are introduced to the project through new marketing efforts and exposure.
But what’s this, another new website?!
Surprise! We’ve also been working on updating the GUTS Tickets website. It’s aaaaalmost done and we can’t wait to share it with you. Here’s a sneak peek:
Besides a fresh coat of paint, we wanted it to have a much better representation of what our system does and what it has already achieved. The new site will embody where we stand with GUTS and showcase everything it can do for potential new clients or other ticketing companies who might want to do the same by using GET Protocol.
The final touches are being done as we speak, we hope to share it in all its glory with you next week.
Tech update
From GUTS Tickets product owner Frans Twisk.
We have moved some mountains again this past month and made small and big improvements in a lot of areas in our tech-stacks. Here a sum-up of the most important things, besides the ones you already know about such as Statebox, GET & GUTS website update, etcetera.
Global User Service (GUS) up and running for international scaling
Meet GUS! This system means we can run another server for our API (in Korea for example) ensuring that it’s super fast even on the other side of the world, while you can still log in with your original (for example, Dutch) account. GUS makes sure that all the user accounts and profile information will be synced, shared and work on each server. World domination is a step closer.
Multiple shops for tickets are coming
We are making the sales of tickets a lot more flexible by adding a layer of shops in between an event and its tickets. This means event organisers will soon be able to offer smart tickets with different properties (like price) to different target-groups (like members or guests), completely separated from each other. Why would you want this? Ask anyone in marketing. They can go nuts! More about this in the next blog when it should be launched!
Going even more international
We’re taking the last steps into complete internationalisation of all our apps & systems (besides our ongoing scaling improvements like GUS). We already have support for all currencies, timezones, etcetera, and now we want to make it easier to translate our apps! We now have an external service hooked up with our apps to make translating super easy and doable by anyone, anywhere, in any language. Our system will automatically pick the best language for a ticket-buyer. Voila!
Remember, this is only a small part we’ve been working on and I haven’t even started about offline wallets, improved secondary market and all the tiny tasks and bugfixes. More in the next blog!
That’s it for this time, as you can see there is a lot going on and we hope the holiday season may bring a fun gift or two that we can share with you soon.
More about GET Protocol
Any questions or want to know more about what we do? Join our active Telegram community for any questions you might have, read our whitepaper, visit the website, join the discussion on the GET Protocol Reddit. Or get yourself a smart event ticket in our sandbox environment. Download the GUTS Tickets app on iOS or Android.
