Update April ‘19
Bringing the burn, looking back, and some big updates for ticket buyers & sellers!
It’s been a month of self-reflection and personal improvement. In this blog we’ll wrap up our findings and share how we are turning them into action.
Let’s start with some housekeeping
GET Protocol is now on Blockfolio Signal! If you use Blockfolio to track your crypto, simply add ‘GET’ to your watch list.
Comedian and honest ticketing fanatic Jochem Myjer tweeted about GUTS again this past month, expressing his confusion for why certain theaters are still afraid to take the step towards honest ticketing.
Translation:
“Weird how some theaters still don’t get how great GUTS is. And are afraid of change. It’s easier for the audience. For artists there is no more reselling. And maaaany other advantages. #Gowiththetimes”
It is indeed remarkable to see the friction and resistance that certain parties still have when it comes to implementing a system that guarantees true transparency and drastically improves a major source of frustration and loss of money. In some cases, it appears not everyone is as innocent as they make out to be and would rather not shine a light on their business models. In others, there seems to be a case of talking the talk but not daring to walk the walk. Fear of innovation is hurting consumers and can seriously harm the future of certain venues — especially in the theater sector — where the average age of attendees is very high and the demands from the visitors of the future are being ignored.
That’s why we couldn’t agree more with Jochem’s tweet (shocker), and we will continue to rock the boat until those who are actively fighting innovation fall out and drown an analogue death. (Just kidding! Sort of.)
Our business developer Sander gave a presentation about our ticketing solution earlier this month at the Swiss entertainment conference ‘360° Entertainment’. A nice bonus for everyone in attendance was the huge screens that showed Sander’s evangelical face.
Welove being featured in ‘crypto adoption’ blogs, as was the case last month on Nulltx:
Although the exact spelling isn’t 100% there (GETS Protocol?!), we’re fairly certain this is indeed about us. If you see other blogs that mention GET Protocol, GUTS Tickets or anything in between, please send it on over!
Our CEO Maarten was interviewed by the ‘Blockchain Realisten’, a Dutch blockchain blog/podcast/Youtube channel, about blockchain ticketing, execution versus concept, the GET Protocol ICO and everything related. If these topics speak to you and you have forty-five minutes to kill (and understand or like to listen to the sounds of the Dutch language), you’re gonna enjoy this.
Due to some unforeseen last-minute changes, the previously announced event of Get in the Ring in Cyprus, unfortunately, will not be ticketed by GUTS. But, never fear, the international expansion still stands as planned. It will now take place in Berlin, in June, at the Get in the Ring Global Meetup, which is one of their biggest events.
Tickets can already be bought:
Ifyou are a developer or know a developer (or know where to find talented developers), this is your chance. We are looking for a Medior Frontend Developer who wants to join our mission for worldwide honest ticketing.
We’re a cross-functional and self-organized team of 9 people. We follow Agile and Lean principles in order to create an environment where everyone can grow while working together towards a common goal. As a Medior Frontend developer, you will help us to keep improving our process and workflow. We’re in a growing stage and therefore very open to discover and use new technologies and explore how we can continuously improve our way of working.
For more specifics about the job and how to apply (or how to give us the lead that will bring you some cash!) check out: guts.tickets/careers/
Three years of GUTS Tickets!
April 20th was an important day: It marked the third birthday of GUTS Tickets! Although this means we are ancient in crypto-years, it also feels like a small number for the amount of events held, development deployed and tickets issued.
As the time is flying and we barely take a moment to reflect on everything that’s happening, we seized this milestone to reflect on the road covered so far, and, perhaps more importantly, where we are going. Check out the interview with our founders Ivo, Frans, Maarten and Tom.
Buyback -> Burnback
From blockchain developer Kasper Keunen
After the results and feedback following Q1 buyback of 2019, we promised a review of the buyback process. As we are men and women of our word, we did exactly that. The result was this (extremely compact for Kasper’s doing) blog, which included some pretty important and significant changes.
It is highly recommended reading for anyone invested in GET (emotionally or financially), but I will give a quick-and-dirty-copy-paste recap of the most important points from the blog, for those who are too lazy to simply click here.
Really? Didn’t click? Alright, here we go:
The continuous buyback will go to the market on a daily basis and fill the lowest sell orders quoted in the order book. In normal English, this means that the protocol will use a system that executes a market buy order. Creating continuous buy-support. As this buying will occur on a daily basis, it is expected to slowly work itself up in the order book until there are no sub €0.50 sellers left.
While the protocol continuously fills (buys) the lowest sell orders on the open market, the GET bought in excess is burned. By burning the net acquisition rate of the GET is €0.50/GET. By burning this excess GET (meaning the share of GET the protocol bought between the average buy price and €0.50), the total amount of GET ever to exist is reduced. Instead of the current arbitrage situation where only 1 token holder benefits of a buyback, this system will benefit all token holders while at the same time providing liquidity.
While the protocol continuously fills (buys) the lowest sell orders on the open market, the GET bought in excess is burned. By burning the net acquisition rate of the GET is €0.50/GET. By burning this excess GET (meaning the share of GET the protocol bought between the average buy price and €0.50), the total amount of GET ever to exist is reduced. Instead of the current arbitrage situation where only 1 token holder benefits of a buyback, this system will benefit all token holders while at the same time providing liquidity.
Sounds complex? It’s fairly simple when explained using an example.
Example: Let’s say the buyback trading bot buys €120 worth of GET on the open market for an average price of €0.25/GET. This means the bot buys a total of 480 GET. To correct this the GET Protocol will burn a total of 240 GET. This means that after the burn the protocol will have 240 GET left. This 240 GET was bought for €120. Thus the GET Protocol has bought GET for an average price of €0.50!
To summarise the summary: Instead of a buyback auction every quarter, there will be a ‘daily auction’ on exchanges, with a GET burn at the end of every quarter. As shown above, this only occurs when the price is below €0.50. Which exchanges will be used will also be made public in the upcoming period.
Burnback update
There will not be an announcement beforehand for the start of the continuous buyback. As this would create a small frontrunning opportunity. In upcoming weeks you can expect details on how the burn will be conducted and how transparency in centralized exchange acquisition is ensured. Stay tuned.
New video’s left and right
We’re continuously churning out new video’s, this month was an exceptionally productive one, with no less than four new video’s release on the GET Protocol Youtube channel. The stream of short explainers on many different topics are meant as an easy-to-grasp introduction to everything you might want to know about GET Protocol. Check out this month’s releases:
1.) What is the GET buyback?
2.) What is the general business strategy for GET Protocol?
3.) What drives demand for GET?
4.) What is GET Protocol?
We will continue to add new videos every other week, so stay tuned!
PS: There’s also currently a giveaway for new subscribers to the GET Protocol Youtube channel:
Make sure you subscribe to the Youtube channel and PM ‘@dr10tv’ on Telegram with your Youtube handle to participate!
Ticket Sharing
This month also marked the official public release of the ticket sharing functionality. Everyone with an updated GUTS app can now easily share tickets with friends.
How it works in a nutshell:
1. Ticket owner taps on ‘Invite’: a dynamic QR appears, similar to the ones on tickets themselves.
2. Invitee taps on ‘Got invited?’, and scans the QR with phone’s camera.
3. Invitee sees an overview of the events, the tickets that will be shared (including prices) and who else they are shared with. The invite can then be accepted or declined.
4. That was it. There is no 4th step.
As more thoroughly explained in the app, both sharer and the receiver have to be at the same physical location to be able to use this feature, which is one of the additional anti-scalping measures we have applied.
There are a few more rules and checks in place that make sharing honest but simple. We hope this adds a new layer of fun and ease of use to the ticketing experience of users, as well as open the doors for more large-scale clients to use our honest ticketing solution.
Feeling generous? Download the app and start sharing!
New Ticket flow for consumers
From product designer Frans Twisk
Last month we released our embeddable widget of the ticket shop, and now we are proud to announce the same great redesign is running on our own platform!
All of the big and small learnings we’ve collected in the last 2 years were the basis of this redesign, and with it comes the best UX flow a ticketing system has ever seen (yes, we dare stating this).
Alongside a fresh design and flow, the code has been completely rewritten, optimized and improved which results in:
- Speed improvements: it will roughly load 10x faster on your device.
- Seamless integration and flow with our queue app: the queue can now kick-in automatically when there is a sudden surge of high demand, making sure our service never goes down.
- Minimal technical-debt: allowing us to build new features on top of this way quicker. (We already started, more about these new features next month!)
Business development: GET Protocol API documentation progress
From back-end developer Koen Klinkers
We’ve made some big steps in the progress of our API documentation. This is important because it significantly streamlines the process of integrating ticketing companies who are interested in the GET Protocol.
We are constructing this in a way that is crystal clear and involves little to no manual labor, so the process of on-boarding can be done efficiently (and from anywhere in the world).
As our focus with regards to business development now lies on ‘bigger & broader’, it is important to make this as easy as possible. Our ongoing talks with different ticketing companies should become easier and more (token) economically sound as we continue to add and improve to the GET Protocol repositories.
Supported use cases of current API
At the moment our API/documentation is ready for the following two use cases:
1) Integrating your own website with the get protocol. A client would be using our backend and dashboard but can write their own webshop on top of it. All
bookkeeping, blockchain and payments will be handled by the GET Protocol back-end. Allowing for traditional companies to modernize without large investments or risk.
2) Integrate GET Protocol with an already existing ticketing system. Tickets will be sold using an external system but that system will register the relevant data on the GET Protocol. This way customers can slowly use certain elements of our tech without making drastic changes to their business model.
Introducing ´shitcoins´ integrating with all the PSPs!
Finally, GET Protocol now allows clients to write and integrate their payment service provider of choice. The code for this is ready and currently being tested in the wild with a few clients. Soon we will write additional documentation for its usage. Including the open sourcing of our reference implementation, which is jokingly named ‘shitcoins’ (a reference to the fact that the module can handle all imaginable currencies and payment flows clients want to use or are already using). This is a crucial part of seamless integration as payment routing is a crucial component of any business.
GUTS Tickets uses Mollie as it’s primary payment processor. Mollie supports a lot of payment methods but sadly is too expensive for ticketing companies outside of Europe to use this PSP. The financial system is arbitrarily divided over the world into financial zones. When you cross these financial borders you incur a lot of fees. To make usage of the GET Protocol viable outside of Europe we needed to support a wide array of local/region based payment service providers. Instead of coding all the possible PSP implementations ourselves we have opened up the protocol so clients can easily integrate their own PSP.
That’s all for this time, we’ll follow up next month (or in between, should there be a large enough announcement!) with plenty more. See you then!
More about the 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.
