Verasity Q4 2023 Recap

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Verasity

12 min readJan 3, 2024

Skip ahead to section “2.1. PoV Marker Consultation” to learn more about our plans for PoV Migration.

As the final quarter of 2023, Q4 was instrumental in ushering in a huge number of collaborations, product developments, key geo patent approvals, exchange listings, and community consultations.

In our Q4 review, we’ll take an extensive look at our roadmap progress during the last quarter, and also discover the multiple off-road map milestones we were able to achieve. We’ll soon follow up with a full deep-dive for the entirety of 2023, as well as a detailed look at our 2024 roadmap and what lies ahead for Verasity this year.

As always, let’s get started by exploring the roadmap milestones in Q4 2023.

1. Q4 2023 Roadmap Milestones

This quarter was mostly focused on key product updates and improvements, specifically designed to enhance the user experience across VeraViews, and also for our community within VeraWallet.

1.1. VeraViews — Ad relevance management for Publishers — Audience Blacklists

In digital advertising, an “audience blacklist” is a tool used by advertisers to specify groups of people or content they want to exclude from their ad campaigns. It helps maintain brand safety by avoiding association with inappropriate or undesirable content. Advertisers may exclude certain audience segments or content categories programmatically, allowing for more precise targeting and improved campaign performance.

For example, an advertiser might use a blacklist to avoid displaying ads on websites with explicit content or exclude audiences that have historically shown low engagement. This strategy is particularly crucial in programmatic advertising, where automated processes handle real-time ad buying and selling.

We have deployed a ready-made audience blacklist solution for current campaigns, while we continue to work on our own solution for release in 2024. Additionally, while in discussions with our commercial partners, we identified geotargeting and scheduling improvements as more critical improvements and we are pleased to share that we worked to improve this functionality in VeraViews during Q4 2023.

Geotargeting in programmatic advertising involves delivering digital ads to a specific audience based on their geographical location. It allows advertisers to target users in particular regions, cities, or even specific physical locations with relevant and contextually appropriate advertisements. Geotargeting leverages data such as IP addresses, or device information to determine a user’s general location. This strategy is valuable for advertisers aiming to reach consumers in specific geographic areas.

Programmatic advertising, which uses automated processes for buying and placing ads, makes it efficient to implement geotargeting strategies by incorporating location-based criteria into the ad targeting parameters. This approach enhances the relevance of ads and improves the overall effectiveness of advertising campaigns by reaching the right audience in the right place.

Enhancement of geotargeting capabilities will enable more specific targeting which improves the functionality for users of the VeraViews adstack, and will make us a more attractive platform for publishers and advertisers.

1.2. VeraWallet — Transak integration improvements, automation, and Major UX & UI improvements

Earlier this year we shared screenshots, shown above, of our VeraWallet 2.0 major upgrades. The development work is now complete, with the new wallet interfaces and user flow moving to a testing stage before its live release later in 2024.

We’ve also worked closely with our partners at Transak to update our instant buy and stake functionality, and improve the user flow. We’ll be working on other features with Transak during 2024.

1.4. VeraWallet — VeraCard available to European residents

The VeraCard is not currently being rolled out to European residents due to third-party dependencies with the VeraCard’s central issuer. Verasity is exploring options to move forward with new card issuers for the European VeraCard. We apologise for this and we’re exploring other options.

In the meantime the Verasity team is instead working with Transak on direct fiat off-ramp capabilities within VeraWallet, which will also serve Verasity users in Europe with a direct VRA / EUR off ramp, connected to a bank account.

1.5. VeraWallet — Notification updates — email and within VeraWallet

A number of updates to VeraWallet communications and support handling have been rolled out during this quarter. The VeraWallet team is now developing a notification centre within VeraWallet and a number of central communications improvements, which will enhance the user experience when making transactions within VeraWallet.

This will include better communications for deposit and withdrawal notifications, staking notifications, and other account-related security notifications for our users.

2. Other Milestones

As always, we have our planned roadmap items, but there’s always a multitude of other opportunities and milestones that we achieve throughout the quarter. Q4 2023 was no exception, with a huge number of collaborations, listings, upgrades, and events. In fact, Q4 was one of our busiest quarters in 2023.

Let’s check out some of the most notable achievements for Q4 2023 below.

2.1. PoV Marker Consultation

There are currently 90 billion Proof of View (PoV) Marker Tokens issued on the same contract as circulating VRA and essentially the same as VRA tokens. These tokens were largely created for data transfer purposes to power the VeraViews ad stack. Following our earlier tokenomics consultation at the end of Q3 2023, we recognise that PoV Marker Tokens do exert pressures on our tokenomics because of the impact on Circulating Supply.

Therefore, during the last quarter, the Verasity development team has been exploring ways to move PoV tokens to a separate chain. As shared at the time, PoV and VeraViews are live solutions which require careful planning to redesign.

In November, we announced that we were in consultation with several promising layer-1 chains, and we opened a consultation process for both the community and blockchain professionals to get involved and help us deliver solutions for PoV tokens.

We outlined our comprehensive technical requirements here, including specifications for metadata functionality, transaction speeds, scalability and interoperability, and open source code.

Promising blockchain solutions that meet these requirements have been identified and are currently in alpha and the next step is to move to a beta testing environment for PoV tokens with new chains in Q2 2024, which is included in our roadmap.

In software development, alpha testing for a potential blockchain solution involves an internal assessment by the development team to uncover and address potential issues before any initial commercial release, while beta testing engages external users/testers in actively evaluating the blockchain to identify and resolve any issues before it is deployed for widespread commercial use. This is critical for ensuring VeraViews continues to function correctly.

This will also enable us to test which PoV token ecosystem best serves our commercial needs, and stress-test different chains with the vast quantity of data that is generated during an advertising campaign.

There is some call to rush this process. We implore our community to understand that this is perhaps one of the most critical updates to the PoV system in its history, and given its use in the VeraViews adstack, which drives Verasity’s commercial endeavors, we will take steps to ensure it is done methodically and with care. Verasity has been in the market since 2017 and has seen ample examples of rushed contracts or development decisions which have ended in disaster for other projects — either through exploits or a disruption of functionality. Verasity is a B2B company that exists to market and provide advertising and invalid traffic prevention services to publishers and advertisers, and this must always remain our key priority.

We stated clearly, after burning the Warchest tokens, that PoV migration would not be quick and would require a period of consultation, testing, and implementation with several solutions before being deployed to a live environment. This process comes with unknown variables and represents an extensive workstream for our developers who are also working in parallel on our video adstack and other products.

2.2. Quarterly VRA Token Burn

For Q4, our quarterly burn was 50,774,689 VRA tokens. This represents a similar value to that of Q3, with significant upgrades into the VeraViews adstack for commercial expansion in 2024.

This means that in total in 2023, Verasity has burned a total of 293,089,056 VRA tokens.

You can find this quarter’s burn transaction here.

2.3. VeraAds

In late November, we announced the launch of VeraAds. This new service from Verasity is specifically designed to onboard Web3 publishers and companies into VeraViews, facilitating monetization of their video inventory through traditional advertising channels, bridging the gap between Web2 and Web3 marketing for enhanced revenue opportunities.

Web3, blockchain, and metaverse technologies have expanded rapidly in the last few years, leading to a multitude of publishers with high traffic and large user bases, who are not currently monetizing their inventory through programmatic ads — a huge lost revenue opportunity for publishers in the space, and a missing channel for brands looking to target Web3 and emerging tech enthusiasts.

VeraAds will enable Verasity to expand its publisher base, generate revenue, and expand its client list. A hybrid team composed of both advertising professionals and blockchain experts, VeraAds will bridge the gap between Web2 and Web3 marketing, connecting the most rapidly growing technology publishers and companies with the world’s largest revenue generating opportunities via programmatic ads.

You can also listen to a X Space session with our CMO, Elliot Hill, talking about VeraAds and its impact, here.

2.4. Neo Tokyo

In one of the biggest pieces of unexpected news this year, let alone this quarter, Verasity was excited to announce that we officially joined the Neo Tokyo community — an online community of Web3 gaming professionals, teams, and experts dedicated to advancing eSports in the blockchain space.

Founded by crypto expert Alex Becker, Neo Tokyo believes that uniting the smartest people in the Web3 gaming industry in a single networking group will give associated projects a tremendous edge as crypto gaming grows from its current infancy into a globally relevant industry.

This is a fundamentally important area of focus for Verasity and VeraAds, as we expect the volume of video content and streaming opportunities to massively expand alongside the growth of the Web3 gaming industry. As a video player and programmatic adstack solution, this could represent a huge opportunity for adoption of our products and tech stack.

Our membership in the Neo Tokyo community will enable us to meet Web3 gaming publishers and projects and make our video technology available to new audiences.

2.5. Verasity and Carbon Browser Team Up for PoV Adoption

Carbon Browser is a free and open-source web browser developed by Carbon X Labs based on a custom fork of the Chromium web browser and its powerful Blink engine. It’s a privacy-focused browser, which can automatically block online ads and website trackers by default. To date, Carbon Browser has brought over 7 million users onboard, making it one of the fastest growing browsers worldwide!

Where users choose to have visible ads or where approved ads can be shown, Verasity is integrating Proof of View natively into the Carbon Browser through a browser extension to prevent fraud and stop bots.

Verasity and Carbon Browser announced their collaboration in late October, and a first date for integration has since been included on both projects Q1 2024 roadmaps! We’ll soon have more details about what bringing PoV to Carbon Browser’s 7 million users will look like, and why it’s an important milestone for Verasity.

2.6. European Patent Approval

As always, we have been pursuing patent protection for our proprietary technology, Proof of View (PoV). This quarter, we secured one of the most important patents to date, from the EU Patent Office. Patent protection enables us to take our product to market in certain jurisdictions safely in the knowledge that it can’t be copied.

Europe is one of the largest advertising markets in the world. In 2022, digital advertising spend in the EU economic area reached 86 billion euros according to Statista, with some 29 billion of this expected to be spent in video advertising by 2028.

PoV now has varying patent protection in all of the world’s largest advertising markets, including the USA, China, Europe, Eurasia, Singapore, South Korea, and Hong Kong.

2.7. Bitcoin.com Wallet and DEX listing

In early October, Verasity listed on the Verse DEX, a decentralised exchange launched by major Web3 wallet Bitcoin.com. Support for VRA was also added in the Bitcoin.com Wallet, which has over 40 million users.

This opens up Verasity to a huge new audience and we are delighted to have been included in the Bitcoin.com ecosystem!

2.8. Upgraded Support with AwesomeQA

A minor but important upgrade to how we handle user questions and queries, in early October we announced that we were working with AwesomeQA, an AI-based customer support tool which would help our existing community management team to handle incoming requests.

We are proud that we are able to handle hundreds of requests from multiple channels throughout our ecosystem, and AwesomeQA has been instrumental in helping us achieve this.

2.9. VeraViews Performance Update

Finally, just before the Christmas holidays, we showed performance improvements from early 2023, including a 132% increase in the viewability of ads on our platform, an increase in eCPMs and a large increase in impressions and opportunities for one of our long-standing publishers.

3. Socials Growth and Marketing

Q4 marked a series of notable social achievements for Verasity, including clinching the #1 LunarCrush AltRank spot, a ranking that combines various important social metrics — monitoring over 4,500 cryptocurrencies. Throughout the quarter, VRA consistently emerged as the most tweeted altcoin. Additionally, we celebrated surpassing 600,000 community members, an increase of over 100,000 in just six months.

Find our key social milestones from this quarter below:

3.1. Press Coverage

This quarter, Verasity gained significant media attention, being featured in major global publications. Notably, we were mentioned in Nasdaq, a piece highlighting the scale of the ad tech market, the market cap of legacy solutions, and Verasity’s unique open-ledger-based offering. Additional coverage included articles in Business Insider and Bitcoinist, with a second feature in Nasdaq.

3.2. AMAs and Podcasts

Many of our longstanding community members are familiar with our continuous engagement in new communities through AMAs, a key cog in our marketing strategy to draw new attention to Verasity. Have some time? We’ve compiled all of our Q4 AMA and podcast recordings:

3.3. New Exchange Listings

Verasity continues to pursue new exchange listings for our ecosystem’s native token, VRA, and Q4 was no exception. This quarter, VRA was listed on one of Brazil’s top cryptocurrency exchanges, BitcoinToYou, and the widely-used platform Bitcoin.com, which boasts over 40 million users. Further strengthening our market presence, VRA perpetual contracts were added to leading tier 1 platforms, Bybit and Crypto.com.

Our efforts to make VRA more accessible are ongoing, as we engage in discussions with new exchanges to support our large global community. Stay tuned for more updates as we expand our exchange presence in the upcoming quarters.

For the latest VRA listings from Q4, see below.

3.4. Partner Events

In Q4, we collaborated with exchanges Bybit, SimpleSwap, BitMart, and Gate.io, to organize a series of trading competitions for VRA. The cumulative rewards from all these events amounted to over $100,000. Below are the details of the events run, which effectively boosted engagement and market visibility for VRA.

Final Outlook

Verasity continues to deliver on it’s commercial goals and aims, with carefully planned product developments and updates. Our collaborations in the Web3 space, especially with Carbon Browser and Neo Tokyo, have the potential to open up an entirely new market for Verasity’s video programmatic ecosystem and tools, and this will continue to be a key focus through 2024.

We’d like to thank everyone for another action-packed quarter, and we’ll soon be publishing a full 2023 report, as well as a detailed look at our 2024 roadmap.

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