Ticket interoperability 2020

At the heart of the GET Protocol, it’s the ability to make tickets truly digital. Having a fast and transparent data layer to store the relevant ticket states is a key requirement for the platform to truly scale. Why is that? Because without a clear way of checking, registering and propagating ticket changes of a ticket there will be no consensus about the current state of all tickets. Without a standard, it is not possible to track tickets distributed by different sales funnels. This fragmentation creates huge inefficiencies for both issuers and buyers.

More funnels, more $ale$

Digitization of tickets brings along a wide array of benefits; less scalping, fraud and better fan data. However, the client making the buy decision will always prefer the system that boosts their ability to sell more tickets. Artists might tweet with their hart, but mo$t of them $ign ticketing contract$ with their wallet.

Issuance of tickets on different platforms (and by different ticketing companies even) is very common in the industry. Something we have witnessed ourselves during ADE.

For the protocol to have mass-market appeal, being able to process, track and monetize tickets from different funnels is crucial. Including tickets that we would classify as ‘dumb’. This does not mean we are compromising on ticket security, we are merely allowing less secure tickets to be tracked alongside smarter tickets.

Luckily there is a big downside for ticket issuers when using multiple funnels with ‘dumb tickets’. After the QR codes are issued to a funnel, they cannot easily be revoked, changed or interacted with. It is like exposing your private key in public, even if you manage to delete the key quickly. You can never be sure it wasn’t stored, until its too late.. Take for example this instance:

There is no way of knowing who is right or wrong in this Ticketmaster case(although I would dare to take a bet). Due to their reputation, everything they say that requires the public to trust will not be believed. What if they were telling the truth all along?? THE INJUSTICE!!! probably not though lol.

No party can make any meaningful claim in this case. The ‘dumb QR codes’ cannot be tracked as they are essentially naked private keys. We cannot figure out who sold the ticket and from whom this ticket originated. This situation favors those that like the shadows and doubt. It draws out bad immoral actors. Let me introduce you to; the ticketing industry.

Hi it’s me. Benjamin. Remember kids: The sound of the cash register has always drowned out the sound of angry tweet notifications.

Back to reality, ‘disagreeing with capitalism’-as a service never really took hold with the mainstream. So we Duch socialists better not finger-wag too long to the big bad wolf called ‘driving shareholder value’. If we want to improve the way tickets are issued we better $peak Benjamin$.

Let me try.

More transparency, more sales

The key idea of the GET Protocol is to standardize the way we register a ticket changing state. Regardless of the back-end of the ticketing company. With such standardization in place tickets of a single event can be propagated to funnels, without losing control. Tickets of an event could be issued on multiple funnels, with only the necessary state changes about the fundamental state of the ticket being propagated (so no sensitive information companies do not want to share for competitive reasons).

Finally; the sound of the cash register

The GET Protocol ticket transparency add-on will allow ticket issuers to track tickets of an event across several funnels. Allowing them to optimize funnels as they go. In addition, they are able to effectively interact with the current owners of a ticket.

Each statehash points to the previous statehash and so on. All the way to the root of the tree. Due to the way state changes are hashes and calculated and because of Statebox properties we can infer current and previous states without exposing any identifying data.

Every hour Stoolbox registers a batch of ticket statechanges to the blockchain.

What the hash is going on here?

There is no information to be extracted from only analyzing a single ticket mutation in such an IPFS batch. Only when the complete history of the graph tree is downloaded and analyzed is it possible to determine to draw conclusions. This iterative process of crawling the IPFS batches and building a state-tree is conducted by the ticket explorer.

Sneakpeak image from the documentation on how to interpret the mutation receipts stored to IPFS by the GET Protocol.

The work on achieving this interoperability between ticket inventories is still ongoing. There are a lot of problems to solve and tools to be built. By open-sourcing the GET Protocol standard as well as all the ticket explorer code we aim to instill a open source developer community.

The GET Protocol Ticket Standard

The first documentation and specifications on how the GET Protocol registers events, tickets and more will be released by the end of Q1 2020. This technical specification will allow anybody with an internet connection to verify the ticket data as made public by the GET Protocol.

In order to effectively demonstrate the type of transparency we are providing, the GET Protocol Foundation will open-source the first iteration of the ticket explorer. Both the open-source code base of the explorer as expected to go into production towards the end of Q1.

“Let the hashes do all the talking.”

The Klaytn Connection

In 2019 we announced that we have partnered with Klaytn, a Kakao subsidiary, one of Korea’s largest internet conglomerates. As of writing (December 2019) GET is still an Ethereum based asset. But as our cooperation with Klaytn intensifies it seems more and more likely that GET will swap blockchain in 2020.

Going for a swap is an intensive and complicated process. Therefor we do not take this decision lightly and are taking the time.

As our own presence in Korea will grow in 2020(if this message is still here it has slipped passed Olivier, hurray!). Klaytn is working towards great things. Let me list a few:

The Klaytn Launchpad

In 2019 Klaytn has mainly focussed on laying the foundation for their blockchain. They boarded 50+ businesses. Added very prominent members to their governance counsel. Large influential companies as Samsung, Upbit, Kakao, Binance and more have joined the ecosystem!

These developments have further solidified our belief that with help op Klaytn, the GET Protocol will be able to scale faster.

The Klaytn Platform

The prominent blockchain companies in the Klaytn ecosystem might help the protocol to get things done on the b2b front. The most exciting opportunities of being part of Klaytn don’t come from their network/influence but from the reach of their daily userbase.

Klip will be available for KakaoTalk all 220 million registered and 49 million monthly active users.

Klip, the Klaytn digital wallet

One of the most exciting aspects of Klaytn is how they plan to integrate a crypto wallet in the Kakao talk-app(220M registered users, 50M active users). The GET Protocol is an inherently mobile focussed product. By integrating into the Kakao ecosystem and having access to their reach. Klip will enable us to make trading smart tickets as seamless as sending a text message.

We see tremendous opportunity in possible integration between GET Protocol and the Kakao ecosystem, both for the GET token directly, as with smart tickets and functionalities of the protocol.