The founders of Monero (XMR), the largest privacy cryptocurrency, and Ticketfly, a major ticket distribution service, have teamed up to launch a brand new, open-source startup built on the Monero blockchain. Named Tari, the new startup is building a decentralized asset protocol that will be applied to the ticketing industry.

According to the official announcement by team lead Riccardo Spagni, Tari will have its own token and will operate a “merge-mined sidechain” to Monero.

“Tari will have a native token, like CounterParty, but it will operate as a merge-mined sidechain. Miners will be able to earn Tari block reward and fees as they mine Monero. In addition to binding itself to Monero’s security model, Tari will also support atomic swaps between itself and Monero.”

Tari Labs, as it will be known, will be based out of Johannesburg, South Africa. The core founders include Spagni, Naveen Jain, and Dan Teree, co-founder of Ticketfly. According to Tari’s team page, the startup already has more than 13 contributors and they are in the process of hiring more researchers and developers.

In an announcement article featured in Fortune, Teree highlights the startup’s plans to improve the distribution and transfer of digital tickets, goods and reward points across multiple industries, including retail and video games:

“Imagine Tari as a secondary market for virtual goods, like rock show passes, Starbucks Rewards kick-backs, and V-Bucks, the coin of the realm in Fortnite, a popular video game. Right now, it can be hard to transfer those assets between different websites and, at the same time, keep tabs on the items as they change hands.”

Addressing concerns regarding potential Monero time commitment issues, Spagni has indicated that he plans to free up time by stepping aside as CEO from two of his side projects, MyMonero and GloBee. While Tari will function as a centralized startup to start, the founders intend to transition to an open-source system, similar to the core Monero project.

Tari is largely theoretical at this point but has gained the backing of major venture capital firms, including Redpoint, Trinity Ventures, Canaan Partners, Slow Ventures, and Aspect Ventures.