GET Protocol — Research by Cryp2Gem
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The author of this research is invested in the GET Protocol project but tends to stay unbiased while researching and writing. This research is not intended as a promotion and is not part of any paid promotion. Cryp2Gem strongly believes in unbiased researching, sharing knowledge and transparency even when possibly invested, which will always be stated.
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Hi, guys & girls from our beloved C2G community. My name is Sir Dutchie, and I want to introduce you to my absolute favourite blockchain project for this blog. It’s my first blog EVER, and I hope you will like it as much as I enjoyed writing it; ENJOY!
In a crypto market where the valuation of projects is mostly based on ‘if’s, when’s and a lot of future promises’, I wanted to introduce to you a refreshing project that has been around since 2016 which is already generating revenue, solves a big existing issue and on top of that: they put blockchain in the hands of people of all ages, genders and different cultures, without them even knowing (as it should be).
Now, grab a beer or some wine, maybe some snacks and enjoy! Because it is my pleasure to introduce to you the blockchain project GET Protocol.
What is GET Protocol, and who is behind it?
GET Protocol offers a solution to problems that have been plaguing the ticketing industry for decades. Using the GET Protocol, artists, event organizers, and ticketing companies can offer their ticket buyers and fans a fair, transparent and easy ticketing experience. Their mission is to become the worldwide open-source data standard of digital rights to enter an event.
GET Protocol has processed more than 700.000 sold tickets, and there are over 300.000 wallet holders. This means that over 300.000 people have used the GET Protocol, mostly without even knowing it! Because the entire blockchain aspect of GET Protocol is kept “under the hood” to keep the product as simple and clean, it can be.
All these tickets are sold in different verticals, to name a few: museums, festivals, concerts, live streams, theatres, office spaces and bars/restaurants. Besides these verticals, a lot more other verticals are being explored! For instance, public transport, amusement parks etc.
GET Protocol has a team of 40 (and growing) frontend, backend and full-stack developers, salespeople, customer support folks, marketing and community managers, international business developers, a lawyer, blockchain developers and three dogs. They are based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Say hi, everyone! Well, maybe not everyone (team photo’s getting old fast!), there are many job openings at GET protocol to quadruple the team in the next two years. So they have new hires monthly at this point, so for the next photo of the team, we need a much wider lens?!
Oh yes, if it wasn’t too obvious, they are hiring! Careers — Jobs — GUTS Tickets (recruitee.com)
GET Protocol is a 100% digital ticketing system that has been built, battle-tested and fine-tuned at real events by real, non-digital savvy attendees. Yes, even my granny (81) bought tickets through GUTS tickets (one of the GET protocol integrators) to visit a cabaret show. Try it out yourselves! If my granny can do it…
GUTS Demo — Eating pudding for proof — GUTS Tickets
As shown in the demo, the end-user pays for the tickets in FIAT. The GET Protocol is completely integrated into the back-end. Do people ever ask you how sending and receiving an e-mail works under the hood? Chances are, they don’t. People want a seamless experience and are mostly not interested in how it all works. They do want to reap the benefits, though! For those interested in ‘how the engine runs’, there is definitely the possibility to dive under the hood.
GET Protocol utilizes a blockchain agnostic approach and NFT’s and cryptocurrency to provide transparency and honesty to ticketing. Thanks to the inherently public nature of blockchain, it becomes possible to keep every actor in the ticketing chain accountable. So we can track the entire life-cycle of all the tickets for a specific event. Just one example: remember the days when TicketMaster supposedly put half of their ticket inventory straight onto their re-sell platforms (which they owned) for huge mark-ups? By that also creating a sense of artificial demand for specific events…? Those days are gone, or let me rephrase: ‘They would be caught with their pants down using the GET Protocol!’.
How do we track the life cycle of each ticket? With the NFT Ticketing explorer, which is due to be released within days, a little sneak peek:
The journey to find a suitable blockchain
Probably the most talked about topic in the Official GET Protocol Telegram channel, next to ‘when Binance?’, was the hurdles GET Protocol encountered finding a suitable public blockchain to issue their tickets on. Creating a ticket should not cost more than a few pennies, else you would price yourself completely out of the market, and nobody will use your product. Do you begin to see the problem when you need to mint 50.000 NFT’s on Ethereum for just one tour of a comedian…?? That’s not just a few pennies!
The pandemic gave the team a chance to look into the scaling problem, and during that journey, they have found a suitable partner:
So what is Polygon in short? Polygon essentially offers blockchains that run alongside the Ethereum main chain, which are faster and cheaper than the mainchain itself. Users can bridge between the Ethereum mainchain and Polygon sidechains to have a quick and easy way of transacting without heavy fees. GET Protocol can now finally create all its NFT tickets on Polygon and still be competitive. How did GET Protocol work around the scaling problem before they partnered with Polygon? They build a petri-net together with Statebox (A petri-what?.. exactly my thoughts the first time I heard about it..), you can read all about it HERE!
How or by whom is the GET protocol used?
GET Protocol has no real competition within the blockchain space itself (some have tried: Blockparty, Blocktix, Aventus etc.). Instead, their main competitors primarily exist, ticketing companies like TicketMaster and Eventim, for example. Now, to take the fight to these big ticketing companies practically dominating the worldwide ticketing market, the team already figured it should move towards a ‘death by a thousand cuts strategy.
It all begins with convincing clients the solution works, right? Those clients use ticketing systems tried and tested over almost decades (those systems have a proven track record). So what are you gonna do when you want to play in the big boy's arena but need a proven track record for your idea/product? That’s right! You set up your own ticketing company that runs on the Get Protocol. So GET Protocol founded GUTS Tickets in the Netherlands to showcase to their potential clients that their system can handle a queue with hundreds of thousands of people in line and selling tens of thousands of tickets in a blink of an eye without breaking down. That is not a small feat GUTS Tickets managed to achieve. Look, for example, what happened when the tour of Dutch comedian Jochem Myjer went on sale via GUTS in the Netherlands:
This was just one of the stress tests of the GET Protocol to see if it would withstand such traffic. Ultimately above mentioned and other events convinced potential clients to use the GET Protocol. In addition, it had now proven itself to be reliable over the last few years (the proven track record we talked about). So it happened that founding GUTS tickets were the best move the team of GET Protocol made.
Now, let’s say a potential client wants to use the GET Protocol; how do they do that? GET Protocol, in essence, offers two different packages to their clients:
⦁ White-label solution: So they decided to white-label their own ticketing solution (GUTS tickets) to allow parties worldwide to integrate the protocol and issue smart tickets in their local markets under their own branding in an easy way. Basically, they slap their own logo on everything from the ticket shop to the website and start selling tickets. Hence why GUTS Tickets and, for instance, the Italian ticketing company Wicket Events have the same look and feel.
There are already several whitelabel integrators around the world, including:
⦁ Guts Tickets — First integrator of GET Protocol, based in The Netherlands
⦁ ITIX — Based in The Netherlands
⦁ Flockey — Based in The Netherlands
⦁ Wicket Events — Based in Italy
⦁ Tectix — Based in Germany
⦁ getTicket — Based in South Korea
⦁ New additions in the USA, UK and Canada announced, and more countries will surely follow!
⦁ Digital twin — plugin: The ticketing space is old, and many ticketing companies rely on old infrastructure for selling their tickets. If GET Protocol would approach these parties saying: ‘Hey, we have a great new ticketing system, want to try it out?’ the most likely outcome will be that they will not try it, as it requires them to leave their old systems behind in which they invested a lot of money and above all, know is reliable! So what GET Protocol can offer is a plugin that effectively makes the protocol run in a shadow mode next to the existing central database of the ticketing company. So every ticket the central database issues will result in a ‘digital twin’ on the protocol. By offering this, GET Protocol is betting that the ticketing company will see the big benefits of fully digital tickets over their traditional issued tickets and ultimately decide to fully commit to the protocol and leave the old central database behind.
NFT ticketing
There are several use cases GET Protocol is offering through their NFT ticketing system, such as:
⦁ Perpetual Revenu: Since NFT tickets are programmable, GET Protocol introduces a built-in ‘royalty split’ that allows for a profit-sharing system tailored by the event organiser and delivers further value to artists venues and legitimate actors in the ticketing chain whilst cutting out resale platforms and touts.
⦁ Tickets as collectables: The sentimental experience of fandom can not be overlooked. Think of a digitized version of sticking the ticket to an unforgettable night on your refrigerator, only with way more possibilities to maximize the memories and cultivate a longstanding connection with a fan. As NFTs, tickets can be turned into proof-of-attendance badges, which can be shown off online and even traded. It also allows the content creator to reward the most diehard fans who go to every show by sending exclusive content to those fans in possession of a previously issued ticket. The possibilities are endless!
⦁ Pre-financing of future events: GET protocol is almost launching their DeFi approach, allowing event organizers to use their ticket inventory as collateral. This will enable organizers to offer up their (NFT) tickets for investment before making any organisational costs. This type of crowdfunding investing can help organizers mitigate (part of) the risk of setting up an event. This will also give organizers an excellent alternative to the loan sharks or the moat of big ticketeers like Ticketmaster and Eventim, for example. In the next blog from GET protocol, there is a detailed explanation of why this idea is so revolutionary and, most importantly, a much-needed alternative for the entire industry!
Decentralizing Event Financing — Liquidity x DeFi x NFTs | by Kasper Keunen | GET Protocol | Medium
Below is a great infographic capturing everything mentioned above at one glance:
The Supply
At the moment of writing, there are a little less than 23,4 million tokens in total. It used to be 33,4 million until a few weeks ago.
At the inception of the GET protocol, a stability fund was created. The tokens in this fund were used to supply the ticketing companies with GET, so they didn’t have to buy them directly from the market. Unfortunately, as the stability fund was in a later stage deemed unnecessary, it was almost completely burned. It had 12,6 million tokens, 10 million GET was burned forever, and 2,6 million tokens were delegated to a DAO treasury.
Below is an infographic containing the information about the latest total supply distribution:
The utility of the GET token:
The GET token utility has evolved over the last years. The consensus is it will keep evolving as new functionalities to the GET Protocol are added along the way. Examples of this evolution are the recent announcements of the DAO treasury and that of the decentralized pre-event financing. The GET token will be assigned an important role in both latest additions.
In the meantime, we can look at the breakdown of the utility at this point. GET is an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain, and it is the fuel for each ticket on the GET Protocol. When an action or state change occurs to a ticket, a fee is required, calculated and paid in GET. Some examples of these state changes include a ticket being created, validated or shared. This process is similar to how gas fees work with Ethereum. After an event cycle is completed and all tickets are validated and processed, a portion of GET is acquired from the open market and burned by the protocol; this is a deflationary mechanism we like to call the GET burnback.
Writing about $0,48 worth of GET is repurchased and burned with each sold ticket.
Proof of the previous burns can be found here:
Some final words…
The pandemic has a huge impact on ticket sales worldwide. This somewhat halted the rocket phase for GET Protocol. The K-POP concerts in South Korea were cancelled with the outbreak of COVID in Asia in late 2019 (getTicket), the Italian wine festival with 300.000 visitors every year? Cancelled (Wicket)! These integrators had a rough time the last 18 months, but the clouds are slowly disappearing, and the sun is coming through from time to time.
As COVID restrictions are slowly being lifted, ticket sales are ramping up. GUTS tickets alone have increased their client base by 300% during the pandemic. So the future is starting to look good again in the short term, but most definitely in the longer term. This is held in my portfolio for many years to come because people will always look for entertainment, regardless of what happens in the crypto space.
Here some useful links in case my blog peaked your interest:
https://medium.com/get-protocol
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/get-protocol/
https://t.me/getprotocolteamupdates
Maybe the best channel of all is the ‘GET event-feed’ made by Deofex, a loved member of the community and early supporter of the project. It scans the blockchain for new events that come online, and there is a daily update with the number of tickets sold & resold.
I hope you all enjoyed this read. Sir Dutchie, OUT!
