Detailed Plan
Desired Outcome
To provide a Cardano blockchain based ticket selling marketplace for live and virtual events powered by smart contracts
Blocking problem
Legacy ticket sellers are middlemen that place high fees on the actual good, with little prevention of scalping or fraud
Costs of the problem
Entertainment is one of the largest and fastest growing sectors in the world ($2.6 trillion by 2025). *1
Ticket scalpers market estimated to be $15.9B in 2020. *2 The largest ticket seller in the US made over 10B in revenue in 2019 *3.
Evidence
https://www.consumersinternational.org/news-resources/blog/posts/consumers-sold-out-the-trouble-with-ticket-resale/, https://www.choice.com.au/soldout, https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/ticketmaster-pays-10-million-criminal-fine-intrusions-competitor-s-computer-systems-0, https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/online-shopping/drip-pricing, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/22/arts/music/ticket-scalping-bots.html, https://www.ticketnews.com/2021/04/illegal-venue-rebates-new-york-ticketing-hearing/, *1 https://www.benzinga.com/news/21/07/21937648/global-entertainment-industry-to-generate-2-6-trillion-in-revenues-by-2025-report#:~:text=The%20global%20entertainment%20and%20media,as%20fueling%20this%20new%20vibranc *2 https://bigthink.com/politics-current-affairs/scalping, *3 https://www.statista.com/statistics/193700/revenue-of-live-nation-entertainment-since-2006/
Market: there is not yet a successfully implemented ticket sales platform on Cardano. Cardano is better suited than other blockchains to provide a backbone for a ticket service with the described functionality due to its speed, decentralization, security, scalability, and low cost of transactions. There is a huge market and opportunity for artists, venues and other entertainers to directly connect to fans with little to no middleman fees and markup, empowering more people to access their experiences, services and events. Our product will incorporate codified ethos to prevent common problems in the ticket and event services sector like scalping, misaligned reseller incentives, frontrunning, ticket transfer risk, proof of purchase, verifiable authenticity, and fair ticket payment plans.
Scalping: We will limit the number of orders that can be obtained within a certain time frame from any one purchasing address or account
Misaligned reseller incentives: We can provide an opt-in service to event organizers to algorithmically determine a fair price based on the proportion of tickets that are fully sold vs unsold, creating a fair value guarantee for ticket purchases.
Frontrunning: we will always be able to display the cost the reseller paid for the ticket to the buyer, reducing the chance for exorbitant markups. Accounts that are found to purchase tickets purely for the intent of reselling at a profit will have their purchasing ability limited even further than the default scalping logic would enforce.
Ticket transfer risk: We can provide secure 3rd party escrow, with proof of funds and proof of ticket ownership to ensure neither party is a bad actor with malicious intent, while still transferring tickets quickly and cheaply.
Proof of purchase: A digital NFT can be generated with each ticket sale, so that even after the ticket is used and the event is past, the attendee can have a free memorabilia and badge to proudly collect and display.
Verifiable authenticity: We can leverage the blockchain to ensure no duplicate tickets are sold and that the tickets are indeed created by the provider of the event or an affiliate. If the provider elects to have an affiliate sales reward program, this will easily be trackable with payments disbursed in near real-time as well.
Fair ticket payment plans: A buyer of a ticket can enter into a contractual agreement to purchase a ticket in installments. Any buyer who fails to provide the funds in full by a predetermined date will automatically forfeit the ticket to auction, where it can be purchased for the difference between what has been paid and the remaining balance for non-sold out events, or auctioned to the highest bidder in the case the event is sold out. Any funds above the fair market price will be used to reimburse the original purchaser a portion or all of their funds.
Budget: The primary use of the budget will be to fund dedicated remote developers to create the required smart contracts, plus a simple web client to facilitate more rapid iteration and testing. Additional funds may be sought in a later round of fundraising to establish partnerships with venues and entertainment companies, as well as for marketing initiatives. There is a separate proposal to fund mobile developers to develop a client app, empowering those around the world access on mobile devices, which is the dominant way citizens of the globe access the web. We would like to devote full time developers to this project, and estimate 1 full stack web developer, and 2 smart contract developers, plus a project manager will be sufficient at this stage for phase one. We are seeking $62,000 to hire and fund these roles for a 3-6 month time period (length depending on full or part time).
Roadmap: in the first month, we will finalize our agreements with the talent required to develop the smart contracts, create a more granular map of the work to be done and begin to code. Our initial focus will be on creating the underlying smart contracts and a simple web client, while the mobile team that has submitted their own proposal works on building out a full-fledged enterprise grade iOS and android app. This will allow us to reach the majority of the world’s population despite many citizens having a mobile device with internet access, yet no computer, while also supporting access from a wide variety of end clients, regardless of browser or operating system. We will leverage an open source cross-platform mobile development platform for this task (React & React Native). The founding team has extensive experience using open source technologies to develop, launch and maintain enterprise grade web and mobile applications used by hundreds of thousands of users monthly.
By month three we aim to have begun testing and vetting the foundational smart contracts to enable interacting with the ticket platform. This includes listing, purchasing, and transferring ownership of the tickets. We will then turn our attention to the more sophisticated smart contracts that will differentiate our platform from legacy providers, enabled by the Cardano blockchain.
By month six we will provide additional functionality empowered by smart contracts as outlined above, like built-in scalper/bot detection and rejection, split payment contracts, and a reseller system.
Our Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the first 6 months of the project will include shipping an initial version of the web client, deploying multiple iterations of the smart contracts on the Cardano Testnet, and beginning to integrate with the mobile client frontend for android and iOS.
Our year 1 KPIs will be to successfully deploy our vetted contracts to the Cardano mainnet, acquire at least 1 partnership with a venue or event organizer, and list tickets for sale to at least 1 pilot event. Our anticipated launch date would be August 2022.
IP: Our IP policy is to provide open source contracts for the vast majority of our logic, with only sensitive details of personal information or logic that may hinder our ability to fairly serve each user obfuscated from public view. We intend to provide our services for an industry leading “middle-man fee”, and provide access to an API connected to our platform within a reasonable usage limit for free to spur additional development and accessibility options to the end user.
This project will be deemed successful if we bring to market a low-cost, frictionless experience to the end user to allow more people to enrich their lives with virtual and in person experiences from performing arts to business conventions, while empowering a more direct sales approach from artists and venues to attendees.