No more fractioned experiences. Get rid of ticket scalpers. Eliminate fraud. We’ve just released a new version of NFT tickets, the one that glues everything together. We consider it to be the peak of our work so far. But what really matters is how this helps you shape new experiences.
Here is what this means to you and your community
Everything becomes an immutable token delivered to your customers’ wallets. The artwork created for your event, their access credentials, their perks and add-ons, are all packed up as the NFT ticket. Added to their wallets, these digital assets will allow them to control the full experience from one place.
Dynamic QR codes
within the NFT ticket, the QR code can be regenerated at any moment. By default, it will regenerate every 30 minutes
We’ve enhanced the NFT ticket with a dynamic QR that refreshes once every 30 minutes. Or as often as its owner likes. This way you’ll know for sure that each QR code you scan is legit, protecting the experience stakeholders against potential fraudsters. So yeah, although this is a real NFT ticket, the QR code above is useless now.
Perks and add-ons are embedded into the ticket. The benefits
the benefits are displayed within the NFT ticket
Perks and add-ons (like VIP access, multiple entries, and pre-purchased merchandise) are embedded within the NFT ticket. Attendees can easily claim their perks by showing the dynamic QR, each having its own check-in option. This keeps their assets secure while giving you access to real-time data on how they claim these benefits.
NFT tickets can be easily (re)sold or gifted
Customers can easily sell or send the tickets
Buyers can sell their NFT tickets on non-fungible token marketplaces or share them as gifts. Unlike traditional e-tickets, these smart tickets are trackable in terms of authenticity & ownership, allowing 100% safe swaps. At the same time, you can protect your community from scalpers by setting up lower and upper reselling prices. Not to mention that you can tap into the secondary market gains by setting up royalties – so that each time a ticket is resold, a certain percentage finds its way back to you.
How will you handle check-ins and benefits for a token-gated event?
Just like you did before. Use our mobile apps to scan the QR codes and data will be instantly synchronized in your Dashboard. Pretty cool, right?
Although NFTs represent one of the hottest topics, it’s often difficult to define the exact benefits they come with. The same applies to NFT tickets, of course. So during this article, we will try to explain what an NFT ticket is by naming the main benefits it brings to the events industry.
While an NFT is a digital record that comes with a computer program attached, in general, they are associated with what meets the eye. The (often not so) pretty pictures. But an NFT ticket is not just a pretty picture. It’s a pretty picture (or gif, or movie) that is disrupting the entertainment industry. And it does it providing utility through the use of blockchain ledgers. This makes it the perfect example of technology used right.
It’s very easy to set up an event and sell electronic tickets. Also for the buyers, the process is similar to buying any electronic ticket. They just need to add it to their digital wallets. Easy to use technology at scale.
But once the NFT ticket is created (or minted), the opportunities become unlimited. This new technology is not just solving many of the current issues faced by the industry, it’s actually creating new experiences and opportunities. This is why we truly believe that NFTs in the form of event tickets provide one of the biggest opportunities and are the leading example of the utility provided by blockchain technology.
Now really, what is an NFT ticket?
NFTs (non-fungible tokens) are unique digital records created on a blockchain network. Meaning that once created (minted), they can’t be altered or changed. Physical or digital assets (basically anything you can imagine, such as an event ticket, a picture, a song, a video, etc.) are stored with proof of ownership and their entire transaction history. Smart contracts (small computer programs) are associated with NFTs, allowing them to act based on a set of predefined rules.
So an NFT ticket is a digital token stored on the blockchain and has the access credentials (and many other extra benefits provided by the event organizer) embedded within itself. It’s a smart ticket with superpowers that disrupts the entire event industry. And it does it by providing easy access to a complete set of benefits for all parties involved.
The benefits of adopting NFT ticketing
To get a better understanding of what an NFT ticket is and how it improves the existing processes, let’s focus on the benefits it creates for event organizers, artists, and attendees alike.
source: Twitter
An NFT ticket gives you full control over its distribution
One of the biggest problems in event ticketing is scalping – large numbers of tickets are bought with the sole intent of reselling them for a large and quick profit. This action has a high negative impact on the overall attendee experience and creates profit on the (more than) gray secondary market.
But NFT tickets give the initial seller over the ticket distribution on both the primary and secondary markets. For starters, transactions can be checked on the blockchain and you can see if the same wallet is engaged in multiple transactions.
Furthermore, as programmable digital assets, resale prices can be embedded into the ticket. So even if somebody buys numerous items, they won’t be able to sell them for a large profit. You decide the upper and lower limits for which the event tickets can be resold. This way, you are protecting your attendees from those looking to make quick money from their passion.
Royalties and access to the secondary market
With an NFT ticket, you can even get access to the secondary market income. The smart contract of the NFT can be pre-programmed so that a specific cut from every resale is sent back to its issuer.
Known under the name of Royalties, this benefit allows event organizers and artists to get paid for their work long after the event has taken place. Especially as NFT tickets are digital collectibles that don’t lose their value once the gig is over.
Event tickets are very interesting items for collectors and they would often pay small fortunes to get their hands on them. Until now, it was extremely difficult to check the authenticity of a ticket. Especially long after the event was over. But the nature of an NFT ticket makes this process extremely transparent. The authenticity of the NFT, as well as its ownership and entire transaction history, can be checked, protecting the buyer against fraudsters and increasing the value of the item.
An NFT ticket protects your community from scammers
One of the downsides of electronic tickets is that they can be forged. And while you may prevent somebody from entering the event premises with a false ticket, it’s impossible to stop scammers from selling false tickets. Or to (re) sell the same ticket to tens or hundreds of honest buyers. One of the biggest problems buyers are currently facing is checking the authenticity of tickets bought from secondary markets. As event tickets come in limited editions. And after a certain period of time, they become available only at resale. Once an event is sold out, people are willing to pay extra just to get the opportunity to attend the event. But they often become victims of scammers that:
Sell fake tickets.
Sell the same authentic ticket more than once.
But as the authenticity of an NFT ticket can be verified on the blockchain network, the same ticket cannot be sold by two people at the same time. It also eliminates the possibility of creating fake tickets, making transactions from secondary markets as safe as the ones operated by the event organizer, thus protecting your community.
The nature of the ticket also makes it almost impossible to lose it. It’s stored in a digital wallet and can be easily accessed by its rightful owner.
Create immersive experiences with NFT Tickets. Offline and online
Using digital technology to enhance a live event is a perfect opportunity for the events industry. Your event attendees can get first access to future releases, online shows, merchandise, and even digital artwork by purchasing an NFT ticket. Possibilities are endless as these smart assets are governed by programmable smart contracts.
But as we were mentioning before, these digital assets can be used to represent both physical and digital assets. Merchandise can be easily prepacked within an NFT event ticket and claimed whenever your attendee finds it suitable.
While the scope of this article is to explain what an NFT ticket is, we are sure that it won’t take long before all tickets are going to be NFT tickets. The benefits powered by this technology are transforming the industry, making it safer and more profitable for those creating these experiences.
Furthermore, despite the technical complexity that stands behind them, NFT tickets are extremely easy to use. For issuers and buyers alike. With Oveit, you don’t need any technical know-how. It’s easy to set up your event and start selling NFT tickets. While we are taking care of all the technical aspects of the process, you can focus on creating the experiences everybody will talk about.
It’s been 18 hours since I’ve boarded my first flight. Meanwhile I switched two times. We’ve finally landed. After passing through customs I look for my name. Someone should be waiting for me. I see him. He is a middle aged man holding a tablet with my name on it.
We get to the parking lot and board the fully electric car with a brand logo I don’t recognize. As my host mentions, the government subsidized 50% of its cost.
As we drive to the hotel I look outside and I see hundreds upon hundreds of apartment blocks, many of which are still being built.
It’s July 2018 and I’ve just arrived in the city I’ll call home for the next 10 days, as I network and showcase our technology to local partners. It’s Hangzhou, China. This is where my view on payments tech will change forever.
The Hangzhou skyline
Electric cars and QR codes
The “small city of four million citizens” was a treat in many ways. Our hosts showcased some of the most advanced Chinese tech companies as well as traditional buildings and artefacts dating back to 2000 BC.
Now, 4 years after Oveit showcased its edge payments technology at the tech conference in Hangzhou, two things still linger on my mind.
The first is just how many electric cars, bikes and scooters roamed the streets. At the time Tesla was hot and growing but not nearly as big as it is right now.
At the time traditional western car manufacturers were still debating whether they should or should not switch to electric. EVs were still a huge gamble. It surprised me to find out that more than 100 electric car brands were active in the Chinese market, with many others providing charging stations, batteries and parts. All the taxi drivers switched to electric cars. It was partly due to cost savings, partly due to the government subsidies and strategic push.
NIO flagship store in Hangzhou. What was about to be unveiled was the EP9, which would become one of the fastest electric cars in the world.
The second big surprise was payments. Specifically QR code payments. One of the companies we visited just passed both VISA and Mastercard in terms of the number of transactions processed. As it turns out, that company’s growth would be stifled in a few years but at the time the energy and enthusiasm was something you can feel in the air. That company was Ant Financial, the financial arm of AliBaba.
Even though the future of the company and its prominent founder remains unclear, one thing is for sure. The total electronic payments market in China kept on growing following my visit and exploded during the Covid-19 pandemic. Tools such as AliPay and WeChat Pay were at the core of this growth and transformation. Their choice in payment processing interfaces was a peculiar technology: QR codes.
Our visit at Ant Financial. Standing in front of the ant: me.
In the western world we use different interfaces for online vs offline transactions but both are still governed by the credit and debit card. With the appearance of Apple Pay and GPay, a lot of these payments migrated to the smartphone. Many, but not nearly all. We still use debit cards, credit cards, bank transfers, cash and oh, dear … checks.
This was not the case in Hangzhou. From shopping for clothes to food, from paying your bills and taxi rides to the vegetable market, everyone used an electronic means of payment I found a bit funny at first: QR codes. For me they were a technology that failed to leave its mark in the marketing and advertising industry. What I failed to realize at first was that these were not your run of the mill QRs. They were dynamic, would run on basically any smartphone or tablet, were impossible to fake or copy, secure and easy to use.
QR codes were scanned via mobile apps and the user paid directly from her bank account, simply pointing the camera at the vendor and confirming the transaction. There was no need to carry multiple cards, each secured and processed through a specialized POS. Everyone paid and accepted payments using their smartphones quickly, safely and instantly.
Cash, especially foreign currencies, was discouraged. For some reason – I needed to exchange a $100 bill and it took me three hours to finalize the transaction. Even as a foreigner cash was a no-go.
What did I learn? It was a simple but powerful lesson: that payments in the way we grew accustomed to were now obsolete. The old way was effectively dead. Banking institutions, slow to innovate were still issuing plastic cards (so hot in the 80s) and hardly adapted to the new globally connected world.
The world changed and we, as a company, were part of the wave of changes that were transforming the world of finance and payments. Our story involved a particular market where we were good but in time we decided we want to become the best: cashless payments for live experiences. This now ranges from events and live entertainment venues to travel and hospitality.
The system we showcased in Hangzhou, our edge payments system, went on to power large festivals and venues, with tens of thousands of visitors. As the pandemic reshuffled the world of live experiences, we continued to innovate and ride the wave of change.
Recently, our R&D started playing around and found out what could happen when you combine our existing technology with the decentralized wonder called blockchain. We discovered an interesting concept that we now believe has the potential to transform the world of payments. Just like the QR codes I saw in Hangzhou, it looks and feels peculiar as a payment technology. Enter the NFT.
NFT payments – beyond fancy monkeys
NFTs are self contained digital ownership contracts. When minted to a crypto wallet, the assets this NFT holds are transferred to said wallet. These assets can range from photos, songs, movies to games and more.
But the NFT can also work as a holder of prepacked benefits and digital wallets, holding value, both fungible and non fungible. When combined with the right infrastructure, the NFTs become a payment technology.
In our case we discovered we can connect the NFT to the addons we developed, as well as the virtual wallet that our users pay and accept payments with. The usage can range from prepackaging a beer and a t-shirt to a concert to your next travel package, containing your plane ticket, payments in the city, access to attractions and local businesses or a hotel stay, even when you travel to Hangzhou.
What it can also hold is a virtual wallet. The wallet can be pre topped up, connected to a debit or credit card and can be used to pay. The NFT can become a payment technology, with properties unlike anything before, which we’ll discuss later. All this when the vendors use our Oveit Pay.
NFT payments – beyond bank accounts and transfers
As it turns out, the payments underlying AliPay and WeChat in China, as well as the likes of Revolut and Kash App are interfaces to systems that hold funds and rely on the traditional banking system. However, building upon the classical approach, they have built their own checks and balances systems to operate a secondary payment system. This new layer improves the payment speed, scalability, makes payments more usable and friendly and makes microtransactions possible.
However, operating these systems comes at a cost. These systems handle real money so their infrastructure needs to be maintained constantly, supervised and updated.
At a certain point it’s harder to keep systems secure than it is to build new features like loans, social payments and more.
As it turns out, you don’t have to do that. There is already an existing technology out there that enables fast and secure transactions, without any single point of failure: the blockchain, in its many incarnations.
There are also tools users can tap into to connect to this new technology and purchase, transact and store virtual value: the crypto wallet.
The blockchain ecosystem was in need of some sort of mechanism to point to digital value and move it from one user to another, securely. This new tool emerged in the past two years. It can do anything a bank account does plus what a card and a swift transfer can do. And a bit more. It’s the NFT.
Unlike the wallet, the NFT can hold multiple types of value abstractions. It can be transferred, it can be sold or gifted. Moreover – it can be governed by clear, transparent rules at the time of the minting. These rules are written and exposed to the whole world to audit. They are all set up in what is called a smart contract.
However, there is some confusion when it comes to the general outlook on NFTs and whether they are a useful technology or just a pump and dump scheme. The confusion is the following:
Think of NFTs as a preloaded debit card, with a bank account attached to it, with all sorts of benefits you can claim in the real world or online. It can have money stored in this bank account, it can have membership programs for all sorts of brands and communities. This card can be safely transferred or sold at a profit. It can be used as a collateral. It’s all the financial systems you know, all baked into one. And a bit more as it can be transferred, sold, traced, governed by rules and it doesn’t depend on any one system to run.
So far all we saw was the pretty picture placed on top of the card. But the bank account it was linked to was empty. There were no loaded benefits. No one built membership programs. There were no places you could use it to gain real benefits, in the real world, online or … the Metaverse. People just plastered pretty photos on it and sold them.
This is where we are right now. As with my time in Hangzhou, we all see the photo (back then it was the QR code). We don’t see what’s behind the photo and where it can lead. In the short time we had to get accustomed to NFTs we didn’t see how we could use them to transform payments. We only saw the surface.
Glancing beyond the monkey photos and the doodles, we can see the future of how NFTs can be used for payments as well as value storage and transfer. We can see the financial system moving from a single, monolithic, architecture which is old and slow to adopt change. The system is in the midst of a transformation into a new vibrant system that puts humans and human communities at its core.
Just like our existing civilization, it all started with photos of ape-like creatures doing stuff.
Meanwhile, at Oveit, we are putting this vision to the test with our very own NFT tickets.
With all its ups and downs, promises, hopes and disappointments, there is no doubt Web3 is here to stay and transform the world. The live entertainment industry is no exception – it is getting its fair share of disruption from Web3. As Oveit is one of the pioneers and leaders in the NFT ticketing space, we have decided to dive deeper and explain how you can use NFT tickets to build a better experience, connect better with your audience and solve problems you previously couldn’t solve.
But first – what are NFTs?
The most common misconception around NFTs is that they are expensive pieces of digital art. Well, they are that too. The most expensive NFT, a series of NFTs actually, called “The Merge” was sold for $91.8 million and was acquired by 28,983 collectors, snapping up 312,686 “units of mass”. This sale put the artist, Pak, at the forefront of the highest selling living artists.
So – are NFTs artwork? Are they cryptocurrencies? Yes and not really. You see, NFTs are digital ownership contracts. The ownership relationship is usually between a crypto wallet and a piece of digital content. So far the most popular form this digital content was expressed in was a piece of digital artwork. However, this is just the beginning. Let’s see how you can use NFTs to up you experiential game:
NFT ticketing can offer visitors valuable digital collectibles
Outside of the hype, there are great reasons to test NFT ticketing as an alternative to “classic” digital tickets. First and foremost, a lot of your visitors will attach a sentimental value to the visit to your event. Adding an authentic digital collectible to tickets may make your visitors feel they get more than they paid for and can add to their digital identity.
In the past, great experiences provided their visitors with all sorts of physical mementos, like a t-shirt, the physical ticket design, a wristband and more. However, t-shirts get torn, tickets get lost and at some point you do have to take wristbands off, no matter how much you enjoyed the experience. With NFT tickets your visitors can always have an authentic, beautiful memory of the visit to your event, one they will not lose and it will only get more valuable with time. Speaking of valuable collectibles:
NFTs can become digital collectible with increasing value which you can tap into
Not only can you provide NFTs together with your tickets but you can also tap into the secondary market for these collectibles.
Whenever an NFT is deployed to the blockchain, such an NFT is governed by a special kind of program designed to run perpetually on the blockchain: a smart contract. This contract can govern all sorts of behaviors your buyers might have.
If, for example, you want to get a cut of all future resales (a royalty) the smart contract can be programmed to send back a certain percentage to your own crypto wallet whenever someone resells the NFT ticket you have issued. The best thing – you don’t have to do anything for this to happen. The system will automatically send a certain percentage on each resale.
The fact that NFTs are actually self contained programs running independent of your activity or your ticketing provider helps solve one of the biggest problems (and opportunities) in the live entertainment industry: the secondary market.
Use NFT ticketing to handle secondary market sales and combat scalping
Scalping is as old as ticket sales. I’m pretty sure that whenever one of Shakespeare’s plays got popular in The Globe, just south of the Thames, there would be scalping involved. Some people would buy a lot of tickets when they went on sale with the hope of reselling them at a profit on the night of the premiere.
For centuries the best way to limit and keep scalping in check was prohibiting resale, which is effective to a certain degree. However – the need for a secondary market cannot be ignored. As the likes of StubHub have shown, people will want to resell their tickets. A better way to govern resells has to be implemented.
With the multitude of ticket sellers and types of tickets, this was not doable until blockchain ticketing technology was introduced in the ticketing industry by the likes of Oveit. Now the secondary market can be governed through NFT ticketing. Event promoters, artists and fans alike can work together to find the best way to handle sales while limiting potential losses to artists and promoters, as well as horribly inflated ticket fees to end consumers.
Use NFT ticketing to cross the boundaries of virtual and in-person events
Whereas in-person events can only happen at given times and in specific event venues, virtual events can be asynchronous and can be accessed from all over the world. The same ticket can be used to enter a real-world event but at the same time can be used digitally to access VR or AR worlds where specific experiences can be accessed.
You might think – can’t I use an e ticket to do that? Not necessarily – the world is quickly moving toward more immersive experiences where the ticket is more like a virtual passport rather than an access control token. With the NFT ticket you got at the Disney World you may be able to interact with virtual branded worlds, play games, earn rewards and more. For this to happen, the ticket will work as an open-access identifier you can use across all sorts of experiences. Blockchain is perfect for that.
Pack value into tickets, allow them to be transmitted
For a very long, long time the ticket was a simple access tool. It would allow you to enter a certain location. As the world of experiences has evolved, so has the usage of such tools. We at Oveit have always been at the forefront of innovation in the field.
For us, the NFT ticket is a way to store and access value in the form of non fungible as well as fungible tokens. Fungible value is the value you can spend in a certain venue. For example – $100 worth of purchases you can spend at your favorite festival. Non-fungible is something that cannot be split or exchanged. For example a t-shirt, a few special rides you want to access, meet and greet with your favorite star, a burger or three beverages.
With NFT tickets visitors can tailor their own personalized experience. If for some reason they may not make it to the event or venue, they can resell this experience and you, the event organizer, can get an additional fee, providing the same experience.
These are just 5 ways you can use NFT tickets to transform your event experience, your theme park visit or your tourist resort visit. We’re sure there’s plenty more we didn’t mention. What is your favorite?
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