Introduction

A $3 million tweet, a $600,000 cat gif and an eye-wateringly expensive collection of NBA moments that people have spent around $230 million trading so far. These curiosities are connected by an emerging technology that has the potential to revolutionise the way humans do business with one another.

Digital assets have previously not been seen as collectable items; why would anybody pay for something they could just download for free with a quick Google search?

The problem? How to verify which picture or gif is the actual original.

There’s no collectable value to something anybody can download and display if there is no proof of originality. Enter blockchain-based Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) that prove authenticity and ownership, with the option to attach smart contracts to those digital assets permanently.

At Seatlab, we’re going to use that proof of authenticity, in conjunction with NFC technology, to validate event tickets on the day. Our tickets will be the NFT (non-fungible token). The smart contracts attached to them will offer a way to customise conditions on each resale and transfer ownership of tickets quickly, securely and without the need for third-party intermediaries.

Cat games

One of the early uses of blockchain technology for recreation was an online game called CryptoKitties. It allowed users to trade virtual pet cats.

Each cat is a digital asset, or Non-Fungible Token, making them a unique, one-off item. Records and smart contracts kept on the Ethereum blockchain allowed users to prove ownership, breed, trade or sell their virtual cats with each other without the need for third-party mediation or supervision. It is this technology that has been utilised in the sale of other digital assets.

Humans love collecting rare items, and while CryptoKitties’ limit of around 4 billion cats means they aren’t super rare, it has quickly been established that the same model and technology could be applied to genuinely rare items.

When twitter founder Jack Dorsey sold his original tweet (the first on the platform) for close to $3 million (and donated the money to charity), the fact that it is the actual first tweet was the reason it commanded the price it did. By proving authenticity, digital assets and art can, in theory, become as expensive and desirable as physical art.

The authenticity of this tweet was verified by data securely held on one of the various blockchains, the same encrypted ledger that cryptocurrencies use to verify their transactions.

It’s this way of looking at blockchains as an irrefutable ledger of data that has the potential to revolutionise the way digital tickets are perceived as well.

A little background on ticket fraud

In the switch from paper tickets to digital, a vast amount of paper was saved (which is incredible!), but the collectable, sentimental value of a ticket was also changed.

Physical paper tickets were made hard to reproduce by the quality of the paper, complex designs and intricate watermarks, features which sometimes made them collectable or worth keeping for the original attendee. Although paper tickets were difficult to forge on a small scale because the cost of replicating the design and watermarks was rarely worth it, if an event was large enough, people would try to replicate the tickets on a large scale. Even then, replicating the quality of the originals was hard, in the same way you can’t just print a few banknotes on your printer at home!

The boom of digital technology brought in QR codes and online ticketing providers like Seatlab, offering a cost-effective way of ticketing. A unique QR code, when scanned, is the stamp of authenticity – communicating with data on a server for verification.

This technology represented a step forwards in the battle against ticket fraud. It also reduced costs for producing tickets, lowered production times and eliminated the need for physical postage of tickets. Soon, the process became the smooth transaction it is today: select your seat on an interactive map, checkout using credentials established from third parties or your own email, receive an email confirmation and a QR code to be presented on entry. 

The QR codes can be created by anybody, of course, but they wouldn’t register with any information when scanned at an event. 

It also meant, no longer did most events take the time to decorate the QR codes audiences would have on their smart devices with artwork or even the event’s branding. Not that anybody could blame event organisers for doing so. Once the utilitarian QR codes have been scanned, they are rendered useless, and few would argue the aesthetic quality of a barcode as museum-worthy. 

Thus, as previous generations of live event attendees have collected tickets from events, nobody now has a collection of QR codes they are saving as tokens of special memories; it just doesn’t feel the same.

Turning tickets into non-fungible tokens, authenticated by the blockchain the same way a $3 million tweet is verified, would bring a whole host of benefits for both customers and event organisers. The most obvious of which is an almost totally fraud-proof ticketing system – doing away with the need for QR codes, along with opening the door to tickets being collectable items once again!

That’s why Seatlab is entering the NFT ticketing market, using the power, security and speed of the Solana blockchain to ensure authenticity.

Before we get into how awesome the Solana blockchain is vs other blockchain offerings, we should explore some of the different technologies that make NFT ticketing possible. Let’s try to understand best the security they can offer, some of the benefits, and how they have already begun to change the way we look at digital assets.

What is a blockchain?

Simply put, a blockchain is almost self-explanatory. It is a series of blocks containing data that are chained together. Where it becomes more technical to understand is how this data is any more secure than other data encrypted by traditional means stored on a server.

Information on a blockchain is stored on a network of computers (referred to as “nodes”) that use the blockchain, meaning there is no single, centralised storage. Once a block is full of data, it is encrypted and chained onto the previous one. This means that not only is there no one point to attack to access the data, but that the data is stored on multiple nodes on the blockchain. Once encrypted onto the blockchain, the data then becomes irrefutable.

This makes it almost impossible to tamper with the data held on the blockchain.

A blockchain then acts as a permanent, irrefutable record of all the transactions which have taken place on it, which is how cryptocurrency transactions are verified. Instead of contacting a bank, or middle man, to secure a traditional transaction, the blockchain simply looks back through its data and checks whether or not the funds exist before permanently recording them as transferred to the recipient.

This is not an in-depth explanation of the technology, but one that gives a good overview. For a more detailed understanding of blockchains, check this out.

Smart Contracts

The security of the blockchain gives us an insight into how strong ticket authentication backed by the blockchain could be, but the additional power of unmediated transactions comes in the form of smart contracts.

Smart contracts are deterministic programs triggered by certain events. If that sounds a bit “programmer”, it’s because they are just that – programmed pieces of code that execute when certain conditions are met.

The foundation of many programming languages is “if/when” statements; smart contracts are no different. The smart contracts are attached to data on the blockchain, in our case, tickets. Whenever an action happens with the ticket (a sale, for example), the binding smart contract is executed, and a set of actions occur if the conditions in the smart contract are met. “If/when the ticket is sold….do these things”.

Where smart contracts have the potential to change ticket selling is in the “reselling” of tickets. If a customer buys an NFT ticket for an event and decides they can no longer attend, when they sell the NFT ticket, the smart contract can be programmed to allocate a percentage of that sale to the event organisers, artists, athletes, etc. if desired. This smart contract will continue to run every time the ticket is sold, meaning if it changes hands ten times, revenue will be generated ten times.

The owner of the genuine ticket will have the NFT, proving authenticity and ownership, allowing them entry to an event.

Event Day

So, on the day, in a packed venue, with crowds streaming in, how do staff and security verify these tokens securely and efficiently?

With Seatlab’s NFT ticketing, each NFT has an NFC tag attached to it (through the smart contract). When the ticket is transferred or sold, the NFC tag will go with it.

NFC (near field communication) is the same technology used in paying for things with your phone (Apple/Android Pay). It allows two devices to communicate with each other when close by. NFC is dynamically encrypted, meaning the encryption is changed for each transaction, making it incredibly secure.

Event attendees will keep their tickets in the Phantom Wallet, a secure, digital crypto wallet developed with Solana in mind. At the gate, event staff will use NFC technology to scan and verify the ticket’s authenticity, allowing the true owner entrance to the event.

Smart contracts allow Seatlab’s clients to retain control of access, even after a ticket has been deployed onto the blockchain. If for any reason an event is cancelled, or a particular ticket becomes voided, the NFC tag can be removed from the ticket, meaning the customer will keep the ticket, but it will not allow them entry to the event.

This communication takes less than a second, meaning event day gate control is fast, secure and smooth running.

Is NFT ticketing the future?

It’s not just about allowing customers to have fancier looking tickets. There are a host of benefits with NFT ticketing for event organisers and the audience. 

• Reduced Fraud. This one we’ve covered heavily, but NFT ticketing has the potential to eliminate ticket fraud entirely.
• Attached Perks. Smart contracts allow Seatlab’s users to bind perks to tickets, meaning returning customers, early buyers or anybody else you want to reward can have perks attached to their ticket. The perks could be anything from free food inside the venue to VIP access.
• Cost. Digital tickets are cheap to produce and can be distributed by email or SMS. Once on the Solana blockchain, transaction fees are never more than $0.01.
• Programmable Additional Revenue. As mentioned, event organisers or artists can earn a share of the reward as tickets are resold, forever! Years after an event, organisers can benefit from a percentage of that sale if a ticket becomes a collectable item.

Back to the blockchain

All the perks of Seatlab’s NFT tickets are written into smart contracts on the Solana blockchain. 

One of the sticking points for blockchains has historically been the cost of transactions and their speed. Early blockchains were sometimes not designed with scalability in mind, meaning they slow down as their user numbers increase.

Processing power is the commodity in a blockchain, which might be simultaneously running currency, NFTs, games and other decentralised apps. As power becomes limited, there is a backlog of transactions waiting to be verified. To combat this slowdown, some blockchains offer the option to pay more for “priority” transactions. Unfortunately, this is a sticking plaster, simply leading to ever-increasing fees and transaction delays.

Solana has been built with scalability in mind, meaning they promise a transaction on the Solana network will never cost more than $0.01 for both developers and users.

NFT tickets from Seatlab use the Solana blockchain to prove authenticity and NFC communication to establish that on entry. This leads to a quick, reliable, secure digital ticket that can be kept as a memento for years to come.For more information on how Seatlab’s NFT ticketing can change your event, get in touch with our team here.