Comment on From millions of dollars to under a grand: The dramatic fall of the NFT
Klox@lemmy.world 1 day agoIt’s not that different from how it currently works, but the difference is the platform is distributed and not centralized. NFTs are nonfungible, and the contract process guarantees the NFT can’t be owned by multiple wallets. There can be only “one”.
A venue generates 5000 NFTs (could be individual seats, could be general ticket) and puts them on an NFT marketplace (e.g. OpenSea) for the ticket price (e.g. $100) + 1% (OpenSea will also charge a fee). I buy one of those tickets for $101. I go to the venue. The ticket scanner sends a challenge to my phone, and my phone generates a signature that proves I have the ticket, and I go in.
If I can’t go for whatever reason I can’t go, I can post the NFT to the same or a different marketplace for any price I want to list it for.
Logistically, what if I lose my phone, and can’t verify the challenge proving I have the NFT at the gate (or whatever similar scenario). The same system intended to prevent fraud also means the system is not flexible for human error. But maybe that’s worth it for everyone to not have to pay 15-30% fees by centralized ticket management systems.
frongt@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
I’m still not seeing the difference between this and an entry in a standard SQL database.
I don’t see how this is cheaper, either. A venue management company using a separate marketplace adds complexity, instead of managing the ticket in-house. It adds interoperability, sure, but also management and development work. And I certainly wouldn’t trust each venue to securely implement it themselves.
Klox@lemmy.world 1 day ago
You aren’t seeing a difference between what I described and a SQL database? First, nobody opens a SQL database to the public. There’s a ton of code surrounding every database. How do you think a SQL database ensures only “one owner” of a ticket? It requires identity tracking and management as the tip of the iceberg. And how do you think a SQL database allows people to exchange ownership of the ticket? It requires creating uniquely identified tokens, and code to bridge across systems and exchange the UIDs around. On and on. Almost no venues are doing this in-house, I am not sure what you mean by that.
You’re not thinking of any complicated scenarios if you think ticket sales can be “just a SQL database”. Ticketmaster offers a ton of management around tickets specifically because they are not using any generalized exchange platform (e.g. an NFT standard). With NFTs the bar is lowered for venues to manage it themselves. Posting NFTs to a NFT exchange is dead simple. You don’t need an IT department, hosting costs, staff, call center, etc. to support it. You need a couple of point of sale devices for verification at the door (something they generally already need).
I feel like you’re putting out mixed messages or I’m not understanding your point. You wouldn’t trust venues to use NFTs successfully because they need to do something specific? Or you are referring to in-house development not being done securely? My overall point is, NFT exchange becomes a standard around which venues can operate independently with significantly less overhead, is simpler for the consumer, and cuts out predatory centralized ticket services.
CrackedLinuxISO@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Not the person you’re talking to, but it seems like a stretch that some little nightclub will want to build and maintain their own smart contract infrastructure. It’s not just issuing the tickets, it’s also building and distributing the tools to quickly validate the hundreds/thousands of attendees every night.
For example, it’s not enough just to validate that everyone at the gate has an NFT. I could enter the venue with a valid token, and then transfer it to my friend still outside once I’m through the door. So now the bouncer needs to track what tickets have already been scanned, and you probably want it to update off-chain (faster and no gas fees).
Not that I can pretend to know what already goes in to a venue supporting TicketMaster, but I figure there’s got to be a reason why these middlemen were wanted in the first place. That reason is probably about venues wanting to do music and not tech support.
Klox@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
Ack. I’m not going to pretend like I’ve thought up the whole business plan, but it’s well known the centralized ticket agencies have huge markups. Ticketmaster’s ticketing business is something like $3B in revenue with $1B in profit.
I’m sure there’s still a need venue services, I didn’t mean to suggest the Venue can be entirely in-house. Maybe I’m minimizing that part of their business, but if tickets are NFTs it’s extemelry easy to avoid vendor lock-in for expensive scanners and day-of services.
A database indexing scanned tickets is cheap if you don’t want to burn/transfer the NFT at the door (depends on the network costs too). But again I think that’s the cheap part of what these ticket business do.