(Ticket) NFTs: Can they ever be practical?

Someone from one of the WhatsApp groups I’m a part of shared his idea for a NFT project, and given the vast amount of time I have on my hands, I decided to take a stab at it.

The idea he proposed was to build a fan based community using nfts followed by allow[ing] fans to have more perks within the projects we execute. Pretty simple idea, matter of fact, him centering the idea around the community is something I can 100% get behind. The contrary, sucks.

Here is an example of an NFT project that sucks: Bored Apes. Why? Because BAYC arguably contributes nothing positive to the Crypto space, and arguably destroys the space’s reputation with the attention it receives and the consequence of this attention to potential, and current, stakeholders.

In other words, Yuga Labs does not care about the community. The community only became important to them after significant backlash from the public. Crypto, and any Crypto project, should have the community first, not secondary.

Although it might be easy and, dare I say, fun to make fun of BAYC and its token holders, it’s not really the focus of this post. Really, I just wanted to highlight the idea of NFTs done wrong and how we can make it right. I’m sure by now you’re more or less convinced that an NFT project will likely suck if the community is not the primary concern for the project.

Still, can a community-centered Crypto project work in Saint Lucia? Will people want to learn to set up a metamask, seek and purchase Native Tokens (e.g. ETH), and pay gas to interact with a “somewhat promising” project that provides an alternative to some already feasible, existing infrastructure? Hard mode: can the alternative be fun, positive, and may even be profitable to the community?

Well, the conclusion I got from that WhatsApp group exchange was that an On-Chain ticketing system solution can facilitate those needs. To be more specific, an NFT minting contract that mints “tickets“. Tickets that can be identified by their tier (VIP or not) and the event it was issued for.

Given these guarantees, some very obvious extensions can be developed to further extend and supplement this idea of “On-Chain event organising“. On the other hand, that may just be enough to issue tickets for the next Vice fete. Who knows.

You can maybe already think about how perks can be obtained by “ticket holders“. For certain events, ticket holders can gain perks specific to the event the ticket NFT is bound to, and VIPs may get more perks or even more customizable perks due to their status.

Given how easy it is to mint NFTs in this model (a model where NFTs are minted openly by the public; NO PRE-MINTS) a rate limiting system needs to also be set in the contracts. In other words, a ticket buyer should only be able to buy a certain number of tickets for each specified period (e.g. 10 tickets every hour). This is all so that ticket issuance is fair, for all.

The community should also benefit from this fundraising as well, thus I think that in order for this venture to work, the community should be an entity, that benefits from each mint.

Mint fees are standard in NFT projects. Artists, admins, marketers… everyone that worked on a NFT project deserves a piece of the pie for creating a multi-billion dollar project. What’s so bad in letting the community take a (significant) piece of the pie too? Each mint should give the community at most 25% of the mint fee to a DAO treasury.

Because 25% is already madness, and I would be surprised if I still have an audience at this point after the statement I made above. At first glance, it looks too generous. The community can do a lot of good with that money, however. For example, fund some local causes.

Hurricane season is here again in the Caribbean, I’m sure the community wouldn’t be against using that money for persons whose homes would be/are affected greatly by our volatile weather. The 25% could be 10%, 5% or even 2%. So long as the community gets a piece of the project’s success, the project itself WILL be successful.

A DAO therefore needs to be deployed from the get go and shouldn’t be tied to some secondary attempt at getting a bag at your expense. A DAO whose aims should be promoting the project, ensuring it is successful long term, and aids local causes (please!!).

This can be done very simply: have ticket holders lock their ticket NFT and they receive governance tokens in exchange. The tokens can then be used to participate in DAO proposals; “What should we, as a community, do with all this revenue“? Followed by a community vote on how these funds are used.

If they want their rare ticket back (to accrue perks and attend relevant event(s)) they need to exchange their tokens for their ticket. VIPs would also get more governance tokens (and thus voting rights) since they paid more for their tickets. Simple, and not an obvious cash grab.

I can’t say that this model can work in Saint Lucia. I remain very pessimistic about the prospect of this becoming successful. If some big event planner utilises a similar solution, my lack of marketing skills wouldn’t be able to guarantee that it would be successful given the market its working in.

Still, the next step to the problem at hand would be to build the solution of course! I’ve already started the initiative, though I can’t say it’s THE solution (and there is still much work to be done on the Governance structure). If you’re interested in taking a look, you can check it out in my repo

https://github.com/AzorAhai-re/ticketing

It uses the Azuki ERC721A standard to create a very gas efficient solution. Much of what I talk about in this article is reflected here, with the aim of making NFTs suck-less (and used in some capacity in Saint Lucia).