NFT Ticketing - on a quest to understand the domain

NFT Ticketing - on a quest to understand the domain
Photo by Claudio Schwarz / Unsplash

NFT ticketing as a use case for web3 is as old as the Ethereum itself. As of January 1st, 2023, the day I’m writing this post, I have no professional expertise in this domain. Curiosity and opportunity are at the door step, so it’s time to ramp-up on the knowledge. This post is an example of the type of questions one may want to ask when evaluating a web2 business opportunity in the context of web3 construct.

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These are the initial thoughts on the approach…

Understand the business domain

  • Who are the key players in the ecosystem?
  • What’s the lifecycle of a ticket? How is the pricing/economics determined through post-event follow-up?
  • What does the business model(s) look like for ticket sellers and all ecosystem providers?
  • How does the money flow?
  • Who are the intermediaries? What role to they play?
  • What does the ticket sale lifecycle looks like? Who controls it? Why?
  • What does the tickets re-sale market looks like? How is the money made there?
  • Where does emotion play a role in the buying process?
  • Categorize all parts of the business process as essential or value-add.

Understand the opportunity

  • What are the frustration and pain points faced by the ticket buyers, ticket sellers, intermediaries, regulators?
  • What are the fraud issues? How severe are the issues? How much business is lost due to fraud?
  • How fast does the money flow from buyers to ecosystem participants?
  • What are the different market segments and where the friction points don’t apply? (Taylor Swift concert vs. local school fundraiser tickets sales).
  • Catalog & categorize the business process step interdependencies (what must be solved together vs. separately).
  • How much choice do the ticket buyers have when making a purchase? What do they really care about?

Apply web3 core principles to the business problem/opportunity

  • What value do the intermediaries provide in the ecosystem? How is this quantified?
  • What are the moats setup by the incumbent players?
  • What aspects of the process will always require centralized entities?
  • Where can web3 tech provide x10 value proposition vs. x2 improvement? Why?
  • Which parts of the business process can be eliminated due to web3 operational constructs?
  • Which parts of the business process can be fully disintermediated through web3?
  • Which parts of the business process can be partially disintermediated through web3?

Understand the web3 friction that must be overcome

  • What web3 elements are required for execution and how far off they are from a web2 experience?

What has been attempted?

  • Review top 10 podcasts on this topic. Categorize each idea/solutions as either a linear improvement (i.e., sprinkle some blockchain) or an exponential improvement (i.e., core of the solution is web3 based)
  • Understand what protocols have been developed or are being developed already for this.
  • Determine if solution evaluation frameworks have been developed for this already.
  • Determine what github repos have been created attempting to solve this problem.
  • Determine failure points for previously attempted projects.
  • Identify which parts of this business domain other startup attempted to solve.
  • Determine the amount of funding (and the timeline) that has been fueled into this domain and results so far.

These are just a few probing questions to get started.