[Thoughts #178] Web3 Ticketing with Consensus

PLUS: 🔑 The Golden Key sells for 1000 ETH, MetaMask SDK in the Unity Asset Store

Big week with ETH Denver and constant stream of exciting headlines coming in. I’ll be at ETH Denver starting Thursday, so give me a holler if you’ll be there by responding to this e-mail or DM’ing me on Twitter!

Consensus 2023’s Microcosms Drop

I’ve long believed that ticketing would be one of angles that would help onboard the next wave of web3 users. Companies like Tokenproof and ETHPass are redefining what tickets could look like and do, legacy ticketing companies like Ticketmaster are building infrastructure for web3 capabilities, and events like Rolling Loud are creating new types of NFT passes for their superfans.

Yesterday Sam Ewen, Head of Coindesk Studios and Web3, shared an announcement regarding the new collection of tickets for their annual Consensus conference, Microcosms:

Sam Ewen @SamEwen

OK lots of words coming In short, the live events ecosystem is broken. Blockchain can help a🧵on IRL and also the Microcosms drop from @CoinDesk for Consensus

TLDR:

• Price is 1.5 ETH (~$2,400) with a max supply of 1,000

• Core functionality of the NFT is that is serves as a 3-year Pro tier pass to Consensus, which is a $3,600 value

• The NFT is also a piece of generative art in partnership with Fahad Karim, an artist and engineer

• Depending on the rarity of the NFT, additional benefits and perks will be applied

• Coindesk partnered with Tokenproof (ticketing), Artblocks Engine (generative art), and Passage Protocol (membership) to create this collection

I personally haven’t come across a ticket that has incorporated all these elements before for a live event.

The visual of all the holder rewards and benefits also caught my eye. Note that the below distribution is only if all 1,000 NFTs are minted. Otherwise, the benefits will be algorithmically distributed based on the total number of passes minted.

Source

Many of these rewards are not your run-of-the-mill cutesy perks.

Specifically, if we break down the above benefits we get 4 categories:

1. The Consensus conference

2. Coindesk (parent company)

3. Partner (direct and indirect)

4. Artist

Adding a simple color code helps to visualize the categorizations:

This initiative by Coindesk helps event organizers to better understand some of the potential that web3 ticketing can be.

Instead of just providing benefits directly related to the event organizer, we see this expanded with other ecosystem partners. In this case we see Ledger, VCs, Art Blocks, Fahad Karim, and Infinite Objects which is a pretty solid lineup.

Where can this go in the future?

• Sponsors can partner with the event organizer to provide specific perks to a select group of (or all) ticket holders

• The ticket has inherent artistic value, even when the 3 years of attendance have expired. We see this happening with other events such as the partnership between Transmission Festival x NFT-TiX x Darkblock.

• There is inherent liquidity for holders of these tickets as they can be traded on marketplaces

Source

Kudos to Sam and the Coindesk team for testing out this new ticketing model, especially as a company in the web3 space 💪

I expect to see more variations of these ticketing concepts from event organizers in the space in the coming months. Value can be delivered at an event, but also outside of it.

Dookey Dash’s Golden Key sells for 1000 ETH

As a followup to my piece, The Most Underrated Moment in Web3 Gaming, I can confidently say I was wrong.

What was I wrong about?

Mongraal getting 1st place in Dookey Dash won’t be an underrated moment in web3 gaming. This is due to the fact that the Golden Key (the prize for getting 1st place on Dookey Dash) was sold for 1,000 ETH (~$1.6 million) yesterday 🤯

Mongraal @Mongraal

I have agreed to sell the key for 1000 ETH to @AdamWeitsman. Super nice guy and thrilled the sale went through with him. A special thank you to @yugalabs for hosting an incredible competition. I look forward to competing in future events. Royalties will be paid in full. 1/2

Though this will not onboard millions of gamers to web3 gaming overnight (that’d be terrible actually lol), it’s certain to raise eyebrows to the mainstream gaming community. Hate on web3 all you want, money is money.

Speaking of money, this is where the $1.6 million sale ranks compared to the top individual tournament prize pools in Esports:

Source

Caveats to this point:

• The prize was not cash, but a NFT sold for a value of ~$1.6M

• The sale was in crypto which was valued at ~$1.6M at the time

Regardless, this is a big deal no matter how you slice it. As a result, it seems like web3 gaming is slowly approaching the next circle of addressable audiences thanks to Dookey Dash and Mongraal.

If we want to add a little more French influence and style, we’re actually here 😂

Anyway, this gets me thinking. What could this mean for the future of competitions and prizes?

• What if the grand prize for a web3 gaming tournament is a 1 of 1 skin or item instead of cash?

• What if the grand prize for a show like The Amazing Race was a digital collectible that provides lifetime access of complimentary travel and accommodations?

• What if the grand prize for a show like MasterChef Junior was a digital collectible that provided exclusive access to top chefs, restaurants, and culinary institutions around the world?

The traditional notion of a prize being cash can be upended, while the winner still has the option to sell the asset for liquidity.

Cash will always be the most desired reward, but for the right audience and community, it doesn’t have to be.

MetaMask SDK in the Unity Asset Store

Speaking of gaming, MetaMask announced that their SDK is available in the Unity Asset Store.

MetaMask 🦊💙 @MetaMask

It has come 🎮 The launch of the MetaMask SDK in the Unity Asset Store will allow devs to connect their games to the 🦊 wallet, enabling users to interact with web3-enabled features within the game itself. Get ready for a whole new level of gameplay! 🔗assetstore.unity.com/decentralizati…

TLDR:

• Unity is a game engine, a development environment that video games are built on. Some popular titles built on Unity include Fall Guys, Pokemon Go, and Among Us.

• The SDK allows Unity game developers to integrate wallet capabilities directly into games. This makes it easier for players to buy, hold, and trade in-game assets and digital collectibles.

• Logging in with MetaMask can be a substitute to standard login credentials

• MetaMask has also launched the Sidequest program, which will provide game devs resources, a like-minded community of web3 gaming builders, and grants up to $100k.

For those less familiar with gaming, what would be a good comp?

Shopify’s web3 integrations and APIs.

Similar to how anyone on Shopify can start to create web3 experiences into their storefront, game devs on Unity can start doing the same.

Web3 games are going to start looking a lot more like…games. The distinction will slowly fade away as better web3 user experiences overshadow the technical mechanics behind the scenes.

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Whenever I see the never-ending stream of web3 headlines, I can’t help but be cautiously optimistic about the growth and adoption of the space.

There’s a saying of ‘Death by a thousand cuts’. Failure as a result of a series of mistakes.

For web3, I think of ‘Adoption by a thousand use cases’. Success as a result of multiple efforts and on-ramps. 🙂

See you Thursday folks!