Over the past few months, we have coordinated with the talented team at ether.cards to bring an NFT-based on-chain ticketing solution to the Ethereum community in time for Devcon5.
This experiment will take place in two parts, with a raffle and an auction, the profits of which will be donated to the Devcon Scholarship Program will take place in the coming days. We have committed 100 tickets to the raffle and 50 to the auction this year, and we plan to expand the availability of on-chain ticketing options next year.
The draw will begin at 5:00 p.m. GMT on August 22. The link to the draw and auction will be at once the sale has started.
Proven fair sale
Draw: August 22 to 24
The provably fair sale will work like a drawing: anyone can submit a trade at any time during the two-day sale. After a 48-hour window ends, the system will reveal those who can claim their tickets.
To discourage people from submitting numerous trades to increase their chances, 2% of each non-winning trade will be withheld. This is to encourage those with more funds to use auctions instead. In a later article, we will present a process by which the community can help decide how best to use these profits to benefit the Ethereum ecosystem.
Non-winning trades, less the 2% “sybil resistance fee”, will be refunded once the sale is completed.
Ticket auctions
Auction: August 27 to 29 (Revelation: August 30 to September 2)
The auction is modeled after the ENS silent domain registration auction. Bids are submitted blind over a 48-hour period and must be revealed once the bidding period has ended. We chose this system to avoid possible bidding wars. After the reveal period closes, all unrevealed offers are forfeited.
This year we wanted to create a diverse set of systems to increase the resilience of the ticketing process and demonstrate the power of Ethereum and open source community projects. It is also an experiment intended to assess the level of participation when the process requires direct interaction with on-chain mechanisms, as opposed to an experiment that gives users the ability to make fiat payments and pay via exchange addresses. We are excited to try these two on-chain mechanisms as part of this diversification.
After these two sales, a final opportunity to win tickets will present itself in the form of a call, during which all unredeemed manufacturer, student and sponsor tickets will be redistributed via an online application process. We can’t yet predict how much will be available for calls, and they won’t be distributed until a month before the conference, so get a ticket for the raffle or auction if you can!
