August Project Update

It's been a while since our last solid project update; an incredible amount of work has been happening in the background over the last few months. I couldn't be more proud of the team and product we've built up until now, and we're beyond excited to be releasing our mobile wallet and marketplace MVP imminently.

This update will cover notable updates spanning product development, team growth, token launch, some industry firsts and more!

Token Launch

Firstly, I want to announce our highly anticipated $SEAT token launch. We appreciate that this has come later than expected, but given the global economic climate and, in particular, the crypto bear market, we decided to review and assess the situation weekly. The outcome was to hold off on the launch until market conditions improved. We believe this time is now on the horizon.

We are currently in conversation with multiple exchanges to create a plan for the launch. Interestingly, we had some last-minute interest from a major tier 1 exchange, so we're going through the due diligence process with them now.

I want to take the opportunity to express my gratitude for your patience during the last few difficult months. It's been a turbulent time for all crypto projects with a pending token launch, but we've kept on building, and arguably it's been somewhat of an advantage. We've been able to fully focus on building the product without any distractions. We had the best interest of our investors at heart throughout, and I stand by my decision to postpone the launch. I wholeheartedly think this was the best outcome for all our investors and the project's longevity. After all, the project is quickly gaining more engaged users, benefitting from having a working product and launching into a global market that's not in freefall!

We have now set a token launch date of mid-October 2022. You will undoubtedly see lots of marketing and communication leading up to the launch. We will distribute all updates by email, our blog and on all social channels where we are active (namely Telegram, Twitter and Discord).

Keep an eye on our socials, and be prepared for the launch!

Team expansion

If you've been following our project, you may have seen in global ticketing news that veteran Paul Kelly has joined our ranks. Paul was previously at Ticketmaster for 11 years, working his way up to Head of Commercial Partnerships, handling $100M of ticketing volume. He was also instrumental in creating their global strategy for 2023.

Music Week covered the hire in a recent piece and Metaverse Post published an excellent article continuing some of Paul’s thoughts about joining the team, which you can read here.

It's a testament to our vision that industry titans like Paul are eager to join us as we revolutionise the ticketing industry. We can't wait to see what Paul brings to the team as we prepare to scale the business.

There are some more notable hires to mention in the coming months, but we're well on our way to building an incredibly talented team across development, operations, marketing and business development. I can't wait to see what we as a team can accomplish once we've launched!

Business Development

A pioneering NFT festival experience

We've recently announced a partnership with one of the UK's most renowned festivals, Lost Village. They have won a host of awards for their forward-thinking ethos and insane production.

In an industry first of its kind, we're powering an NFT-enabled experience inside the festival for attendees. We partnered with Lost Village to create the Lost Society 2022 that attendees can join by claiming a special edition NFT membership card. The NFT membership card, delivered as an NFT via the SeatlabNFT wallet, will grant access to secret locations within the event. We're incredibly bullish on fan passes as a use case for NFTs, and this is the first example of how this can be implemented.

Event Creator Fund

Last month we launched our Event Creator Fund. The aim was to offer non-repayable grants to event organisers to help them with the operational costs surrounding running events, and in return, we onboard them onto our product. As you can imagine, this has been exceptionally well received, and we're working through hundreds of grant applications, ranging from global household names to local club nights. It's incredibly reassuring that organisations and entertainers are very much open to the broader benefits of NFT technology and how they can incorporate it into their events.

Thanks to the popularity of the initiative, we received great press coverage from the likes of industry giants DJ Mag and Variety Magazine!

Event listings

We, of course, can't say too much about specific events until launch, but we've already got a host of credible events and brands signed up and waiting to go on sale.

We've been spending a lot of time over the last few months attracting high-calibre organisers to our platform, and it's been incredible to see so much support and demand from the market pre-launch. It goes without saying, but we can not wait to reveal these events and show you what we've been working on! There are some global powerhouse brands in the mix, and we're super excited to go to market and start onboarding more organisers. If you know anyone that runs events of any kind, send them our way!

Product

Fiat gateway

It's been a long road, but we are now officially authorised for crypto and NFT transactions by Stripe! We're one of only 100 or so companies in Europe to be granted this authorisation.

An easy-to-use product for non-crypto natives is our goal; we want to be a mass-market product, and allowing fiat payments is critical to the success of this ambition. It's a great sign from a global payment powerhouse like Stripe that they believe in our product vision and its use case.

MVP!

The day is upon us! It feels a little surreal that all our hard work over the last six months is about to be released to the public. It's easy for us to demand constant improvement, but we should equally reflect on how far we've come and what we've built.

The MVP wallet application will be available on Apple and Android app stores imminently, and the feedback we've had from our beta testers has been fantastic. We made a few minor tweaks but overall, nearly all users have had an easy and enjoyable experience. We welcome further feedback and encourage you to download the app when you see it advertised on our social channels!

Events

NEARCON is fast approaching, and we can't wait to meet our fellow NEAR community and Web3 family finally. We are hosting a VIP, invite-only event at one of Lisbon's most exclusive venues. If you're attending NEARCON and wish to attend, please reach out to us on Twitter, and we'll see what we can do! After all, we’re throwing this event to meet our members and early supporters in person.

We're also exhibiting at NEARCON itself, where we'll be presenting and demonstrating our platform and wallet app. If you want to be one of the first people in the world to see our platform, please come and find us (we won't be hard to find!).

ADE, the global dance music festival taking place in October in Amsterdam, is welcoming us this year, where we'll be holding two events. We'll transform a riverside venue into a tech-enabled dance music utopia with a series of groundbreaking collaborations with some extraordinary guests. The collaborations will be announced soon, with tickets becoming available via our wallet shortly afterwards.

We look forward to welcoming you to any of our events, and don't forget that if you hold one of our NFT membership cards, you get automatic entry to all of them!

Looking to the future

As you might have already guessed, we're a highly ambitious team with a big drive to improve the event ticketing and collectable landscape for good.

We're working flat out to launch our MVP platform and mobile app. We will continue that momentum forward as we roll out all of the features that will improve the live event experience for fans and allow event organisers to take back control of the secondary market.

If you aren't already, please make sure you are following us on all of our social media channels and have signed up for our newsletter. That way, you'll be the first to know about the big things we've got lined up for the rest of 2022 and going into 2023.

Again, thank you for your unwavering support!

‍

Ryan Kenny

SeatlabNFT Founder & CEO