YellowHeart is Transforming How Tickets Are Issued, Sold and Exchanged

If you’ve ever had to search for a gig ticket at the last minute, or had to sell your own one on, you know the drill: go to the gig’s Facebook event page and try to find a buyer or seller, or turn to the ticket issuer’s own resale platform.

It’s a painful process; the ticketing industry is rife with gatekeeping companies and exorbitant commission fees, with fans treated as mere customers, devoid of any sense of community. As a result, people see tickets to a gig or a sports event as a transactional tool—and not as a medium that unlocks new experiences.

Founded in 2017, YellowHeart, a blockchain-based ticketing platform, promises to fix the broken $72 billion ticketing industry — an industry that hasn’t innovated beyond static QR barcodes — by leveraging Web 3 tools and ethos to put community at the heart of the whole process. It’s an end-to-end solution that works out better than traditional alternatives for everyone involved: fans, venues, and artists.

Now the next step in the evolution of ticketing is here, with the launch of NFT platform YellowHeart Protocol and its token HRTS (pronounced “hearts”). It’s the first project to launch on Bittrex Global’s IEO platform, Bittrex Global Starting Block, with the HRTS token sale kicking off on May 10 at 13:00 UTC (for non-US residents only). “We’re excited for the future of the YellowHeart Protocol, and think the addition of the HRTS token to the Bittrex Global ecosystem will add significant value for all of our users,” Chris Sinkey, Listing Director and Chief Business Officer at Bittrex Global, told Decrypt.

“I’ve always loved music. And when I got super into crypto, I thought, ‘What if I could start a company where we release tickets on the blockchain and solve all the problems I’m having as a music fan?’,” Josh Katz, CEO and co-founder of YellowHeart, told Decrypt. “I would try to get tickets to so many shows as a live music fan, but then they would sell out immediately. People would upcharge them for an insane price. So everybody’s getting ripped off, there’s counterfeit tickets, and it’s just a big mess.” But if you do it on the blockchain, Katz thought, then the artists, venues and fans can all have a say.

It’s all possible because YellowHeart’s technology offering is built on a rotating barcode — to ensure that the ticket holder is the only one redeeming — verifiable via Ethereum sidechain Polygon. In this way, the platform replaces the ticketing industry’s middlemen with a novel, trustless community-oriented model.

YellowHeart issues tickets as non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which fans can buy through the YellowHeart app just as they would traditional tickets. But blockchain technology enables YellowHeart to offer a number of innovative features that are impractical for traditional ticketing companies.

One of the coolest—and currently underutilized—features of NFT technology is token-gating: by holding a specific NFT, you can have access to exclusive files or content made available only to those who hold that token. YellowHeart leverages this NFT capability to allow artists to communicate directly with their fans, share airdrops and photos with them—ahead of the gig or even after the gig.

But it’s not just community engagement that makes it a compelling proposition. NFTs allow for a seamless revenue-sharing model so that artists get a cut of each secondary sale, because royalties are coded into the project’s smart contract. YellowHeart enables a similar model for venues and artists. For venues and artists who get no compensation for their efforts after the first sale under the existing ticketing industry, it’s a massive deal — especially considering the secondary ticket sale market is projected to reach $9.7 billion by 2027, according to research from Brand Essence.

Although YellowHeart is a blockchain-based platform, users don’t have to be a blockchain whizz to be able to use it. It’s as simple as downloading an app on your cell phone and paying for tickets with a credit card. For those who prefer to buy tickets with crypto, the platform also has integrations with MetaMask and Coinbase Wallet.