Blockparty - May 2020 Monthly Update.
Blockparty is building a digital asset marketplace - visit us at www.blockparty.org.
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1. Overview
It’s hard to believe that this update brings us close to the halfway point of the year. It’s a moment to reflect on what we hoped to accomplish at Blockparty from January 1st, what it looks like now relative to how we imagined it on a whiteboard, and how far we’ve come in these months. Amidst all of this reflection, we do apologize for the delay with this May monthly post.
To be honest, this has been one of the hardest months we’ve had to face as a team. We are deeply saddened to inform everyone about the loss of our team member, Matthew Davis. Matthew worked on our engineering team, and was among the first hires of the year. He joined and immediately hit the ground running making improvements to the Blockparty Tickets product. Matt was the type of personality we were hoping to scale Blockparty with; cool AF, incredibly intelligent, hard working, opinionated but collaborative, all in on the Blockparty vision, and just an all round great guy. We appreciate you Matt. You are missed. Rest In Peace.
While taking time to remember Matthew, the rest of the team has just otherwise been heads down working.
The Blockparty NFT marketplace has made excellent progress. The protocol is functional, NFT creation on testnet looks great and we have started towards the finish line with NFT on-chaining and User Experience. UX is the part that you as a customer or client will interact with, and we want to make sure the “magic happens” when you use the platform. We’re working with an awesome design team to ensure it‘s looks amazing.
The ticketing industry is still in the doldrums. You may have noticed that people are heading back into clubs and stadiums around the US and the world. This will not result in any of our ticketing client contracts going live in Q2 2020. However, our ticketing clients are cautiously optimistic and some are scheduling events for late summer and the fall, which of course we will service. We will be demonstrating an NFT product at Elements Music Festival, which appears to be moving forward at the end of September this year.
As a company, we’re still playing it conservative and continue to work from home. The COVID numbers are creeping up in Texas, the tri-state area and other states and we’re keeping a close eye on it.
The good news is that most industry participants across live events think that 2021 will be one of the best years in live event history. This makes sense — everyone is stuck indoors for most of 2020 and will be keen to get out, dance, spend money, meet people and have a good time. And there will be an added effort from artists and teams to pull out all the stops. They all need to make bank in 2021 to cover the lost year of revenue. The timing frankly works out well for us. Our goal has been to spend the second half of 2020 growing in digital collectibles and art, and then accelerating back into ticketing in 2021. While of course the potential for an explosive live event season in 2021 hinges on COVID-19 being under control, we continue to push forward with our mantra: While we can’t control the input — the outcomes or timeline of COVID-19 — Blockparty’s commitment is to always have 100% control of our output. Thus we are building product, securing deals, and preparing for the possible historic summer season in 2021.
Until then, we’re pleased with the clients we’re picking up in the art and collectibles world, and we think we can knock the rest of 2020 out of the park.
2. Roadmap
In February, we released our Blockparty 2020 post. It included several key roadmap dates for 1H 2020. In our April Monthly Review, we added a line item to the roadmap. Here is an update of how we’re progressing on each roadmap date:
Q2 2020 → Update on token utility and blockchain development — Provided initial update on utility in April. Final update out in JULY
We are still in a legal analysis on the next steps for the token. At the moment, we are comfortable moving forward with two points of utility in the initial release of the marketplace. Once legal review is completed, and the token has been tested within the marketplace, we will provide a more formal update on token utility. We continue to expect this to be ready to share at the time of the launch of the marketplace with two methods for BOXX utility enabled.
June 2020→ Launch of Blockparty Marketplace — NOW JULY
In February, we had expected this to be completed by June. We still have a solid month of work to do on user experience for the customer store, token integration and client onboarding. We expect that the marketplace will be launched in July.
June 2020 → Blockparty NFT’s — NOW JULY
We continue to build out a brand new never-seen-before NFT product. We’re really excited about this. Numerous clients and blockchain veterans have shown interest in what we’re doing here. We intend to provide a formal product overview of this product in tandem with the launch of Marketplace.
3. Product Update
Blockparty Marketplace
In the first week of June, Blockparty hit an end point in digital asset marketplace development:
NFT support
NFT backend
NFT payment confirmation
NFT transfer
NFT withdrawal
NFT user wallet integration
On-chain integration
As mentioned above, now we’re focused on customer and client UX for the store and dashboard, token integration and some updates to the NFT onboarding and withdrawal process.
Tokens
Thank you for your inputs and comments in the DM’s and in the Blockparty Community Telegram channel. We appreciate it. We continue to work on this and will launch new utility at the time of the launch of the Blockparty Marketplace in July. We will provide an update in the June update if possible.
4. Sales
The sales team continues to be very busy, talking with sports teams, performing artists, and many other groups. We continue to project that we will be able to offer at least one major exclusive NFT sale per month on the platform during 2H 2020.
As indicated in earlier months, many of our discussions are with brands that are predominantly live events oriented . Many globally known live event brands are looking for ways to survive in a world where it is unclear when events can resume. We are lending our voice into that discussion, and how blockchain technology can help fans bring value today for experiences tomorrow.
5. Team hires and moves
We are pleased to announce that Owen Fearon has joined the Blockparty Business Development team as a Sales Associate. Owen spent the summer with Blockparty Tickets last year while he was completing his undergraduate degree. He proved his capability shepherding in Blockparty Tickets’ deal with Mugatunes. Owen will be working on sports teams and colleges, two markets we hope to scale into in 2021.
We continue to finalize the onboarding of new strategic advisors and team members. We have finalized a high-level team member to work more closely with us on a day to day basis to scale our product in the music business. We will announce their role and initial projects in July. The rest of the team and advisory members are leaders in music and blockchain and will help us scale.
Until then, the Blockparty team wishes everyone health and safety during this time.
With love,
Team Blockparty
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