The 8-year story of OPEN

How a ticketing protocol with real-world traction, real clients, and real volume is now facing its toughest battle yet: surviving the crypto industry.

Is this the final chapter?

If you're reading this, you probably already know us, or you're about to meet the most stubborn builders in Web3. This is not a goodbye. This is a reckoning. After eight years of non-stop building, we’ve hit the wall: no more runway. And yet, ironically, we’re seeing more traction than ever before. This is our last stand to continue our mission to fix ticketing and to not let Ticketmaster win.

We’ve signed global ticketing deals, integrated with real businesses, and powered millions of real-world transactions. We’ve helped fans enter stadiums and Ziggo Dome concerts without being ripped off. Not a single scalped ticket. Just verified access, transparency, and ownership.

While others were raising VC rounds with dog memes, we were filling stadiums, onboarding partners over the world and integrated with large ticketing companies. We saw crowds dance under closing set fireworks while holding NFTs they didn’t even know were NFTs.

We’ve lived the highs. The stress. The late-night debugging. The wild integrations. The good coffee. The deep laughs at the office, trying to explain what a smart contract is to an event organizer.

And we’ve lived the lows. The COVID years, when ticketing stopped dead in its tracks and we had to reinvent ourselves just to stay alive. The bear markets, where fundraising calls went silent. The layoffs. The difficult goodbyes to team members we built something beautiful with. Those were never just colleagues, they were part of the story.

And now, with no easy way out, we’re doing what we’ve always done: keeping it real, being radically transparent, and facing the hard truth: keeping it real might’ve been our first mistake.

A pattern I should have seen sooner

Years ago, during my short-lived time at De Nederlandsche Bank, I applied internally for a role far above my pay grade. I was young, ambitious and, to my surprise, I made it to the final round. It felt like a small personal victory. Until it wasn’t.

I didn’t get the role. And when I asked why, the feedback was honest: “You’re too authentic.” At the time, I was frustrated, deeply so. But in hindsight, they were right. This particular role required neutrality, protocol, and playing the game. Authenticity doesn’t fit easily into institutions built on caution.

I didn’t realize it then, but I was being handed a mirror.

Looking back now, it feels like I’ve recreated the same tension, only this time on a much bigger stage. We’ve built a protocol with real-world value, traction, and integrity. But again, I may have been too authentic. Too unwilling to fake it till we make it. Too reluctant to hype. Too resistant to chat-room theatrics and inflated roadmaps.

That same old feedback echoes again: “You’re too authentic.”

The Origin: fixing the most broken industry we could find

We started with a crazy idea: put ticketing onchain. Not because it was trendy, this was 2016, but because ticketing was a total mess. Fake tickets. No resale control. No ownership. We believed blockchain could fix that.

Back then, people laughed. "Blockchain for tickets? Why?" They weren’t wrong. Back then, we had no UX, no gas optimizations, and no clue how hard real-world adoption would be. But we kept going.

In 2017, we did an ICO. And then, here’s a plot twist, we built an actual product! We onboarded early adopters. We screwed up smart contracts. We lost sleep. But we shipped. Again and again.

And fans entered venues. Not just any venues, real shows, in real cities, with real stakes. Stadiums. Clubs. Conference centers. No scalping. No fraud.

The Pivot: from tickets to infrastructure

As we learned more about the industry, it became more clear: we weren’t a ticketing company. We were infrastructure. The backend. The rails. So we rebuilt everything.

This pivot wasn’t just a strategic decision. It came from a much deeper understanding of the industry. The ticketing market is overcrowded. Price competition is brutal, driving a race to the bottom. Ticketing volume and vertical integration are elementary if you want to win in ticketing. That dynamic has created a de facto oligopoly.

As a result, small ticketing companies are being swallowed up by larger ones. And even though GUTS had proven the tech worked, we saw no clear path forward in continuing as a standalone ticketing provider. So we pivoted to what we did best, distribution. Infrastructure. Rails for everyone else to put the right to access onchain.

We re-architected the stack to support third-party ticketing platforms. We became invisible but essential. The API-first, modular protocol that powers others. Think of it like Stripe for ticketing, only fully onchain.

And we did it while the world shut down. No events. No ticket sales. We could’ve packed up. Instead, we went heads-down. Built quietly. And came out of the pandemic stronger.

It wasn’t sexy. It wasn’t hyped. But it worked. And suddenly, big names started knocking.

The traction paradox

Right now, we have:

• CM.com (publicly listed; clients include the Dutch F1 grand prix & Van Gogh Museum: 20 million tickets annually and mandatory use of our secondary market.

• Azerion (publicly listed; 500M MAUs): Football Dutch Premier League clubs already live. Totalling 40+ professional clubs upcoming season.

• BookMyShow (India’s largest ticketeer): Integration live. CEO involved. 180 million tickets annually are at stake.

• Sold over 8.5m tickets and counting.

And yet: we’re out of cash. The more we built, the harder it became to raise. We weren’t speculative enough. Not memeable. Not bullish on vibes.

We shipped the product, protected our token, and grew real-world usage. Apparently, investing for the long run isn’t very common in crypto.

The deal we turned down

We had a way out. A well-known blockchain wanted to acquire us. The team would’ve had security. The tech would live on.

But our community, our tokenholders, would get left behind. No token integration. No safeguards. Just a clean acquihire.

We said No.

No exit for founders without protecting those who believed in us. No quiet rug. No alignment theater. We walked away. That decision may cost us everything. But we’d do it again.

And now — for the first time in months — we can speak freely. No NDA. No legal gymnastics. No internal restrictions on what we can or can’t say.

Here’s what we didn’t say before:

The sale of GUTS was not a windfall. It was a strategic decision — one that brought no personal gain to the founders. It was done to clear the slate, unlock new momentum, and give the OPEN protocol a better chance at industry-level adoption.

And here’s what most never saw:

This team has been building without salary since January. No complaints. No drama. Just deep commitment to the work, to each other, and to the mission.

We’re not telling you this to play the sympathy card. We’re telling you because you couldn’t have known. And because speculation about personal gain doesn’t help the ecosystem we’ve worked so hard to build.

Keeping it real was our biggest mistake

This space rewards noise, not nuance. Cartoons get funded. Real integrations get ignored. We did the ICO and shipped the product. We have clients, metrics, and protocol usage.

And still, we hear: “Why aren’t you pumping?”

Because we were busy building.

Because I believed - naively, perhaps- that if we could prove adoption, the rest would follow.

Team members warned me. They saw the war for attention. They explained how paying for exchange listings worked, back when that was still possible. They tried to steer me toward the tactics that others used. But I resisted.

I believed our traction would speak for itself. That real-world impact would win. That building, not shouting, would set us apart.

Maybe I should’ve played the game more. Maybe I should’ve posted more memes, hyped more roadmaps, paid more shills.

But I didn’t. Because keeping it real is somehow my default modus operandi.

A call to the brave

We’re looking for a partner. A chain, an ecosystem, or an org with courage. One that:

• Understands the enormous opportunity of onchain ticketing.

• Wants real traction

• Respects community integrity

• Understands infra, not just tokenomics

We bring:

• 8 years of protocol development and industry experience

• Active clients & ticket volume

• A stacked team that’s still here, still building persistent as ever

What we don’t offer:

• Hype cycles

• Vaporware

• Founder exits

We’re not looking for a bailout. We’re offering a blueprint.

What you can do

Share this. Tag the ones who still care about real builders. Retweet the thread. Talk to us.

But more importantly: know this.

The team does not deserve to suffer for my mistakes.The ecosystem doesn’t deserve to fail because I was too stubborn to play the crypto game. Crypto, if it wants to be taken seriously, doesn’t deserve to lose one of its few real-world use cases over pride.

However this ends, I’m proud. Proud of what we’ve built. Proud of every ticket. Proud of every integration. Proud of every person who’s ever contributed.

And I’m old enough now to know: I’m not going to change. Too authentic then. Too authentic now. But maybe, just maybe, there is someone out there who is willing to play the crypto game on our behalf. We’ll provide the real life adoption, you play the game.

We’re still here. Still standing, but not for long. We need a lifeboat and there should be plenty out there that need real passengers.

Now let’s see if crypto is ready for something real.