Validate Those Users

Tools are only as helpful as their practical use. Though digital assets have been marked as a significant step forward in the ownership of everything from artwork to concert tickets and more, the basics of user validation online cannot be forgotten. Ensuring routine ownership of checks of renounceable digital assets is key for trust-building and scalable use.

We have written before about the need to reign in the hype over the exciting new world of blockchain technology in order to ensure practical, measured use cases are established. Perhaps even more important, is the continued application of basic user security and ownership standards at the intersection of Web2 and Web3 technologies.

A prime example is the use of NFTs as tickets for events. The benefits are clear. Event organizers can keep track of exactly who owns what tickets and when. They can also benefit from secondary market sales through built-in clauses in the smart contracts which automatically allocate some percentage of sales to their pockets. Fans receive a better customer experience through the ability to easily access events tied to their ticket. They also have transparent insight into the pricing of their tickets, helping eliminate the impacts scalpers have on the market.

From the demand perspective, more and more active user wallets are created every day, with the grand majority of NFT transactions falling within typical ticket pricing ranges.

So where is the problem?

Like any renounceable asset, ownership changes hands. In the digital world, this just happens more quickly. Algorithms can be used to purchase and sell tickets (or any asset for that matter) in milliseconds, looking to carve up small price differentials. How this can cause authentication challenges is ultimately a matter of data cleansing and transformation.

Most companies building between Web2 and Web3 technologies exist in a world of tradeoffs. On one hand, they are looking to lean into the decentralized nature of blockchain technologies. On the other hand, there are significant benefits to centralization and process management that are often counter to some of the principles inherent to Web3.

With tickets in mind, there is likely the need to build a clean UI that enables users to complete their transactions easily. This process also must run on pre-established code so that users do not need to deploy or validate their own contracts. In addition, it is likely that the company has decided that quick website load times are important to the purchase and use experience. This is where a problem could start.

How does this company ensure that the tickets are actually owned by who is claiming ownership?

Traditionally, this would be held in some form of a static (or possibly dynamic) database. We’re talking Mongo, PostgreSQL, or for those who love the classics, Microsoft SQL (as a desktop app of course). Easy! The firm likely has built a series of data calls on this table. When a user changes ownership, they are in control of that process, directly updating their own, internally managed data.

This is not true for blockchain-backed assets.

In this new, decentralized world, not only do assets change hands frequently, they do so silently (some may say spookily). At least to the disconnected Web2 application. While changes are being broadcasted out to other nodes in the network, for websites or even hand scanners at a sports game, there has been no change. There is no automatically hooked-up database that validates transactions. It no longer pays to be a listener, instead, companies need to become active searchers. Constantly ensuring the data they have is concurrent with the noted state of the network.

This is why Metcy’s validation API is critical for any Web3 project. It provides users with clear, real-time confirmation of asset ownership. That is with no need for the maintenance of a distinct network of blockchain nodes or any knowledge of Solidity. In addition, because our API is built under a REST framework and returns easy-to-parse JSON data, it is a direct plug-in to any dApp or website.

This ability to properly ensure immediate, at-the-source confirmation of ownership will be crucial to ensure the benefits and ownership of assets are delegated correctly. Hooking any integrated product into this fluid computer network will allow developers to expertly control the experience of their product’s end consumer.