5,000 music fans will soon gather atop a sun-drenched platform, over the sparkling water, and under an open sky for Croatia’s Circus Maximus music event. They’ll enjoy 360-degree views of the Adriatic Sea while listening to electronic sounds in the picturesque settings of Zrce Beach on the island of Pag.

This year, while the festival still has a stellar cast, it’s a different kind of party—one that Circus Maximus organizers hope will pave the way for a decentralized future of “putting partying back in the hands of the people,” as well as the widespread adoption of a new ticketing system to make that possible.

Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), two new technologies, are at the center of what the festival organizers call a “party renaissance”—and they hope that other events will follow in their footsteps.

Circus Maximus aspires to be the first DAO music event in the world. This means that the festival’s regulations will be established by DAO members and will be encoded in smart contracts, which will also hold the festival’s budget. The festival’s venue, artists, budget allocation, future direction, and much more will be decided by the community, the music enthusiasts.

“The idea is that the DAO assists with developing new solutions and providing assistance for the underfunded and sometimes underdeveloped festivals and events that the DAO community considers most useful,” said Josipa ii, chief media officer for festival organizers Noa Group.

DAOs can be formed to pursue any shared aim or interest. However, most of them are focused on development or finance; for example, VentureDAOs allow independent investors to pool their capital and vote on specific projects to invest in.

According to the project description, Circus Maximus is now investigating how a music festival may be arranged in the form of a DAO “that lets the entire world to have their voice.”

Ivan Jokić, one of the Noa Group’s founders, and Nikola Jokić, the project’s self-described “crypto man” and chief technical officer of financial platform Krypto Investment Partners, came up with the concept.

According to Nikola Jokić, the team is developing a DAO and a “global protocol for organizing future music festivals.”

Sunset view at #EthCC @Meta_Cartel party pic.twitter.com/b4U2xJ7fBT

— Makoto Inoue ( matoken.eth ) (@makoto_inoue) July 20, 2021

DAOs have previously organized events and parties; the Jenny DAO and MetaCartel DAO parties were two of the most memorable after-parties at the Ethereum developer conference EthCC. A DAO, on the other hand, has never been the perpetrator. “This is the first time I’ve seen a true music festival of this size and duration. ” Jokić said.

A Set of Tools for Festival DAOs

It’s a big initiative, and the first step is to enlist the help of the community.

To join, users must purchase a ticket to this year’s event, which will be available for the first time in the form of an NFT.

“We are creating tools so anybody in the world can create their own festival—with their own rules, their own venue and their own DJs.” – Nikola Jokić

The research team discovered that existing systems for selling NFTs on-chain lacked the dynamic pricing characteristics they need, so they devised a mathematical formula to compute ticket prices called the Bezier bonding curve. Instead of financial products, their proposal extends the algorithm to tokens for selling goods.

They’ve also designed a set of smart contracts called Bondzier for this year’s Circus Maximus, which use ERC-1155, the xDai blockchain’s token standard. Anyone can build and sell dynamically priced NFT-based tickets because the technology is open-source.

The system is intended to increase transparency in the ticketing process by eliminating middlemen like agents, scalpers, and other ticket brokers that profit from ticket sales at the expense of the community and the artists, performers, and DJs who are at the core of each event.

In Only a Few Clicks, you can Create an NFT

Jochem Myjer, Holland’s most popular comedian, said in 2019 how a token-based ticketing solution had changed his sell-out shows. But, of course, ticket scalpers had a field day with his gigs, jacking up prices relentlessly.

He explained, “They’re tackling a problem that was really making me upset. I believe everyone will be selling using this approach in two or three years.”

Last March, the rock band Kings of Leon issued an NFT to honor the release of their current album. The tokens were offered in three tiers, with the top tier comprising tickets to the band’s gigs.

Festival and concert tickets rely on non-fungibility to help prevent fraud, making them ideal candidates for NFT adoption. In addition, the music industry is slowly waking up to the other benefits, such as more revenue and lower expenses.

Given that NFTs have only been widely used since the beginning of the year, the use of tokens rather than tickets is swiftly gaining traction, thanks to platforms like NFT. Any event organizer may now create an NFT ticket in just a few clicks using Kred.

According to Atari CEO Fred Chesnais, who spoke to Rolling Stone this week, the gaming multinational is working on ideas for its Metaverse that include concert tickets tied to NFTs that open an in-game meet-and-greet between celebrities and their fans.

Clubbing in Covid Times

However, as Covid-19 continues to flare around the world, festival organizers face an uncertain landscape. The epidemic has been especially harsh on the events business, with the great majority of in-person events scheduled for 2020 having to be canceled or postponed.

This year, there may be a reason to be concerned as well. A spike in cases owing to the delta variety has prompted some European governments to tighten regulations, with Spain and the Netherlands imposing night curfews and prolonging festival bans.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson of the United Kingdom has proposed that vaccine passports be made necessary in various situations, including festivals, which are similarly subject to last-minute cancellations due to personnel shortages.

Although Florida now leads the United States in new infections and hospitalizations, the hip-hop festival Rolling Loud sold out on Friday. According to the festival website, festival-goers were urged to wear masks even though there were few limitations (aside from state-imposed ones).

According to the organizers, the Croatian authorities have announced no new limitations around events, and all 400 Circus Maximus staff have received a double dose of vaccine. They also stated that only festival-goers who have been vaccinated or can demonstrate immunity, as well as those who have tested negative upon entry, will be admitted.

Distinguishing the Lines

Using the power of communities to take control of their own festivals, if Covid permits, might be a strong force. DAOs, on the other hand, are a new technology with a lot of kinks to work out. One obstacle to overcome is incentivizing community members to vote on initiatives.

This novel enterprise genre is characterized by decentralization and a lack of hierarchy. However, according to Nikola Jokić, the degree of decentralization in projects is a contentious issue. “The Internet’s tech stack is extensive, and decentralization is not only a technological but also a societal idea.” He used an example of a hypothetical situation to illustrate his argument. “What does it mean to have a decentralized smart contract if a group of people living in the same flat can control all contract parameters?”

Although there are many unknowns in the DAO business, the first legal DAO was acknowledged in Wyoming earlier this month. This type of organizational structure might have a huge impact on the festival sector.

“The boundary between who is the customer vs. who is the artist or marketing person is sometimes quite blurred in the value creation of underground music cultures,” said Michail Stangl, a festival curator, presenter, and DJ, speaking on a recent panel regarding the future of NFTs for the music industry. “When it comes to event promotion, in 99 percent of the situations, the promoter isn’t a promoter—someone it’s who is so invested in the music community that they spend their own money into populating the culture,” he explained.

When applied to the non-hierarchical structure of a DAO, that hazy distinction becomes suitably meaningless. Leaderless governance is common, and decision-making power is frequently proportional to a participant’s contribution—which might be monetary, based on participation, or based on other variables.

The Circus Maximus DAO’s inner workings are still a work in progress. “We can be certain that festivals will be held, that music will be played, and that the dancefloor will be trampled. The community will decide what will happen, where it will happen, how it will happen, and when it will happen, “Jokić remarked. “What we intend to do is provide the tools to assist the community in planning their event as they see fit, with a DAO on hand to assist them as needed.”

Their huge experiment will begin to take shape between August 8 and 13. They hope that it will lead to more festival DAOs and greater partying freedom.