TIX, a key player in the live-events space, has come out of stealth mode to introduce decentralized finance (DeFi) lending and onchain settlement to an industry that has traditionally operated like a private credit market.
So far, the TIX network has enabled over $8 million in ticket sales and around $2 million in venue funding. This activity has been facilitated through KYD Labs, with TIX expected to debut on the Solana mainnet by mid-2026, as reported by Cointelegraph.
TIX, helmed by veterans from Ticketmaster and Buildspace, acts as the fundamental settlement and financing layer for KYD Labs, a consumer-focused ticketing platform that recently secured $7 million in a funding round led by venture capital firm a16z.
While KYD Labs offers the user interface for venues and artists to sell tickets and manage events, TIX manages the onchain infrastructure, tokenizing tickets and facilitating financing, settlement, and repayment processes.
TIX seeks to tackle what it describes as the live events industry’s credit-and-debt model, wherein venues and promoters rely on upfront financing prior to ticket sales. The solution is to transform tickets into onchain real-world assets (RWAs).
Ultimately, this model allows venues to tap into immediate capital from various sources, empowers artists to sell tickets directly, and provides fans with lower fees and improved transparency in resale practices.
Related: Securitize hires former PayPal exec as US tokenization picks up steam
Ticketmaster takes blockchain technology seriously
As blockchain-based settlement layers aim to disrupt Ticketmaster’s market dominance, the company itself has been testing this technology for several years.
Ticketmaster has been exploring blockchain solutions since at least 2019, and selected the Flow blockchain in 2022 to bolster its non-fungible token (NFT)-driven ticketing initiatives.
Since that time, Ticketmaster has issued nearly 100 million NFT tickets, according to a report from TheStreet, highlighting the ongoing integration of NFT technology across various applications as evidence of continual adoption despite diminished hype since 2022.
Meanwhile, advocates of RWA technology emphasize its distinct advantages for ticketing, including the capacity to mint tickets as unique digital assets that minimize fraud and counterfeiting. Tokenization can also bring enhanced transparency and control into secondary resale markets.
While NFTs and RWAs can intersect, they represent different concepts. NFTs pertain to a token’s technical structure, while RWAs relate to the underlying asset or rights being represented. In ticketing, an RWA may be executed using NFTs to tokenize access.
Related: Licensing-to-earn protocol converts intellectual property rights into RWAs
