CHPL.Live - An Introduction
CHPL.Live Part 1
A decentralized not for profit community foundation for the benefit of live performers and performances
Abstract
We’re on the verge of a revolution. The live music industry is broken.
Whether it’s the lack of predictable revenue or industry models taking away choice, venues and performing artists have never had it easy.
With the global pandemic, this has been exasperated to the point of despair: with 40% of venues in some cities closing, an 80% decline in revenues, and millions of jobs in the global live music sector 'gone by Christmas.
Long-time friends and collaborators, Irfon Watkins, Founder of Blockchain companies DOVU and TAPMYDATA, and Ian Matthews, Drummer in KASABIAN wanted to combine their experience and reinvent the live entertainment business model through a community-owned , not for profit, DAO.
Our solution, CHPL.Live, is a Web 3 ecosystem that fundamentally flips the live music industry on its head by creating long term residual income for Venues and Artists.
CHPL.Live delivers on this promise with a few key components enabling:
individual Venues to ‘invest’ in their own events jointly with the Artists (who are playing a GIG at an Event)
Artists and Venues to automatically monetise content from the Event
residual automated income from each event to the Venue and Artist
easy access for attendees and fans to buy/get exclusive NFT based content and exclusive access to Events.
We believe that bringing decentralised finance (DeFi) to a retail market, combined with non-fungible tokens (NFTs), creates the perfect opportunity to disrupt an industry in need of revival, reinvention and revitalisation.
CHPL.Live is a decentralised network governed entirely by Chapel (CHPL) Tokenholders via a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO). This ensures a transparency driven future of governance and innovation.
The founding team views sustainability, inclusivity and accessibility as baseline imperatives for all aspects of CHPL.Live.
Proposed Solution - CHPL.Live Ecosystem
In the traditional world, Venues host Events making their money from tickets and beverage sales. Once an event has finished, this is the end of any revenue for a Venue. The same is almost true for Artists playing a GIG at a Venue, except that they have an opportunity to monetise content from an Event, although they rarely do in any meaningful way.
CHPL.Live allows a Venue owner to use the revenue (pre or post) from an Event as collateral to create a residual long term income using Yield generating mechanisms for itself and any Artists playing at the event.
A portion of the Yield is used to buy NFTs from the Artist (generated from the Event) or even to just pay them residually.
The relationship between the Artist and the Venue for a specific Event is managed via an Event DAO (GIG) which controls the flow of residual income between a specific Artist and the Venue.
It also owns any of the NFTs ‘it’ buys from the Artist. It’s worth noting that for any given Event there will, more than likely, be multiple Artists; each Artist has their own Event DAO(GIG) for the Event.
[Diagram of Venue feeding multiple Event DAOs each with one Artist.]
The actual business rules (Governance) for this are controlled by the CHPL Token - initially the split is set to 70% for the Venue and 30% for the Artist.
The Event DAO smart contract serves to::
set a base price for Artist content/NFTs
buys or sells content/NFTs
define the rules for access to the event
pay back the collateral put in by the venue
generate a continuous yield for both parties and deposits in respective wallets
link to metadata that describes the relationship and the Event.
Each Artist and Venue is given a Web 3 page which they can incorporate into their existing website(s) easily allowing direct interactions with their associated Event DAOs. (Of course, they can build their own decentralised pages should they wish via an API).
This opens up the content/tickets/assets to Fans and Attendees of the Event, making it easy for either type of party to sell and promote content and upcoming events.
A simplistic overview of how it would work for a Venue; it’s worth noting that the system takes control (and hides the complexity) over most of the following points:
Venue deposits $X into a new GIG per Artist playing at their Venue
Venue automatically borrows 50% from the GIG to invest into a Yield Farm
The Venues loan is automatically paid back via Yield over a dynamic period of time
The Yield from the Farm flows back into the GIG Vault
The GIG Vault pays out 70% to the Venue and 30% to the Artist
The GIG Vault buys (and holds) NFTs from the Venue or Artist that relate to the GIG increasing Artist revenue
The Venue and Artist can display the NFT contents of the Vault(s) on their websites via a Web 3 integration to sell directly to Fans and/or attendees.
Why would a venue put any revenue into an Event DAO and share it with an artist?
All businesses have ‘current needs’ and ‘future needs’. We’re making the assumption that a Venue will pay its current needs (utility bills, rent and so on) and that for a specific Event it will have to pay various bills in advance (Artist deposit, gear hire, security and more). Of course, the Venue will sell tickets in advance to help with cash-flow burden. After the Event all the sales are totted up and (in theory) everyone is paid, and there’s a profit.
CHPL.Live is based on the premise of getting this Yield to work indefinitely for the Venue and Artist. It’s about investing in the future:
Venues get back their entire collateral
the value is the relationship between the venue and the artist
the artist has a repository for virtual merchandise scoped to an Event that could increase in value (wow moments)
the long-term aggregated revenue will attract Artists to Venues that use CHPL.Live
and, it’s the progessive, far-sighted, culturally enriching thing to do.
CHPL.Live - Nuts and Bolts
Actors in the Ecosystem
Venue
a Venue is responsible for agreeing stake percentages between themselves and Artists, creating a GIG, depositing funds into the GIG and participating in Governance. Also, Venues are incentivized to create NFTs to distribute and trade with other actors in the platform.
Artist
an Artist is an individual or group of individuals who could passively receive a percentage of the Yield generated from the initial deposit by the Venue. The Artist is incentivised to promote the GIGs that they belong to by minting NFTs which could create value for all the other actors.
Attendee
an Attendee is one of the individuals at the event. An attendee can also be a Fan. They have the ability to trade NFTs and participate in governance of the platform.
Fan
a Fan is any member of the public with an interest in the Venue, Artist or event. Within the context of CHPL.Live they may trade NFTs and participate in governance of the platform. A Fan is not necessarily an attendee and could be a fan of CHPL.Live itself, not just the Artist associated with a specific GIG.
All actors need to have an Ethereum wallet.
Event DAO
Event DAOs (GIGs) are at the heart of CHPL.Live. A GIG is an Event-specific DAO for the event stakeholders. In most cases, the event stakeholders will include a Venue and an Artist. Once an event is confirmed (outside of the platform), a GIG will be created within the platform. The venue can then deposit funds into this GIG, which will start generating Yield.
Through a collection of smart contracts, the DAO can autonomously handle the management of funds, yield generation, NFT minting and storing event metadata. As with most traditional organisations, the goal of a GIG is to facilitate value generation.
A GIG will be a place where Venues and Artists come together to generate as much buzz and revenue around the event as possible. The GIG can continue to generate Yield for an event that happened years ago. Stakeholders of GIGs can invite interested parties to join their GIG to potentially deposit funds and share in a percentage of the yield. This results in thousands of events still generating revenue even though they’ve already happened.
The Venue view of setting up an Event DAO
Deposit and Withdrawal
Initially the funds from a Venue will be deposited in DAI[2] . When the funds hit the GIG, they’ll be sent automatically to a yield generation platform.
During GIG creation, the venue could set the Artist’s percentage of the Yield, payment schedules, and rules for the Artist. For example, the Artist could be entitled to 30% of the total Yield accrued in the GIG and they will automatically receive a payout into their wallet once a month.
Initially these ‘business rules’ are set by the overall governance via the CHPL Token. The Venue can withdraw their collateral at any time. If necessary, they can withdraw all funds and close the GIG.
An Artists view of royalties accruing in real-time for all GIGs
Event Metadata
The Event metadata is as much about describing the GIG as it is setting up any rules needed to govern the GIG. The metadata is not stored centrally and is associated with the Event DAO via IPFS or similar.
Yield Generation
To continually and autonomously increase the value of the GIG, any deposited funds are automatically distributed to a yield generation platform. Any generated yield is then sent back to the GIG.
NFTs
Artists and Venues will have the ability to mint and trade NFTs associated with a specific GIG. There are initially two key types of NFT: The Collectible and The Access.
The former allows fans and attendees to collect potentially rare virtual merchandise, while the latter will have NFTs performing functions such as ticketing and access to CHPL.Live Web 3 sites and dAPPS. The NFTs will follow the ERC721 standard.
Venues can create NFTs from the event, while Artists can create NFTs focused around their own content, relevant to the GIG or not.
NFTs are created within the CHPL.Live ecosystem via the ‘NFT Factory’ and sent to the ‘NFT Marketplace’ for distribution and sales. It’s The NFT Factory’s responsibility to ensure that the correct meta data and GIG association for an NFT - ensuring authenticity.
The Event DAO will (auto) buy NFTs from the NFT Marketplace (scoped to the Event), increasing the Artist income and increasing the value of the Event DAO.
The NFT creator (Artist or Venue) will send a call to the NFT Factory, which will mint the NFT with metadata about the creator and the associated GIG.
Once the NFT is minted, it will be sent to the Chapel NFT Marketplace where the Event DAO can purchase it and store it in the Event DAO wallet.
A simple way to look at this process is:
NFTs are minted through the NFT Factory by related parties (the Venue or the Artist)
They are ‘added’ to the NFT Marketplace
The Event DAO automatically buys the NFTs from the NFT Marketplace using the Yield generated
Attendees and Fans can purchase the NFT’s from the Event DAO on the Artist or Venue website
Artists and GIGs will receive royalties each time one of their NFTs are traded. To track royalties across any marketplace, we will use a ERC721 extension such as EIP-2981[3]. This will incentivise Venues and Artists to create NFTs and increase the value of their GIGs and therefore CHPL.Live.
Artists and Venues will also have access to a simple Iframe to integrate into their existing web properties. They can also choose to access directly via the developer tools provided.
An Artists website with embedded Web 3 ‘shop’
Token
The Chapel Token (CHPL) is a ERC20 token awarded to anyone who engages with the platform. Engagement could come in several different forms, such as event promotion or attendance. By utilising the growth and adoption of Web 3, we’ll create an ecosystem of “wallet-enabled experiences” to give CHPL Token holders access to exclusive content, merchandise and experiences in the music industry. We’ll build a library of components that Venues and Artists can plug into their existing web content to offer exclusive and unique experiences without the need for any Web 3 experience.
Governance
Governance will become decentralized incrementally as the platform grows. Governance will be achieved through voting and staking the CHPL Token. Anyone holding the CHPL Token has the right to vote on decisions for CHPL.Live.
Initially, CHPL.Live will be governed by the governance council with the intention of becoming fully decentralised as the token becomes more distributed when the community takes majority control. Initially, a platform such as snapshot[4] will be used to handle voting before implementing an automated approvals process. We expect that within three years the platform will be fully under user control.
Treasury
Initially, the Treasury will hold all of the Chapel Tokens. The treasury is responsible for collecting fees and distributing tokens to individuals who engage with CHPL.Live. 3% of the yield returned from the yield generation platform will be added to the Treasury to cover development and infrastructure costs.
Yield Generation
We have two requirements for a yield generation platform. We require it to automatically add funds to a yield aggregator and allow access to future yield. Initially, the platform used will be Alchemix.
Alchemix allows you to deposit DAI to their contract. DAI is then deployed by the Alchemix contract to earn yield in the Yearn yvDAI Vault. Users can then mint alUSD up to 50% of the amount of DAI they have deposited (accessing future yield). alUSD can then be withdrawn to pay for any immediate costs associated with the event or it can be added back into the platform for yielding farming[5].
Token Economy
Future Work
The possibilities are almost limitless with CHPL.Live. The additional value of huge collections of NFT-based content (such as https://mvs.org) give rise to further potential revenues and external investment for Venues and Artists. Of course the current rate of technological progress is fierce and some of our technical assumptions will unfold. For example, right now the Ethereum network has fundamental issues to resolve. While we’re confident resolution is happening, there are other potential newer technologies that may provide more bang for the buck sooner.
We also envisage a huge opportunity around the distribution of original content as a new type of record label where new mechanisms - some mentioned, some not - will put the power into the hands of the artist and those that directly surround them.
Stage 0 has been full on R&D with the concept and preparing for a Token event.
Stage 1 for CHPL.Live will be a concept test with a micro festival based in the heart of Wales at our very own Chapel Wales (yes it’s a real chapel) where key parts of the technology will be tested; with a view to V1 of the platform onboarding potential Venues in early 2022. This will incorporate the concept of specific Event DAOs and yield generation.
Stage 2 will consist of fine tuning the existing experience for Venues and Artists while introducing the concept of the NFT Factory and NFT Marketplace.
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