Inspiration
Ticketing today is often frustrating for both fans and organizers. Scalpers drive up resale prices, fake tickets circulate online, and organizers rarely benefit when tickets are resold. We wanted to explore how blockchain could make ticketing more transparent and fair. The XRP Ledger stood out because it supports NFTs and built-in royalties, making it possible to create a system where tickets are verifiable, resale prices are controlled, and organizers can earn from secondary sales.
What it does
OpenTix is a ticketing platform where event tickets are minted as NFTs on the XRP Ledger. Organizers can create events and issue tickets, while fans can buy, sell, and hold them in their wallets. Each ticket is uniquely verifiable on-chain, which prevents fraud. The platform also enforces resale price caps to reduce scalping and automatically sends royalties to organizers whenever a ticket is resold. At events, tickets can be verified using QR codes that confirm ownership on the blockchain.
How we built it
We built OpenTix as a full-stack web application. The frontend uses React and Vite to create the user interface, while the backend runs on Node.js and Express with MongoDB for storing users, events, and tickets. Authentication is handled with JWT, and wallet seeds are encrypted for security. For blockchain functionality, we integrated the XRPL Testnet using xrpl.js to mint NFTs, list tickets, process purchases, and verify ownership.
Challenges we ran into
One challenge was making blockchain interactions simple for users who may not understand wallets or keys. To solve this, we automatically generate and fund XRPL wallets when users sign up. Another challenge was handling the NFT offer flow on XRPL for minting, listing, and buying tickets while enforcing resale price caps. We also had to ensure QR ticket verification could reliably confirm ownership on-chain.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We’re proud that OpenTix works end-to-end: organizers can create events and mint NFT tickets, fans can buy and resell them using XRP, and tickets can be verified on-chain at events. We also successfully implemented automatic royalties using XRPL’s TransferFee feature, ensuring organizers earn from secondary sales.
What we learned
Through this project we learned how to work with the XRP Ledger’s NFT standard (XLS-20) and how blockchain transactions can be integrated into a full-stack application. We also gained experience with wallet management, encryption, and building systems that combine traditional web infrastructure with on-chain verification.
What's next for OpenTix
Next, we want to deploy OpenTix on XRPL mainnet and improve the marketplace experience. We are also interested in scaling this product to a variety of scalping issues, beyond just ticketing. One example of this is pokemon scalping.
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