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Rhuna x @Aptos | First major festival on chain
Recorded: June 2, 2025 Duration: 0:41:19Space Recording
Short Summary
RUNA and Untold Festival announce a groundbreaking partnership to integrate blockchain technology into live events, marking a significant shift in the entertainment industry. With RUNA's innovative infrastructure, the collaboration aims to enhance ticketing and payment solutions, showcasing the potential for growth and new revenue streams in the crypto space.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, good morning.
Good morning, how are you?
That was the most seamless onboarding of a space I've ever done.
Everybody's up within two minutes.
Love it.
How are you guys?
Excellent. Yeah.
Very, very good.
Yes.
Hi. Cool. I think we can just jump straight in if we're all here.
Hi, Alex. How are you?
I think it's on mute.
on mute. Cool.
Cool.
Epic. So hello everyone. My name's Zoe. I'm the CBO of RUNA and I'm going to be the host
today. We're super, super excited about this space as we're going to chat about Untold
Festival and how it's going to be coming to the Aptos network through RUNA itself, so
powered by RUNA. I'm honoured to be joined by the founders of Untold today and the amazing
Alex from the Aptos side. But before let them introduce themselves I'll quickly tell you who I am.
As mentioned I'm the CBO at Runa where we've built a fantastic white label solution for event
management which cuts out all of the requirements for expensive third parties and provides a
seamless solution for payments, access and ticketing at a range of events. So we can do theme parks, water
parks, sports stadiums, festivals obviously and many more. So yeah, Alex would you like to go next?
I know I've got your request. Okay whilst Alex is joining maybe Bogdan would you like to go next?
Let's go next.
Bogdan, are you there?
Hi, Zoe.
Yeah.
Hi, Zoe.
Hi, everyone.
Can you hear me well?
Yeah, we can hear you.
How's it going?
Okay, good.
Yeah, so I'm Bogdan, co-founder of Untold Entertainment Group and also co-founder of Runa.
And yeah, very excited about the announcement of this partnership.
It's something that we've worked a lot, like over one year now since the first discussions and actually it's a big breakthrough not only for the web3 industry
but also for the live entertainment industry, the live music entertainment industry.
It's been very rare when like large-scale events to the size of Untold Europe and Untold Dubai. That's over 800,000 people together in the both festivals that will literally start using
blockchain technology and one of, from our perspective, in one of the most up-to-date and also one of the most innovative blockchain infrastructure that's available today provided by Aptos.
So it's not only a breakthrough from the partnership perspective, but also from the fact that it's one of the first collabs
that's literally bridging properly the Web3 and the Web2 world
in a seamless way for the normal consumer as well.
So, yeah, happy to be here.
Thanks. Thanks for joining.
And then, Alex, I think you can speak now.
I think we got you up here. Yay. Hello, hello, everyone. Yeah, hopefully it doesn't work the same way it did last week, but I was up as a speaker and then was removed somehow.
Sorry. No, that's fine. But if my understanding is correct, we are making some introductions.
No, that's fine. But if my understanding is correct, we are making some introductions.
So I'm Alex. Wait, can you hear me?
Yes.
Okay, cool. I'm probably the least important person on stage today. And actually, I'm feeling
like asking some questions. So we might switch roles and I might be the one who's asking you
guys more questions than the reverse. Since we spoke a bit about Aptons last week already,
so I feel like people are more interested
in understanding what you guys are going to be doing
during the festival than hearing me ramble, you know?
Yeah, definitely.
Thanks so much, I think this will be cool.
And we're definitely excited to dive into Untold and exactly how it started, the origins and where it's going next. So yes,
Svet, I think, would you like to introduce yourself quickly?
Hey, my name is Svet. I'm the co-founder and founder of RUNA, that meaning the infrastructure that we are speaking now.
And yeah, happy to be here.
Thanks so much. Okay, cool. Let's just dive straight in then.
I think I'll focus first on, obviously, on Untold.
Sorry, second on Untold, but first, Bogdan, could you just tell us the story about why Runa, why we need Runa now?
And why it's more than just a ticketing tool? And then we'll go into Untold.
Yes, sure. Okay, so going back in history to 2015, Eastern Europe, Transylvania.
That is the origin of our mother company, let's say, the entertainment group that
started building one of the most valuable music events IPs in the world, number three worldwide right now, and kind of in top ten in the last five years.
It's Untold Festival.
And we were very young back then, like very young entrepreneurs that kind of started without any investment funds, without any money coming from air.
We were literally bootstrapped and we built a very valuable IP, very organic.
And now in just 10 years, we're basically competing on the global scale,
in a global market with big entertainment groups that are backed up by big corporate and funds that kind of fuel with unlimited resources, the new IPs and everything.
So we've literally managed to grow a business from zero to around $200 million valuation right now in these 10 years,
out of which two years we were in pandemic.
And in our growth,
we've kind of tried always to be very open
to not have the standard business model
in the live events industry
like the other players in the industry was doing it so we're doing it
we literally try to be very open into integrating new technology if we're talking about
for example i don't know when the nft market was booming we were already two years before having our first, it was the first festival
in the world that had its first NFT collection without any speculative purposes and without
knowing that in two years things will be so valuable. We've just found this Web3 gift very valuable to our ecosystem, and we embraced it and integrated it with success.
Then the fact that we were the first large-scale festival in the world that accepted crypto payments,
not only for buying tickets through a local payment provider that facilitated this for us,
but then also for the F&B services that we had.
So a lot of people could come to Untold
and didn't need to off-ramp their cryptocurrencies.
They were able to pay absolutely legally
their F&B consumption for the tables the tables for the drinks for whatever in
in cryptocurrencies this was early 2021 i believe yeah after the pandemic
um going further along the 10 years of existence we used i think over 10 or 12 service provider in terms of payment infrastructure
for the access in our events for the ticketing system for the food and beverage experience
acquisition so multiple suppliers that were individual companies, suppliers that were from all around the world,
and all of them had, let's say, their way of doing things, their way of selling things,
and we always had a big headache to integrate all of them so that the end consumer will have a seamless and quality experience
when interacting with the festival infrastructure.
After 2019, we started developing and we started investing in our own solution.
And during the pandemic, we managed to kind of have like a beta version.
we managed to kind of have like a beta version
in the first event management infrastructure
that was entirely Web 2.
And then basically over the years,
we've kind of tested it in our own events
and done it better and better and better.
And since one year and a half ago,
when we started to kind
of embrace and come in the web 3 space with this software development and the
event management infrastructure we've started thinking of how the solution can
improve also other global players not only. So what we've done is basically this is the story of how RUNA was born.
So RUNA basically was built for 10 years of experience
of testing every infrastructure solution in the market.
And we've kind of developed our own that is integrating the best features of the existing suppliers in the market and adding on top a technology layer in the form of blockchain integration.
with some data predictability using AI and also data mining and also data,
let's say, like analyzing the huge amount of data that we have.
And it's built and we are building RUNA now in order to be used not only for events, but also for permanent venues.
That means it can be the white label infrastructure behind venues like theme parks, stadiums, aquaparks, even public transportation for daily issuing of metro tickets, bus tickets and everything.
And the biggest thing about RUNA is now that scaling to the level of becoming closer to
the payment narrative, like focusing more on the payment experience and the payment
modules from the infrastructure,
because all the fulfillment modules are completed and work seamlessly. So, for example,
when I'm referring to the payment experience, I'm thinking, for example, when you have,
like you're attending your favorite event or your favorite stadium where multiple events happen,
or your favorite aqua park with your family
then you have the possibility to have your own account on the brand and on the website of the
owner of the venue and then using the runa infrastructure you will have the possibility
to have i know from the top up from your credit account for from your credit card and also from
your crypto wallet so direct top up in the wallets of each client of ours like big client big
corporate client like the the owners of these venues and festivals events and what i've mentioned
what I've mentioned, to going further into this global smart city trend that will also feature
very smart ways of commuting around the cities and using our white label infrastructure, you will
literally have access also with cryptocurrencies to this. Yeah, so in a bigger nutshell.
Thank you so much.
That was unbelievably exciting.
Just in terms of
taking away the kind of tech side of the infraside,
how old were you when you started the festival?
And what were some of the biggest challenges you found
in terms of the festival?
Bogdan, Ida?
Can you repeat this please?
Because the internet connection.
I think it's actually my internet connection.
I've just been told that the intros from my side,
no one could hear me.
So I think it's mine.
No, it's fine.
It's fine.
No, I was just talking about Untold Festival itself.
Like how old were you when you started it?
You must have been young and what were some of the challenges in organizing such a global event?
I was 25 back then and the problem is that nobody believed us.
So we were telling sponsors, partners, potential partners, also the city hall, the authorities.
We were trying to kind of explain our vision and also what will happen in their city and what will happen in their country.
But nobody believed us.
They were saying, oh yeah, okay, it doesn't exist.
yeah okay it doesn't exist it's not possible it's like you cannot bring 300 000 people from the first
It's not possible.
edition in this in a 600 000 capacity city so we're basically increasing the the city capacity by 50
the city capacity by 50% over the four days.
That was like our biggest challenge.
And then when it happened, I remember even now,
so we've kind of managed to,
so even the suppliers for random beverages,
like I don't know, cranberry juice or Coca-Cola or vodka or whatever.
So I remember that the suppliers for cranberry juice were out of stock in like four counties
that were around the city.
Because no one believed us we would bring so many people.
And you did.
And you did. Because you booked like quite phenomenal artists for the first year, right?
Yeah, back then we've managed, I think, the top five artists.
I mean, we were, Untold is a crossover festival, so it's not only doing DJs.
It was not booking only DJs like Tomorrowland or EDC, we are also having
live acts. Like we've had artists from Robbie Williams to Imagine Dragons to
Burn a Boy to I don't know, like a lot to name it. We kind of had them in the 10
years of existence and the fact that in the first edition like we've managed to squeeze in like top
performance that were literally number one in the radio stations so for example we had avici and
david getta back then avici and david getta were like amazing acts i mean I don't know now maybe there are other
artists that are
I mean I'm sure because we have
the new ones as well but back then
they were like the top
in the world
so yeah we managed from the first edition
to book these two guys
like Avicii and Geta
these were the first two names
of the festivals
and then we had the inspiration to kind of build
the rest of the lineup while the ticket sale was on. So we've kind of built on the notoriety
and awareness of the first two acts, we've built the 150 artists lineup for the first
edition. That's amazing.
And so in terms of the experience,
you buy a ticket and then you make your way to Romania
and then obviously Dubai now coming up.
But what would a festival goer expect to experience whilst at the arena?
So I mean, untold, not only only untold but like many festivals around the world
because i'm sure like many of our audience today like the people from that are listening to us
today have experienced festivals venues concerts sports games around the world and I'm sure that people here being very
passionate about web 3, being passionate about technology, being passionate about
innovation can easily, so they easily saw that this industry is outdated so our
industry, our entertainment industry in web 2 unfortunately is very very
outdated in terms of the integration of even modern web 2 technology not speaking about web
3 technology so web 3 technology in the live entertainment space it's something like talking
about aliens aliens or i know a rare form of technology that might be available in 100 years.
So this is the, I mean, the main reason behind this is because the core business of the live
entertainment industry is booking artists, selling tickets. Then the years have passed and crazy entrepreneurs like us became part of
the industry. We were younger, we had a new vision, we were passionate about technology.
Some of us, like my partner Zvat here, and he's the co-founder of Runa as well, and also the CTO
of Runa as well and also the CTO and part of the Antol Group development since the beginning.
He was like a former Google guy and he moved in Europe back 12 years ago and he literally brought the technology that he developed over there.
He literally borrowed everything, every knowledge and integrated in our company as the technology experience.
So coming to your question, Zoe, we treated the integration of technology and the experience of the consumer very, let's say we integrate, we had a very big interest consumer journey perspective with each consumer that handles 60 points of intersection.
So 60 touch points of intersection wallet to spend in our events.
And going further, even as far as what type of soap is in the bathrooms in the festival.
And so it's like we're obsessed about the customer experience. And this
is why Web3 is something like a world where we found this, let's say, response for innovation
that we have. Like we were thirsty about having innovative things and innovating technology in our products and in our events.
And then this is how all happened.
So this is how we built basically the whole user journey and the experience.
Very, very cool.
I think as well, like you say, attention to detail is just so critical in a user journey.
So good to hear you got that locked down.
And then Svet, I think let's come to you next.
As the co-founder and CTO, I mean, what's it been like running such a massive operation from the tech side?
Have you had any standout learnings along the way?
Yeah, that's why we created Veruna.
Because like Bogdan said, we quite tried so many suppliers and the biggest issue it was for such big festival, you needed to work at least with three, four suppliers.
for the access and our supply for the payments inside of the festival.
Now supply for the data and data predictions and so on.
And it was the pain and it was not only the pain for organizers like us, but also it was the pain for attendance.
Just imagine each attendant needed to create an account on the ticketing platform, on the access platform, and also about the payments,
and they are not communicated between them, that meaning it's different passwords,
different emails, and so on and so on.
But it was a lot of challenge here also somehow, also understand that you can be the best developer
of the best software company that can create such software infrastructure, but if you are be the best developer of the best software company that can create such software
infrastructure but if you are not the insider from this entertainment world you are skipping
a lot of information and so many small things that nobody knows if it's working outside from
the festival even concert aqua park and so on That's why it's very important when you're creating such infrastructure to be
to new full picture, what need to be, how need to be, because for example,
when we created so big ones, like almost half million of attendees just in four
days, also about a signal, it's very important.
That meaning sometimes you just sending just one SMS
and you're receiving in three, four minutes. Why? Because it's too many people in just one place.
It's a lot of challenges. It's challenges from the people, challenges from the infrastructure,
challenging from the user experience. It's also very important because you are seeing people from the, let's say,
kids from three, four years until the old ages and so on.
And you need to cover all of them.
Yeah, it's a lot.
Totally.
And having, I mean, having, there's so many nuances to each industry and having the understanding
to understand the problems and then fix them
is definitely crucial.
And then Alex, I think, did you have any questions along this way or would you like to explain
a bit more about Aptos?
Whatever you want to do.
No, I would.
So I was actually not familiar with Aptos.
Or maybe a pain where you were at a festival and a festival or a concert and so on.
Oh, my dear, pain where you were supposed to be a festival or a concert and sound.
Yeah, so I wasn't familiar with Untold up until I started to see what you guys are doing for the festival and everything.
And then I saw that it's the world's third largest festival, I believe.
How many days does that run through?
How many days does that run through?
It's four days.
We have two editions.
One edition in August.
It's here in Romanian Europe.
And the second edition is in Dubai.
It's in November this year.
Is this the first time that you're doing it in Dubai?
Or have you been doing it in Dubai for a while?
No, it's the second edition.
It's already the second edition. It's already second edition.
And the cool thing that the government of Dubai is now building a special place for us,
like to be all time, the festival all year around.
We will also create more events there.
And yeah, RUNA will be run every day there.
Wow, that's impressive.'s the on the lineup for the
upcoming one wow we have already over two thousand of artists uh just for let me check
It's like Alan Walker, Armin Van Buren, Fischer...
it's like alan walker armin van buren fisher
Yeah, I can help you here.
Yeah, because I'm outside.
I'm more excited.
Yeah, so the lineup in Anto Europe is built, let's say, very well balanced.
We have around eight stages and we have multiple music genres.
So, yeah, we have artists on the main stage and commercial like Martin Garrix,
like Post Malone, Armin, Fischer, Don Dalla, Mao P, I mean this type of artists and then going to the more
tech side going to Marco Carola like I don't know Black Coffee and this type of techno stage
but also we're kind of growing regrowing the drum and bass stage and yeah a lot of dubstep and also, yeah, the trap phenomenon
is very present in our festival.
So usually we book,
like mostly from the top 20 DJs,
we book usually almost all of them.
And then we have also from the LiveX, we try to book what people want.
Because we are, let's say, we gave the power to the fans.
And they vote what artists they want to see for each edition.
Yeah, I want to say like here it's also like it's 200 artists, 250 artists per one edition. Yeah, I want to say, like here, it's also like it's 200 artists,
250 artists per one edition.
And it's just not simple artists that's from the street.
They all are tier one artists.
That meaning DJs, everything.
Like it's really amazing.
It's so new experience.
Do you have DJ Snake coming this year?
DJ who, sorry?
Snake.
Snake, yeah.
No, Snake ended his career.
Yes, it's done.
Did he? No way, I didn't even know that.
You can book him and make a private.
When he ended his career, when did that happen?
Three weeks ago.
That's crazy.
Okay.
Well, that's good to know.
See, I learn every day.
Yeah, he had the last show in France in the stadium, in PSG Stadium, I think.
That's surprising.
I mean, he didn't start his career that long ago.
Yeah, but it's difficult to survive in this area.
It's very hard to work.
If you want to have a family, it's complicated.
Yeah, I'm sure. Okay, well, that's too bad, but we'll get other new and great artists, I'm sure.
So a question that I get a lot, and I know we covered that a little bit last week,
but it's something that I get a lot by people who are in this space
and people who are not in this space,
is why does a festival, for example,
or any sort of event benefit from using blockchain technologies?
It's many points. The first point is about the fees. Just imagine when
organizers are creating such a big festival or event, you need...
festival or event, you need like, we are paying with credit cards, cards and so on.
And you're paying a lot of big fees to the banks and so on.
And with a blockchain, we can reduce it with unwrapping, confronting solution quite a lot.
And these money and fees, it goes to organizers and organizers can create much cooler experience,
can book much cooler artists and so on and so on.
It's one thing.
Another thing, it's about the security.
And just imagine one of our, like meaning infrastructure, already our infrastructure
is used by 165 events and not just our events, but
meaning also it's owned by our other organizers.
And one organizer, one of his ticket was sold before us 120 times.
And just one guy enjoyed the concert and 190 times it was scanned.
enjoyed the concert and 190 times it was scammed.
That's why also NFT ticketing will help us a lot to reduce these scams.
And we reduced a lot of scams already.
Last year, it's also creating a new revenue stream for organizers.
Just imagine at the beginning when organizers are selling one ticket, he's
almost selling early stage and this early stage is, I don one ticket, he's almost selling early stage.
And this early stage is, I don't know, let's say it's costing 100 bucks.
But before the festival, it will cost mostly 500 bucks.
And organizers, when they're reselling, selling, and so on, is not doing any money.
And it's quite also bad for them because, like I said, many experience can be done with extra money and so on.
Uh, after we are doing a lot of, uh, transparency, that meaning when you're
creating big event, you need also to pay the vendors.
You need to pay the local suppliers and all the now organizers are working like two three weeks
after the concert event festival just to with excel to export this data who was selling one
was selling it's my transaction not my transaction it's very pain and with this we are reducing a lot
and that meaning everything can be automated and everything can be
transparency after we have also about the security issues about transactions and so on it's so many
points that's why the blockchain is very important for us that's why we want and we are implementing
now that's why do you guys plan on having any on-chain experiences post-event?
Or is that going to be used?
Yeah, and the cool thing that I think also we are speaking with,
I don't know if I can say, but I will not say the name of the project
that your Aptos is doing. That meaning we are partnering.
And yeah, it's incoming very cool thing together.
That meaning we can stream and do a lot of things after the event and before this one.
Nice, nice.
Yeah, I know what you are talking about.
And I don't think we can talk about it yet.
Yeah, that's why I'm not sure.
See, it's always hard.
I'm like, Alix, don't say something you're not supposed to.
Do you have any artists who accept to be paid in crypto?
Yes.
Yes, we have.
Yes, yes.
We have.
The long days, yes.
And just imagine like also about the crypto, like another big, big issue.
When we are going to the new market, example incoming untold asia next year in
2026 when we landed in the dubai we needed at least two three months just to find the local
local payment provider to make a transaction and went with runa then any organizer can sell
whatever they want their tickets their
merchandising and so on and they don't need to be local approved and so on
that's why it's also a big big benefit
yeah definitely and you know at Aptos we've been emphasizing a lot what we
call the real world Aptos.
So it's everything that has to do with actual daily activity.
Let's call it that way.
Or regular users and stuff that like has real use cases in the world.
I think DeFi is amazing.
And every blockchain needs a very strong DeFi foundation, but I do think that the people that it, you know,
caters to is very different from what we've been hoping to see for quite a few years now,
which is exactly what Runa is doing, where you have actual applications of the technology in the world.
I'm quite web-free native, like I'm already like in the web-free space, like five, six years,
I'm trading every day and so on. But like everything defined, it's very cool thing.
But it's, let's say it's quite limited.
That's why my opinion, the next step of a web free one, the solution from
the free would be used in web two.
That meaning it's solution web.5.
meaning it's solution web.5 it's the next level that meaning real also web 2 user who are noob
It's the next level that meaning real.
in the web 3 can use these things these web 3 solutions it's next level why because it's quite
difficult now to use web 3 in my opinion if you are like at the beginning, it's very, very difficult. That's why everything needs to be smoothless.
And if we will bring Web2 experience in Web3, in my opinion, this is next level.
And if you are a Web3 expert, you can export your private keys, import private keys, and so on.
That meaning can benefit everyone.
Yeah, there's still quite a bit of a learning curve into playing around with DeFi and Web3 right now,
that's for sure.
So great, amazing.
Looking forward.
Awesome.
Thanks so much.
I think what we should do now, guys,
is open up to anyone else in the audience that has a question.
I can see one Dev is requesting to speak so I'll bring you up. Just connecting.
There we go. Hi Dev, how are you? Dev are you there? Okay I think some people accidentally to request.
Sorry now that you're a speaker.
Oh, oh good.
Any other requests?
Any questions about the blockchain?
About Untold? Okay I don't think so
can I ask
a question that you know if you don't want to
answer you don't have to
but how much is the price
of tickets for Untold
it's around
it's public information it's fine yeah it's public information, it's fine.
Yeah, I figured, but you know, in case.
From 180 euros per ticket up to 1000 plus for the VIP experience.
Okay, it's not that bad compared to some insane festivals like Coachella.
But burning out of the camp.
Coachella is, I think,
$800 now for the GA, right?
For the general access.
Yeah, I heard that people take credits
to pay for it, which is
mind-blowing to me.
Yeah, buy now, pay later
in Coachella
is 60% of the tickets.
That's crazy.
Yeah, that is crazy.
And the cool thing that we also are doing,
this will do it together with Appos.
This will be the next level in Web3.
Yeah.
Yeah, we're providing a new service
that would help people that don't have this amount of spending
to have access to like this type of micro
loans for experiences with the buy now pay later principles that will be
entirely on chain liquidity and then yeah this is a new thing we're bringing
to them to the market both in the web0 space but also in the web 2.0.
Seriously, cool. Because then you can capture such a bigger audience, more people will be able to join.
That would often be priced out.
Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, we all love experiences, like live and real world experiences but our pocket is not well calibrated to our
not very well calibrated to our needs and our desires so now we need to find
solutions for that. Yeah that's a definite issue. Okay awesome guys thank you so much.
If there aren't any more questions we can wrap it up as we're a bit over time.
Okay, cool.
Well, I think covered everything pretty effectively,
got the story out there.
Yeah, very excited to be having Aptos as our partner for this.
It's going to be very cool to start building
and start getting on chain.
Thank you so much for joining, guys.
Alex, thank you for being here. And Aptos is welcome. Thank you for listening. Thank you so much for joining guys. Alex, thank you for being here.
And after all the time. Thank you.
Thanks guys. Bye.
Thank you. Have a good one. Bye.
