Captain

What Captain does

Captain Labs (legal entity Captain XYZ, Inc.) is a Chicago-area technology studio that has pivoted from its original 2018 restaurant online-ordering business — founded by former Grubhub workers — to building onchain commerce products on the Solana blockchain. The company is led by Founder and CEO Michael Saunders, supported by a 14-person team covering operations, marketing, product, finance, strategy, business development, engineering, and design. Its current product portfolio centers on XP, a decentralized exchange for buying and selling sports and concert tickets that claims 50 million+ tickets across 100,000+ live events and is structured to eliminate junk fees and deceptive pricing through onchain asset attestation and P2P swaps rather than a centralized marketplace model.

The company's technology is built natively on Solana, which it selected for transaction speed and cost efficiency, and it has accumulated ecosystem credibility through an official Solana Foundation case study and by winning the Solana Grizzlython hackathon with its Tamperproof protocol. Tamperproof is a real-world asset bridging primitive originally developed to tokenize restaurant gift cards and subsequently adapted to mint concert tickets as NFTs. A third product, captain.fun, operates as a public sandbox for experimenting with blockchain primitives as simple games, functioning primarily as a community-relations and developer-engagement channel rather than a revenue-generating surface.

The business model is anchored on transaction fees from ticket trading on the XP decentralized exchange, though no pricing tiers, fee schedule, GMV, or revenue figures are publicly disclosed. The company appears to be bootstrapped or self-funded, with no institutional investors, funding rounds, or revenue data referenced in available sources. Distribution is entirely self-serve through the xp.xyz web platform, with go-to-market emphasis on community-led growth, Solana developer-relations, earned media coverage, and public experimentation rather than paid acquisition.

Name

Captain

Legal name

Captain XYZ, Inc.

Website

https://gocaptain.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

2018

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

Captain Labs is a Chicago-area Web3 studio operating XP, a Solana-based decentralized exchange for buying and selling sports and concert tickets, alongside the Tamperproof real-world-asset bridging protocol and the captain.fun blockchain experimentation sandbox, targeting consumer fans and event attendees.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Blockchain Ticketing Platform

NAICS

Securities and Commodity Exchanges (523210)

SIC

Security & Commodity Brokers, Dealers, Exchanges & Services (6200)

akta.pro primary industry

Web3 Game Publishing & Distribution Platforms (FSAPAGAA)

Keywords

• Decentralized ticket exchange
• Blockchain ticketing platform
• NFT event tickets
• Secondary ticket marketplace
• Web3 commerce

Headquarters

HQ city

Chicago

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2C

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales, Infrastructure, Operations

Revenue model

1. Ticket Transaction Fees: As a decentralized exchange for buying and selling event tickets, XP likely generates revenue through transaction fees on ticket sales facilitated on the platform.

Go-to-market motion2 records

Distribution channels1 record

Marketing channels4 records

Core offering

Captain (operating as Captain Labs) is a Web3 technology studio building XP, a decentralized exchange on the Solana blockchain where fans buy and sell sports and concert tickets directly with each other via onchain asset attestation and P2P swaps. The platform offers access to over 50 million tickets across 100,000+ live events with no junk fees or deceptive pricing. The company also maintains Tamperproof, a protocol for bridging real-world assets onchain, and captain.fun, a public sandbox for experimenting with blockchain primitives.

Product overview

Captain Labs is a technology studio that pioneered onchain commerce on Solana. The company offers a portfolio of Web3 products: XP is the core decentralized exchange for buying and selling sports and concert tickets with over 50 million tickets available. Tamperproof is a protocol for bridging real-world assets (originally restaurant gift cards, adapted for concert tickets as NFTs) that won the Solana Grizzlython hackathon. captain.fun serves as a public experimentation sandbox for blockchain primitives through simple games. All products leverage the Solana blockchain for fast transactions.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• XP: A decentralized exchange built on Solana to help fans buy and sell sports and concert tickets. Offers over 50 million tickets across 100,000+ live events with no junk fees or deceptive practices.
• Tamperproof
• captain.fun

Products and services

• XP Decentralized exchange (DEX) for sports and concert tickets built on the Solana blockchain. Enables fans to buy and sell tickets directly with each other via onchain asset attestation and P2P swaps, eliminating junk fees and deceptive pricing. Offers access to over 50 million tickets across 100,000+ live events spanning concerts, sports, comedy, and theater.
• Tamperproof Protocol for bridging real-world assets onchain. Originally developed to bridge restaurant gift cards onchain and later adapted to convert concert tickets into NFTs. Won the Solana Grizzlython hackathon.
• captain.fun Public sandbox for experimenting with new blockchain primitives presented as simple games that anyone can try, used to demonstrate technical capabilities and build community awareness within the Solana ecosystem.

Quantifiable outcome

• 50 million+ tickets available across 100,000+ live events

Segments2 records

Ideal customer profiles2 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Feature4 records

Partnerships

Six partnerships are on record, tiered core and minor.

• SolanacoreTechnology or IntegrationCore blockchain infrastructure partner. XP is built on Solana to enable blazing-fast transaction speeds for onchain commerce. The Solana Foundation featured XP in a case study and the platform won the Solana Grizzlython hackathon.
• Crypto BriefingminorGTM or Marketing PartnerFeatured media coverage of XP launch and ticket solution.
• CoinSpeakerminorGTM or Marketing PartnerFeatured media coverage of Solana decentralized ticketing solution.
• DailyCoinminorGTM or Marketing PartnerFeatured media coverage of XP marketplace and online ticketing.
• BlocksterminorGTM or Marketing PartnerFeatured coverage of Solana Grizzlython hackathon including Captain Labs winners.
• Bizjournals ChicagominorGTM or Marketing PartnerProfile feature on Captain Labs as Chicago-area startup.

Scale indicators3 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Broad incumbents

• Ticketmaster (Live Nation Entertainment): The dominant primary and secondary ticketing platform globally, owned by Live Nation. Directly comparable to XP as a venue for buying and selling concert and sports tickets, with vastly larger scale and incumbent primary-issuer relationships.
• OpenSea: Largest cross-chain NFT marketplace. While not ticketing-specialized, it is comparable as a broad Web3 marketplace where ticket-NFTs could theoretically be traded and provides a benchmark for decentralized marketplace liquidity and fee economics.

Direct peers

• StubHub: Leading secondary ticket marketplace for sports, concerts, and live events. Comparable to XP in that both facilitate buyer/seller matching for live-event tickets, though StubHub is centralized and charges substantial fees.
• SeatGeek: Primary and secondary ticketing platform for sports, concerts, and theater with deal-score search and broad event coverage. Closely comparable to XP in inventory breadth (similar event categories) and target persona (mainstream live-event attendees).
• GET Protocol: Blockchain-based ticketing protocol issuing NFT smart tickets for primary issuance and secondary resale. The most product-comparable peer to Captain's XP/Tamperproof combination, also targeting consumer live-event ticketing on-chain.
• YellowHeart: Web3 ticketing platform that tokenizes event tickets as NFTs to enable verified resale and artist royalties. Directly comparable to XP in mission (blockchain-native ticketing) and overlapping use cases including concerts and live events.
• Vivid Seats: Secondary ticketing marketplace spanning sports, concerts, and theater with competitive buyer-fee structures. Comparable to XP on inventory breadth and target consumer fan buyer, though operating as a traditional web marketplace rather than a DEX.

Emerging players

• Aventus: Layer-2 protocol for ticketing and other use cases built on blockchain, with partial feature overlap to the Tamperproof protocol's RWA bridging and on-chain attestation approach.
• Magic Eden: Leading Solana-native NFT marketplace. Relevant because XP is a Solana DEX with NFT-based tickets; Magic Eden is the dominant consumer-facing marketplace on the same chain, useful for channel/distribution benchmarking within the Solana ecosystem.

Others

• Coinbase: Major regulated crypto exchange and on-ramp provider. Tangentially relevant as the consumer-facing fiat/crypto on-ramp many XP users will rely on to fund Solana wallets; not a direct competitor but an enabling infrastructure peer.

Market position

Strengths4 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• Facebookfacebook.com/Captain-103951701740487

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles2 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Captain