Cardstack ICO review

Review

What is CARDSTACK?

We live in a world where we rely on a host of services and apps, where the World Wide Web is gradually and completely centralized. Where monopolists like Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple harvest our data and seize on all the value that we create. Where our personal data is being abused and where vendor lock-ins restrict us in our possibilities to use our own data in the way we like.

These where the things Chris Tse was thinking about, when he developed the idea of Cardstack in 2014. Chris realized that it is an uneven fight in this centralized world and that all cards are stacked against us. He vowed to take back control by using open-source software to create a decentralized alternative to the centralized clouds which are currently darkening our skies.

The main vision of Cardstack is to create a layer that fosters accessibility and usability between centralized and decentralized technologies. They provide a very simple, cohesive, yet complete set of instruments which facilitate interoperation between centralized and decentralized networks with ease.

The aim of Cardstack is to bring a cohesive user experience to the end-user, which is essential to bringing decentralization to the masses. Cardstack lets users mix and match features from multiple apps or dApps without worrying about a mess of separate cloud subscriptions or utility tokens. What’s even more exciting: their system lets users design incredible new workflows— joining services from different layers of the Internet—that currently are not possible in a centralized world.

*(The functionalities described below are an excerpt from the Cardstack whitepaper and/or website and will form the basis of our rating and conclusion)

Let’s take a look at their product:

  

What problems are they trying to solve?

• The Apps that we use turns software features into standalone native apps, which usually do not communicate with each other and require users to choose between multiple overlapping features to form their workflows.
• As software moves to the cloud, users need to manage multiple subscriptions to cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) products and choose the right plan to optimize cost across all the needed features.
• The emergence of blockchain and decentralized apps (dApps) exasperated the situation, by requiring users to acquire and manage the supply of utility tokens for each of the functions making up their software stack.

 

Why use Cardstack?

Cardstack lets the user be at the center of the internet and act as a hub between all applications and services. Interactions with applications and services flow through a software stack that is completely and exclusively controlled by the user.

CENTERING THE INTERNET AROUND THE USER:

• Cardstack provides a gateway to decentralized resources and, through them, traditional internet services, while also having exclusive, full control, over their identity, digital life and data.

TURNING SERVICES INTO TANGIBLE CARDS

• Cardstack breaks down the problem of complex user interfaces and workflows by cutting these interfaces and workflows into bite-sized encapsulated cards. Each card is a visual embodiment of the key information, suggesting the next course of action via chaining of related cards.

BRIDGING BLOCKCHAIN AND CLOUD SERVICES

• These cards become the primary unit of interaction between the users and many variants of competing services, which run locally, in the cloud, or on a blockchain and fulfill the different aspects of users’ needs.

 

ENABLING PROGRESSIVE DECENTRALIZATION

• The creation of layered cards enables the process of decentralizing the current software ecosystem. It is now possible to substitute cloud services piece by piece, allowing for drop-in replacement when blockchains are ready to act as substitutes.

 

Cardstack Technology
Cardstack is a pluggable, three layer and open-sourced application framework, for building distributed as well as decentralized application networks. The core of Cardstack’s technology consists of:

 

APP FRAMEWORK

• Cardstack Framework is a comprehensive SDK for building powerful, cohesive blockchain apps. At the core is Cardstack Hub, which orchestrates data and value transfer across multiple blockchains and the cloud.

Github code: https://github.com/cardstack

 

AGGREGATION PROTOCOL

• Cardstack-powered dApps can tap into the Tally protocol, which gives dApps the power to perform complex computations to organize large networks of users — such as batching payments, counting votes, and rewarding good work.More information about the Tally protocol can be found here: https://medium.com/cardstack/the-tally-protocol-scaling-ethereum-with-untapped-gpu-power-d949a441c082

ECOSYSTEM TOKEN

• Developers can monetize their Cardstack- based apps via the smart contracts powered by the Cardstack Token (CARD), an Ethereum-based ERC20 token designed to fairly reward Cardstack- powered communities.

More information about the Ecosystem token can be found here: https://cardstack.com/tokenmechanism.pdf

  

How advanced is the project?

The core architecture and components of Cardstack have been under continuous development for 3+ years. They have been deployed in production in both enterprise and open network environments.

For a full detailed future roadmap please visit: https://cardstack.com/whitepaper/organization/project-history-and-milestones
 

Team

The CARDSTACK project features a team of 18 full time members and contributors. The core team members all have proven track records of entrepreneurial and technical skills. We will only list the most important ones.

Chris Tse – Founder & Head of Product

Chris is a technologist by trade, a designer in practice, and an entrepreneur at heart. He has been a designer and architect of “Digital Ecosystems”, from decentralized peer-to-peer applications to federated social applications. He is a champion of applying Open Web technologies, such as HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript, to create mobile experiences that allow interactions to move smoothly between devices, users, and brands.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/christophertse/
https://twitter.com/christse

Ed Faulkner – Lead Developer
Edward Faulkner is a member of the Ember Core Team and the creator of Ember’s official animation library. His open source code is running on mainstream gaming consoles, major social media sites, and hordes of enterprise applications.

His consultancy, Polynomial LLC, leads ambitious software projects for a diverse group of businesses and nonprofits. He was a research associate of the MIT Media Lab’s Social Computing group, and was previously a lead engineer at Akamai Technologies, where he built critical, internet-scale security infrastructure.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/edwardfaulkner/
https://github.com/ef4

Hassan Abdel-Rahman – Sr. Blockchain Developer
Hassan cut his teeth working on crypto at Monegraph as a senior developer, designing and building a system to recognize the rights that the creators of media possess against their creations and serializing these rights into the Bitcoin blockchain; thus facilitating a marketplace where media creators can transact using the rights they possess as data structures encoded into the Bitcoin network.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/hassanabdelrahman/

Advisors:

Cardstack has put together a specialized unit of advisors like Bitcoin Suisse to guide the growth of the business. Each person in their advisory team is a technology/blockchain heavyweight.

Token Allocation:

The Cardstack Foundation will be generating 6,000,000,000 CARD during the Token Generation Event.

The majority of Cardstack Tokens will be distributed to end users, makers, and miners of the ecosystem. A portion of the tokens will be reserved for the Foundation and the Syndicate, which will vest on a linear schedule.

40% will be available for public contributors (Batch A, B, C).
8% will be reserved for future airdrops.
20%  will be reserved for the Cardstack foundation reserve.
15%  will be reserved for the Cardstack syndicate team reserve.
7% will be reserved for Cardstack Advisors & Agencies.
10% will be reserved for Ecosystem Initiatives

More details about the intended use of revenue can be found here.

Cardstack Token Dynamics:

With Cardstack Tokens, users purchase credits to use software in the ecosystem, while makers and miners are rewarded proportionally, based on usage data, etc

Cardstack Tokens (CARD)

• This is the tradable token based on the ERC20 standard of the Ethereum network. When CARD are converted into SSC, they are locked in a reward pool and distributed to makers and miners based on a multi-variable model.

Software and Services Coupons (SSC)

• SSC are non-transferable entries in each of the application contracts. They act like a store credit that can be redeemed by a user within a specific period of time (e.g. 1 year). As usage is metered, SSC are deducted and burned.

For more information about the use and functions of the CARD and SSC token click this link: https://cardstack.com/whitepaper/economics/detailed-token-mechanism

Opportunities

• There is a tremendous need for a solution that offers an answer for the ever increasing compartmentalization of internet services. If Cardstack manages to offer an easy to use solution and is able to attract sufficient developers they will have a huge potential.
• Cardstack is led by an expert team that have been developing the product since 2014. All members are highly qualified and experts in their respective fields
• Cardstack will release their MVP at the same time as their token generation event ‘TGE’. There is already a working release available for developers which can be found here: https://github.com/cardstack/cardstack
• Their network allows for seamless integration with existing cloud services and with multiple blockchains and protocols. It is designed to enable, and allow, cross-chain operations and transaction while also being able to integrate resources from different blockchains under the same secure environment.

 

Concerns:

There are some key risks, here are the most important ones:

• Their service is only accessible via a web based peer to peer portal which could severely limit customer exposure.
• By layering all apps and services into one interface, Cardstack is centralizing services into one place which negates their value proposition a bit.
• Their solution is built with core technologies that are immature and unproven, if those core technologies do not perform according to their needs or expectations, they may be required to change the specifications or to reduce or eliminate features on the platform.
• This project depends on attracting users and third parties providing services to Cardstack at a level sufficient to become (or remain) useful or viable. Any such lack of use or interest could negatively affect the development of Cardstack and therefore the value Cardstack and their token.
• Because laws are not yet fully on track with blockchain technology, there is a risk that Cardstack needs to make substantial modifications to their token dynamics. It is not known if, when, or to what degree different jurisdictions will interpret existing laws and regulations or adopt new laws and regulations that could adversely affect them.

 

Conclusion:

Cardstack is another project that is in an advanced stage of development. Instead of issuing an ICO whilst being in the whitepaper, – alpha, – or beta stage, their solution is nearly ready to hit the market.

There is a great need for solutions that makes blockchain technology more user friendly. Up till now, if users want to make use of different dApps on different platforms, they have to purchase different tokens that need different wallets to store them. This makes wide adoption of blockchain technology somewhat difficult.

The Cardstack solution lets us perform all these actions from one unified interface.

Overall we are positive about this project and will certainly participate in their ICO!

Thank you!