A massive, extremely ambitious and complex project. This might seem “too ambitious”, trying to do too many things. However, CardStack has a high quality white paper, some big names in the team, an oversubscribed pre-allocation, a very big Telegram group, and a clear communication. Some weak points: undisclosed advisory team, undisclosed full-time team members, and lack of media coverage.
This is not financial advice, do your due diligence before investing. And mind the scammers: they are particularly active in the field of ICOs.
Methodology used when creating this report
Every article published using this "5min read" format is answering a very specific list of questions.
The list of questions does evolve slightly from one article to another, but stays 90% the same to allow easier read and comparison between projects.
If the answer regarding a given question isn't available on the project's publications (website, white paper, blog, etc) and isn't answered by the team when asked on its Telegram Group Chat (i.e. the team ignores the question or avoids the question asked by answering on an unrelated topic), it is communicated in this report:
some answers will be written as "not disclosed/available"
a comment may be added in the "Overall Communication" section regarding the team's attitude
Break down app silos by creating a decentralized software ecosystem (for DApps)
CardStack = Zappier/IFTTT + DApp store + Raiden + DApp framework (i.e. Azure Blockchain as a Service)
Market size
Massive considering the aims of the project, so worth billion of USD.
Description
Card is an ERC20 token
A “full stack” application framework to reach mainstream users
Coordinated via open governance of decentralized protocols
Users of Cardstack Hub
Mix and match multiple dApps and cloud app - without worrying about a mess of separate cloud subscriptions or utility tokens
Create amazing new workflow and app combinations
Get started quickly with fiat currency: no crypto expertise required
Marketplace or decentralized software market
distributes rewards fairly among the creators of the software and the open-source communities supporting them
a buyer of applications enters into a direct deal via smart contracts, which coordinate a diverse network of software development teams, cloud hosting providers, and app coin-backed protocols.
The buyer offers to cover all the material costs of running the app, as long as the cost is directly linked to the usage. The buyer will also pay a royalty that is split between those who developed the software, as a reward for initially creating and continuously supporting all the components making up that particular application.
Cardstack Framework
a comprehensive SDK for building powerful, cohesive blockchain apps.
At the core is Cardstack Hub: orchestrates data and value transfer across multiple blockchains and the cloud
Drop in ready-touse functionality like searchable indexes, realtime notifications, uniform user permissions, flexible containerized deployment, and much more.
Everything is extensible, and is 100% open-sourced
Tally protocol
An aggregation protocol
Proof-of-usage messages that are efficiently validated and aggregated off-chain before reporting the final payment splits back to the smart contract on-chain - dramatically improving the experience and reducing the demands on the Ethereum blockchain
Gives dApps the power to perform complex computations to organize large networks of users — such as batching payments, counting votes, and rewarding good work
Miners
Unlike Bitcoin - which forces miners to solve useless math problems - Cardstack analytic miners help calculate the reward function of who gets paid out what, while sifting out spam, making the system fair and resilient.
Tally miners can use GPUs already deployed in the crypto world
Batch C (crowd fundraiser) = Q1 2018, exact date pending
Bonuses (max bonus?)
Batch A (early contributors) = 20% bonus
Batch B (pre-allocation) = 10% bonus
Batch C (crowd fundraiser) = no bonus
Token amounts
6 billion CARD = Token Generation Event.
10 billion CARD = maximum number of Cardstack Token.
Token allocation
40% for contributors
8% airdrops
15% Cardstack syndicate team reserve - 4 years vesting
7% Advisors and agencies
20% Cardstack foundation reserve - 5 years vesting
10% ecosystem initiatives
Banned countries
United States, Iran, North Korea and Cuba
Token Trading and Usage
Token trading
date tokens get distributed
up to 30 days after the TGE
date tokens hit exchanges and exchanges planned to list the token
not disclosed yet
Token usage
a hybrid token acting as a utility token, a work token, and a reward token
utility token allowing end-users and businesses to use applications that interact with multiple blockchains, decentralized protocols, app-coin-backed dApps, and cloud- based services while paying a single on-chain transaction fee
software makers earn tokens from a reward pool
Team
Note that there are only 8 employed full-time team member (4 of which are engineers). The rest are consultants.
The names of the 8 full-time team members is still to be disclosed (at the time of writing).
Many of the team members worked with Chris Tse in previous organizations.
Chris Tse - Founder & Head of Product
more than a decade of experience leading R&D and innovation teams for Fortune 500 companies
co-founder @ Monegraph - bridges existing music databases and blockchain-based registries
co-founder @ Dot Blockchain Media - decentralized media markets with a combination of cloud and blockchain-based tools
Clear communication via the different online channels (helpful team on Telegram), however there isn’t much third party coverage yet so CardStack might want to work on that.
