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
Basics
- Official Website
- White paper
- Short paper
- TGE page
- Fields
- Foundational layer + Marketplace + Productivity
- Goal
- 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
ICO
- ICO announcement and updates
- Hard cap
- $35,000,000 in USD
- For private pre-sale, public pre-sale and ICO
- Dates
- Batch A (early contributors) =
- Batch B (pre-allocation) = March 6th, 2018
- 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.
- Dates
- 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
- date tokens get distributed
- 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
- https://cardstack.com/contributors/chris
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/christophertse
- https://twitter.com/christse
- Ed Faulkner - Lead Developer
- Extremely strong technical profile
- Member @ Ember Core Team
- Creator of LiquidFire
- Founder @ Polynomial LLC - consultancy that leads ambitious, strategic software development projects
- Founder and CTO @ BraveLeaf
- Founder and CTO @ Clericare
- Software Consultant @ MIT Media Lab
- Senior Software Engineer @ Akamai Technologies
- Master in Computer Science @ MIT
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/edwardfaulkner
- http://eaf4.com/author/edward
- https://github.com/ef4
- https://twitter.com/eaf4
- Hassan Abdel-Rahman - Senior Blockchain Developer
- A very strong technical profile with 2 decades experience.
- Senior Software Engineer @ Monegraph (with Chris Tse)
- Principal Engineer @ McGraw-Hill Education
- Co-Founder @ AppBox LLC
- Technical Lead @ Flatirons Solutions
- Various tech positions (98-2006) @ Sun Microsystems
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/hassanabdelrahman
- https://www.crunchbase.com/person/hassan-abdel-rahman
- https://github.com/habdelra
- Justin Thong - Data Scientist
- Young profile, freshly out of university
- Researcher @ University of St Andrews
- Researcer Mathematics @ MIMOS Berhad
- Author of the “Proportional Attribution and Allocation Model” Paper
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-thong-6bb97954
- Ken Rossi - UX Lead
- Principal, Product & User Experience (UX) Design @ Liquid New York
- Creative Director @ USTA / US Open
- Principal @ Kasei Sports Inc
- Design and UX @ Civil Engines Research, LLC
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenrossi
- https://www.twitter.com/kenrossi
- Chris Gardella - Lead Designer (freelance)
- Creative Director (freelance) @ Monegraph (with Chris Tse)
- freelancing @ dotBlockchain Music (with Chris Tse)
- Creative Director (freelance) @ Fly Labs inc.
- Art Director (freelance) @ Red Antler
- Art Director (freelance) @ HD Made
- Art Director (Freelance) @ Area 17
- Art Director @ Apple
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-gardella-92b7958
- http://chrisgardella.com
- https://twitter.com/cmgardella
- Wilfred Chan - Managing Editor
- Social Editor @ Fusion Media Group
- Co-founder @ Still / Loud
- Writer @ Gizmodo Media Group
- Writer / Producer @ CNN
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/wilfredwchan
- http://www.wilfredchan.net
- https://still-loud.com/author/wilfred
- Will Bagby - Senior Developer
- Senior Developer @ Monegraph (with Chris Tse)
- Senior Developer @ McGraw-Hill Education
- Developer @ Bloomberg LP
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/william-bagby-3186481
- https://twitter.com/willbagby
- Aaron Sikes - Senior Developer
- Previously worked @ Dockyard, MOTU, Hubspot, HedgeServ
- Alex Speller - Senior Developer
- Previously worked @ Nature Publishing Group
- Venkat Dinavahi, Developer
- Masters in Management Science & Engineering @ Stanford University
- Maximillian Kirchoff - Interaction Designer
- Previously worked @ Lifion, ADP, Google, The Bold Italic
- Isla Bell Murray - Interaction Designer
- Creative Director @ Bustle
- The Bold Italic
- Findery
- Jacqueline Thong - Head of operation
- Previously worked @ Vestadia International, Advisoray (with Chris Tse)
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacqueline-thong-4676281b
- Balint Erdi - Senior Developer
- Author of "Rock and Roll with Ember”
- Katrin Nusshold - Editor
- Previously worked @ Pluto Vermögensverwaltung GmbH and as a Freelance Writer
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/katrin-nusshold-25532742
- Anne Wright - Event Producer
- Director of Events and Production @ Women in the World Media
- Previously worked @ Tina Brown Live Media, and NBA Entertainment
- Steve Bobrov - Senior QA Engineer
- Previously worked @ BusinessWeek, Bear Stearns, Citigroup
Advisors
- Advisors still have to be announced
Partners and Investors
- Partners
- Investors
- No investor support (Angel, VC, else).
- No answer given when I asked how the project was funded until it raised money through the ICO
Online Presence
- Media coverage - niche & mainstream
- Decent coverage in the crypto medias
- No coverage at all in the mainstream medias
- Social medias
- Twitter
- 3K followers
- https://twitter.com/cardstack
- Reddit
- 90 readers
- https://www.reddit.com/r/Cardstack
- Medium
- Telegram
- 13K members
- https://telegram.me/cardstack
- Twitter
Product Status and Transparency
- Product status - MVP, testing, alpha, beta, live?
- 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.
- Transparency
- organization registration & jurisdiction
- Cardstack Foundation is a non-profit foundation based in the Canton of Zug, Switzerland.
- Other organisations that are part of CardStack
- card.space
- Monegraph
- Dot Blockchain Media
- CardStack Sundicate
- CardStack Foundation
- CardStack Institute
- CardStack Studio
- CardStack Financial
- CardStack Live
- open source or not
- Yes.
- github.com/cardstack
- "Everything is extensible, and is 100% open-sourced"
- code audited or not
- Yes, the code was audited by NCC group - https://www.nccgroup.trust/uk
- overall communication
- 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.
- organization registration & jurisdiction
3rd party ICO reviews
- 4.3/5 https://icobench.com/ico/cardstack
- 6.1/10 https://cryptobriefing.com/cardstack-ico-review-card-token-analysis/
- 5.4/10
- 4.1/5 https://www.trackico.io/ico/cardstack/
- 3.5/5
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- Article written by Adrien Berthou - founder of ICO Points Analysis