Cardstack CARD ICO: The experience layer of the decentralized internet? (ICO REVIEW)

Cardstack describes itself as “the experience layer of the decentralized internet.” Find out what that means today in our review.

What Is Cardstack?

Cardstack, found online at Cardstack.com, is an open source framework and consensus protocol that aims to make blockchains usable and scalable for the mass market. The end result is a decentralized software ecosystem capable of challenging today’s digital superpowers.

Cardstack sees itself as a leap forward for blockchain at every layer of the software stack. It provides a toolset unlocking the potential of the decentralized internet for everyone.

The ecosystem uses CARD tokens to reward network participants. Miners, meanwhile, provide network analysis in order to fairly distribute CARD tokens to participants – including the developers who create services for the Cardstack ecosystem.

What Problems Does Cardstack Seek To Solve?

Today’s centralized tech giants – mega corporations like Facebook, Amazon, and Google – force users into silos, then capture the value users create.

Cardstack wants to break down app silos in favor of an open, digital world. With Cardstack, end users can mix and match features from multiple apps or decentralized apps without worrying about a mess of separate cloud subscriptions or utility tokens.

Basically, Cardstack wants to create an adaptable framework that breaks down today’s data silos, creating a more permissive future for the internet.

How Does Cardstack Work?

Cardstack allows users to mix and match features from multiple apps or DApps without worrying about a mess of different subscriptions. Users can also design new workflows where they join different services together across different layers of the internet. Protocols like this aren’t possible in a centralized version of the internet.

Cardstack does all of this with its composable design paradigm, which turns units of information into bite-sized, encapsulated cards. These cards can be expanded, embedded, attached, chained, triggers, versioned, cloned, approved, rescinded, or saved forever.

Developers, meanwhile, can build on Cardstack using the Cardstack Framework, a comprehensive SDK that facilitates the creation of card-based blockchain apps. Developers can build anything using modular narrative and discovery containers. They can easily construct custom workflows using the Cardstack Hub, for example, which organizes data and value transfer across multiple blockchains and the cloud.

The Cardstack ecosystem revolves around the use of the Cardstack token, or CARD, an Ethereum-based ERC20 token. When a user spends CARD, it seamlessly forms smart contracts between the user and their chosen apps before getting staked into a reward pool. Pooled tokens are periodically distributed to the creators of apps based on anonymized usage data tracked by the smart contracts.

Miners can also participate in the Cardstack ecosystem. Cardstack analytic miners help calculate the reward function of who gets paid out what.

The brains behind Cardstack’s ecosystem is its consensus mechanism called Tally. Tally aims to create a more scalable blockchain solution using cryptographic 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 demands on the Ethereum blockchain. This avoids problems like long wait times, rising costs, and absurd resource expenditure.

The end result is that Cardstack aims to lay the foundation for the mass market adoption of blockchain technologies.

Cardstack Features

Cardstack’s core features include:

App Framework:
The Cardstack framework is a comprehensive SDK for building powerful, cohesive blockchain applications. The core of the framework is the Cardstack Hub, which organizes data and value transfers across multiple blockchains and the cloud.

Aggregation Protocol:
Cardstack-powered decentralized apps can tap into the Tally consensus mechanism, which gives DApps the power to perform complex computations to organize large networks of users. This is ideal for batching payments, counting votes, and rewarding good work without unnecessarily flooding the network.

Ecosystem Token:
Developers can monetize any Cardstack-based apps using smart contracts powered by the Cardstack token, or CARD. The Ethereum-based ERC20 token is designed to fairly reward Cardstack developers based on their contributions to the platform.

Benefits Of Cardstack

For Users

End users can benefit from Cardstack in all of the following ways:

Mix and match multiple decentralized apps and cloud apps
Create new workflow and app combinations using the Cardstack Hub
Use a single token (CARD) to create retainer agreements with all of the services you need
Keep your data sovereign or send it anywhere with the Cardstack card-based user experience
Get started quickly with fiat currency, with no cryptocurrency experience required

For Developers

Developers can build on Cardstack to enjoy powerful advantages like:
A comprehensive SDK allowing the creation of powerful, beautiful, extensible apps
Access a deep library of powerful drop-in functionalities
Improve app experiences using Cardstack’s off-chain aggregation
Get paid fairly by the Cardstack community-run payment and governance algorithm
Get reimbursed for material costs
Keep things 100% open source

For Analytic Miners

Analytic miners can contribute to the platform to earn benefits like:
Perform the useful work of powering community-run algorithms that create a fair distribution of wealth across the Cardstack network
Help protect the system against outliers, bad faith actors, and spam
Earn compensation in the form of Cardstack tokens (CARD) that can be held or circulated back into the ecosystem
Get compensated via a fair sortition scheme that prevents any one single party from controlling reward functions

Who’s Behind Cardstack CARD?

Cardstack is led by Chris Tse (founder and head of product). Chris is a technologist and designer who has been working to humanize blockchain technology since its early days. He founded Cardstack in 2014. He also co-founded blockchain companies Monegraph and Dot Blockchain Media.

Today, the Cardstack team consists of a group of blockchain architects and open source contributors seeking to build the experience layer of the decentralized internet. A full list of contributors can be viewed online at Cardstack.com.

Cardstack CARD ICO Conclusion

Cardstack aims to create an economically-sustainable software ecosystem that avoids the problems of today’s centralized platforms. It’s an “experience layer” for the decentralized internet of the future, allowing users to combine services across cloud apps and decentralized apps. The ecosystem revolves around the use of Cardstack tokens, or CARD.