Cardstack (CARD) ICO Analysis: A Decentralized Ecosystem that Facilitates Software Interoperability

Executive Summary

Project Description

There are millions of apps in the world right now, and these days, you will find an application for nearly anything you can think of. The only problem is, most of these apps do not inter-relate. As a result, end-users have to use a combination of apps that have overlapping features to meet their needs. This means they have to create separate accounts for each app; this is very time-consuming and in some cases, costly. To make matters worse, the era of decentralized apps (dApps) is upon us. These too do not permit cross-chain communication and users have to open several accounts and manage several utility tokens to enjoy the benefits of different dApps.

Cardstack aims to make blockchain technology scalable — and more functional — by creating a decentralized software ecosystem. In this ecosystem, Cardstack plans to reorganize apps and dApps and use them to form a software stack of apps that inter-relate and communicate. This ecosystem is expected to provide end-users with the luxury of mixing and matching features of different apps/dApps without having to subscribe — or purchase tokens — for all of them.

Additionally, users will allegedly be able to design new and personalized workflows that can be broken down into smaller pieces of “cards”. Cardstack is also expected to unveil the Cardstack Framework, a comprehensive SDK that is open-source and extendable; this can be used by developers in the ecosystem to create card-based blockchain apps.

Cardstack’s token, CARD, is ERC20 compliant and will reportedly be the governing currency in the ecosystem. Software developers and service providers, called “makers” will pay in CARD to register their apps/dApps and offer them to users. End-users may also pay in CARD for the opportunity to curate and combine various software services to suit their needs. When a user uses an app, a smart contract is created between the user and the app, and the fee is staked in a reward pool. These pooled tokens will then be distributed to the apps’ creators and contributors periodically.

Hard Cap and Valuation

There will be a total of 10 billion CARD tokens; 6 billion will be generated by the Cardstack Foundation during the token generation event, and a further 4 billion will be minted and allocated by the Cardstack smart contract over the next 10 years.

40% of the 6 billion tokens mentioned above is to be made available for sale with a hard cap of $35 million (soft cap: $10 million); 35% is earmarked for the Foundation and the Syndicate; 10% is reserved for ecosystem development and will be allocated within the first 2 years; 8% will be used for airdrops throughout the first year (each airdrop event will involve a maximum of 2% of the generated tokens), and the final 7% goes to advisors and agencies.

The Foundation and Syndicate tokens will be on a linear vesting schedule. The Foundation Reserves will have a lock-up period of at least 1 year, and it will vest linearly over 5 years. The Syndicate and Team Reserve tokens will also have a 1-year lock-up period, and afterwards, it will be vested linearly over 4 years.

Price Per Token

Not yet fixed.

Estimated price of 1 CARD = $0.017 USD.

Important Dates

Interested parties can pre-sign up for Cardstack’s whitelist.

Furthermore, members of the Cardstack community can obtain an allocation of up to $50,000 worth of CARD tokens. This pre-allocation comes with a 10% bonus and minimum contribution is pegged at $1,000. Interested investors have to complete an on-boarding process operated by Cardstack’s partners, Bitcoin Suisse, and pre-allocation is expected to start on the 6th of March, 2018.

Cardstack is expected to hold their TGE in the first quarter of 2018 but the exact date has not yet been announced.

Marketing Power

As at the time this post was published, Cardstack had over 12,400 members on Telegram, 2,800+ followers on Twitter, and over 700 followers on Medium.

Team Members’ Areas of Expertise

Business experts

Chris Tse, Founding Director.

  • Co-Founder & CTO of Dot Blockchain Media — an open-source software that bridges existing music databases and blockchain-based registries — for over 2 years.
  • Co-Founder & CTO of Monegraph Inc. — a content monetization platform — for 3 years.
  • Co-Founder of Advisoray Club — a platform that aims to help startups — for 2 years.

Edward Faulkner, Lead Developer.

  • Founder of Polynomial LLC — a consultancy that leads software development projects — for 2 years.
  • Founder, and CTO of Brave Leaf — an electronic care management system — for over 4 years.
  • Founder, and CTO of Clericare — an organization that aims to reduce the dangers and costs of medication noncompliance — for more than 7 years.

Hassan Abdel-Rahman, Sr. Blockchain Developer.

  • Co-Founder of codr, an app that aims to help children code, for 5 months.
  • Co-Founder of Swirly Dots Limited — a startup focused on creating recommendation services for social media networks — for a year.

Target market experts

Chris Tse, Founding Director.

  • Co-Founder, and CTO of Dot Blockchain Media (see above).

Marketing experts

No team member with notable marketing expertise. However, the project is working with Wachsman, an agency that creates exposure and brand recognition for some notable companies in the blockchain industry. Companies like Dash, Kik, Iconomi etc.

Legal experts

The Cardstack team has a working relationship with MME, McDermott Will and Emery and Debevoise and Plimpton, 3 legal consulting firms.

Software engineering experts

Edward Faulkner, Lead Developer.

  • Senior Software Engineer at Akamai Technologies — a cloud delivery platform — for 6 years.
  • Master’s degree in Computer Science (MIT).
  • Ember Core Team.

Hassan Abdel-Rahman, SR. Blockchain Developer.

  • Senior Software Developer at Sun Microsystems Inc. — a wholly-owned subsidiary of Oracle — for a year.
  • Principal Engineer at McGraw-Hill Education — an e-learning platform for students — for over a year.
  • Senior Software Engineer at Monegraph (see above) for over 2 years.

William Bagby, Senior Developer.

  • Senior Software Engineer at Monegraph and McGraw-Hill Education.
  • Developer at Bloomberg for 3 years.

Aaron Sikes, Senior Developer.

Christopher Gardella, Lead Designer.

  • Art Director at several firms, including Apple, Huge and AREA 17.

Blockchain development experts

Hassan Abdel-Rahman, Sr. Blockchain Developer.

  • From his work at Monegraph Inc. (see above).

William Bagby, Senior Developer.

  • Senior Software Engineer at Monegraph.

Token sale structure experts

No team member with token sale structure expertise but the team is working with Wachsman, Bitcoin Suisse and AmaZix. These companies have helped several projects — e.g. Bancor, Salt, and Aragon — launch their ICOs. As mentioned above, Bitcoin Suisse is currently coordinating Cardstack’s pre-allocation process.

Token economics experts

Same as above.


Disclaimers:

  • Nothing written in this article is a legal or an investment advice.
  • Information is provided on a best-effort basis and is subject to change without prior notice. Be sure to verify everything you read with a project team.

The analysis was produced by Research Center team members: Alexander Hinz, Mark Jedd, Eugene Tartakovsky.

We are constantly working on improving our work and welcome all constructive feedback. Let us know what you think.

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Quite an interesting idea and it's on my radar. Hardcap is quite high though, not sure why they need 35 million. The team is not as big as some other projects.

I do think it is a good sign they have multiple videos/presentations online and it seems like they know what they talk about :-)

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