Internet is mostly in the hands of a dozen companies that control platforms, data and infrastructure. It is now very difficult to build a viable alternative to those services, and we are all prisoners of a closed and controlled internet.

Cardstack is a Swiss foundation that want to break those silos by creating a decentralized open-source ecosystem that could compete with GAFA.

Yes, just that.

Cardstack wants to build a unified, user-oriented, interface with applications (called cards) that can communicate with each other. Users will be charged in a transparent manner, depending on the action (service) requested. This payment will then be equitably paid using smart-contracts between the various actors (service providers, content providers, minors, etc.). All these levels need a complete 'ecosystem', and that is why the project seems complex in the video below:

Why it can work?

The 'pay by application' model is dead. The vast majority of users no longer buy software at a high price, and publishers are turning instead to subscription models. But this model is also reaching its limits because consumers end up with a important and complex cumulative bill (netflix, spotify, amazon premium, icloud, adobe, 1password...). This is especially true for business corporations.

There are millions of applications, and it is now necessary to switch between a dozen (mail, facetime, whatsapp, telegram, messenger, signal, discord, slack, hangout ..) just to contact someone. All these applications do not communicate with each other, and the few of them are opensource and can become a standard. There is therefore a compartmentalization that strongly degrades the user experience.

Cardstack wants to fix that with an open and well designed system, which has been in development for 3 years with a lot of bricks already been delivered. The program is ambitious and the platform will offer services little by little.

Tokens (CARD) :

Tokens will be Ethereum ERC20 utilities type, that will allow users to buy ecosystem services and reward service providers and content creators.

There will be 6 billion tokens created initially, of which 40% will be sold through three events (contributors, pre-sales and sales). The rest will be distributed via partnerships or will be used by the foundation. 4 billion tokens will then be mined for 10 years, and the total of tokens in circulation will not exceed 10 billion.

The price of a token is $ 0.017 and the ico is scheduled for Q1 2018.

My opinion :

Cardstack can revolutionize the Internet as we know today. This technology, based on Ethereum can clearly solve part of the problem of hegemony of the big players, allow to redistribute the cards and become the foundation of the services that we will all use in the coming years.

Of course, all this will not be done in a few months and the investment in this ICO has rather a long-term objective. The subject is technically very well framed, with a roadmap focused on the user and useful services first (MVP style). There are also strong guarantees, with a real foundation, open-source code, an active community taken into account in the distribution of tokens, which ensures a development already well advanced.

However, the project is complex and difficult for the general public to understand. Cardstack is still confidential, and if the communication remains too technical, and the main challenge will be, in my opinion, to put in production a base of useful, connected services, and to communicate widely and in a simple way.

For further explanations, the Telegram is available.

For more details :

• The whitepaper and the executive summary
• Some explications on tokens (génération, distribution et utilisation)
• A quite complete review
• Another explanation video
• My original article in french

There is no referral yet, and we don't know the exact dates of the public ICO