May 10, 2018
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The experience layer of the decentralized internet
Watch Intro Video10 Min
Cardstack is an open-source framework and consensus protocol that makes blockchains usable and scalable for the mass market, creating a decentralized software ecosystem that can challenge today’s digital superpowers.
Foundational Documents
To help you gain a deeper understanding of the market context, mathematical model, and token mechanisms behind Cardstack project, our team has prepared 4 additional papers for your review:
Tally Protocol
15 Min Read
An early look at our pioneering work on a new scalable consensus protocol that combines on-chain stake pools and off-chain number- crunching to allocate mass payments while enforcing community rules in a decentralized way.
Technology
Cardstack is a leap forward for blockchain at every layer of the software stack — providing a toolset that unlocks the potential of the decentralized Internet for everyone.
App Framework
Cardstack Framework is a comprehensive SDK for building powerful, cohesive blockchain apps. At the core is Cardstack Hub, which orchestrates data and value transfer across multiple blockchains and the cloud.
Aggregation Protocol
Cardstack-powered dApps can tap into the Tally protocol, which gives dApps the power to perform complex computations to organize large networks of users — such as batching payments, counting votes, and rewarding good work.
Ecosystem Token
Developers can monetize their Cardstack- based apps via the smart contracts powered by the Cardstack Token (CARD), an Ethereum-based ERC20 token designed to fairly reward Cardstack- powered communities.
Features & Benefits
For End-users
- Mix and match multiple dApps and cloud apps
- Create amazing new workflow and app combinations using Cardstack Hub
- Use one token (CARD) that forms retainer agreements with all the services you need
- Keep your data sovereign, or transmit it anywhere easily, with our card-based user experience
- Get started quickly with fiat currency: no crypto expertise required
For Developers
- Use our comprehensive SDK to build powerful, beautiful, extensible apps
- Access a deep library of powerful drop-in functionality
- Improve your app experience using Cardstack’s off-chain aggregation
- Get paid fairly by our community-run payment and governance algorithm
- Get reimbursed for your material costs
- Keep things 100% open-source
For Analytic Miners
- Do the useful work of powering community-run algorithms that create a fair distribution of wealth
- Help protect the system against outliers, bad-faith actors, and spam
- Earn fees in the form of Cardstack Tokens that can be held or circulated back into the ecosystem
- Get compensated via a sortition scheme that prevents single parties controlling the reward function
Cardstack’s approach to decentralizaton lets self-sovereign users act as their own hub, so that interactions with applications and services running on networks of different topologies flow through a software stack controlled by the users.
Video
Chris Tse, the founding director of the Cardstack project, gave an overview talk in September where he walked through the thinking behind the Cardstack vision, architecture, and protocol. The recorded video with animated slides is available below:
The length of this video is 1 hr, 15 min
Project Founder
Chris Tse
Founder & Head of Product
Chris Tse (@christse) is a technologist and designer who has been working to humanize blockchain technology since its early days. In 2014 he founded Cardstack, where he leads a team of blockchain architects and open-source contributors to build the experience layer of the decentralized Internet. He is also a co-founder of blockchain companies Monegraph and Dot Blockchain Media, and has more than a decade of experience leading R&D and innovation teams for Fortune 500 companies. Chris has a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Columbia University.
Read Full Bio
Meet the Contributors
The project has advanced to what it is today thanks to the help of an amazing team of contributors.
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Token Mechanisms
Our ecosystem is governed by smart contracts powered by the Cardstack Token (CARD). With this single token, users can pay for their entire mix of software usage, verified by our off-chain consensus protocol. The result is a seamless experience for consumers, and fair rewards for makers and miners.
Cardstack Token (CARD) is a 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.
In this specialized settlement network, software makers earn tokens from a reward pool, proportionally allocated based on usage data, code dependencies, user feedback, and transaction history — which is crunched and verified by analytic miners.
Software and services need predictable pricing. To get started, a user converts Cardstack Tokens into non-transferrable tokens called Software and Services Coupons (SSC) which are pegged to the US dollar, before the coupon is deposited in an application’s retainer contract. Meanwhile, the Cardstack Tokens are added to the reward pool.
When the app is used, coupons are burned to form an on-chain transaction history that helps determine the allocation of Cardstack Tokens to reward makers.
A smart contract under the user’s control can top-off an app retainer when tokens run low, while another contract operating at the network-level can exchange Cardstack Tokens to other utility tokens as needed, all without user intervention.
Introducing Cardstack Token
Cardstack Token is the fuel and catalyst for the global movement towards a sustainable software market built on open-source code and powered by crypto-economics.
UPDATE: Details about the Cardstack Token Generation Event have just been published: Read the Medium post
Get updates about the Token event
Our mission is to build an economically sustainable software ecosystem that fights back against the rampant lock-in mechanisms of centralized platforms.