Web1 allowed for the ability to read. Web2 allowed for the ability to read and write. Web3 allows for the ability to read, write and own.
Essentially, Web3 is the next iteration of the internet, and it will be comprised of decentralized protocols and tokens.
To learn more about unlocking the doors to Web3 for everyday people – so that anyone can build apps, create content and get paid in decentralized ways, Benzinga spoke with Cardstack founder Chris Tse.
Benzinga: Hi Chris, nice to meet you. Care to kick it off with an introduction?
Chris Tse: I’ve been a technologist in the media space for most of my career. I’ve worked for bigger companies and startups, sold companies, and worked in an innovation role, last.
Moreover, when the Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) project got started, I met with the team – Vitalik Buterin and Joseph Lubin – and they were doing their initial coin offering (ICO). We connected over dinner, and they told me about the model called cryptocurrency.
I’ve been hooked ever since. I built a commercial platform called Monegraph, which was probably the first commercial non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace ever made.
It was Kevin McCoy, who invented the concept of NFTs, that recruited me to join his company and build this commercial version of Monegraph.
How did Cardstack happen?
In wanting to fund open source development in crypto, I started Cardstack which treats software, itself, as an NFT of sorts.
Instead of thinking about [software] as a one-time sell, think about it as a rental-type of royalty, and that is aligned with my background working in media and intellectual property licensing.
How does Cardstack work?
If you think about Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), most of the time you log into a website – Salesforce.com Inc (NYSE: CRM), HubSpot Inc (NYSE: HUBS), or Slack – and it is a subscription.
With that subscription, you get a bunch of features and tabs, but the traditional approach of thinking about monetizing software…
