Carry Protocol: Project Update Report (October)
Hello members of the Carry Community!
In this Project Update report, we will summarize the progress over the past few weeks and changes Carry project will have in the near future.
Carry News
Prioritization strategy for Carry product development
Back when we first published our white paper a year and a half ago in early 2018, we envisioned a blockchain-based solution to the world’s offline purchase data problem. We outlined in the documentation the necessary building blocks of smart contracts, service components and ECA partnership contribution to achieve Carry’s mission of giving the data rights back to the consumers. Since the publication of our whitepaper, we witnessed the following:
Development of base protocols with spec requirements that enables us to build Carry’s application level protocol is progressing slower than we expected at the time of white paper publication. This means base protocols with the following components necessary for Carry are not available:
- Transaction per second requirements needed for Carry service operation
- Sustainable gas fee structure and gas fees for onchain transactions
- Privacy features
Due to slower technical development and commercialization of base protocols, mass blockchain adoption in the real world is lower than expected. This means the utility of tokens and viability of on-chain token economy has yet to prove itself in real world services.
In the last few months, Team Carry had deep discussions on how to best achieve Carry’s mission now that the blockchain landscape is vastly different from what we expected when we launched our project. After countless hours of intense discussion, we decided to change our high-level strategy in product design and development to best suit the current blockchain landscape.
1. Overall service architecture & design
1–1. Public blockchain architecture to centralized build
1–2. Minimization of onchain transactions
2. Value proposition and target demographic
2–1. Consumer focused product design
- as opposed to B2B/ECA-oriented architecture to foster ecosystem
2–2. Focus on non-data value proposition for mass consumers for wider adoption
- as opposed to data-sensitive consumers wishing to monetize their data (niche market)
1. Overall service architecture & design
1–1. Public blockchain architecture to centralized build
As we began to design and build several components of Carry to facilitate data sharing and monetization, we ran into several hurdles that the current blockchain tech didn’t address or couldn’t solve. This means we have three options: 1. the team waits for further progress by other dev teams so we could build on them, 2. the team solves any and all technical issues posed by current state of base protocols or, 3. the team builds and tests our proposed product in a centralized manner planning for eventual migration to base protocol whenever it gets ready. The three options pose the following pros and cons:
Option A: The team waits for further progress by other dev teams
Pros:
- No changes to the product roadmap proposed in the white paper
Cons:
- Unpredictable timeline and roadmap execution as our progress is completely determined by third party’s competence
Option B: The team solves any and all technical issues posed by current state of base protocols
Pros:
- We take matters into our own hands
Cons:
- Vast changes to project scope and roadmap
- Re-organization, planning and structure of dev teams needed
- More resources required (time, talent and funds)
Option C: The team builds and tests proposed product in a centralized manner planning for eventual migration
Pros:
- Fastest way to get the product out in the hands of real consumers, merchants and advertisers
Cons:
- Problems of centralization
- Benefits of blockchain reduced
After consulting with our advisors, much internal debate and heated discussions, the team decided on Option C. We also considered building our own mainnet by forking other base protocols but decided to prioritize actualization of data monetization and ownership problem for the mass consumers at the service level over solving for problems plaguing the underlying blockchain technology. This is not to say that the fundamental technology is not important.
1–2. Minimization of onchain transactions
This is an extension of our decision to centralize the build. Our estimation implies that putting all BT and CRE transactions onchain will cost Carry somewhere between $500k to up to $2m on a monthly basis. This is only to cover transactions made by our first partner Dodo Point, and as Carry takes on additional partners generating higher volume of transactions, the monthly gas fee structure becomes simply unmanageable. It simply does not make sense for us to power gas fees via inflation or Carry subsidizing gas fees generated in the initial stage as these options are not sustainable. To address this issue, most of our transactions will incur offchain in centralized build. We will re-evaluate transaction migration to occur onchain once base protocol prove commercial viability in terms of gas fee structures and price.
2. Value proposition and target demographic
2–1. Consumer-focused service design
Carry is an ambitious project with huge goals of changing the way consumers own and monetize their data starting in the offline world. Achieving this requires an orchestra of heavyweight champions with existing merchant or user base participating in ECA as partners contributing in harmony. That is the reason why the original white paper described in length the purpose and role of ECA and its partners. We also designed the Carry ecosystem to suit the needs of these contributing partners as they play pivotal roles in merchant acquisition (Device Providers) and user acquisition (Wallet Service Providers), effectively laying out the foundation for Carry’s growth.
As we decided to centralize the Carry ecosystem before base protocols prove their commercial viability in light of getting the product in the hands of real consumers and merchants as fast as possible, we also began debating whether to prioritize the Carry ecosystem over initial user base or to focus on feature-level use case over delivering incentive and value proposition to contributing partners of ECA. After much deliberation, the team concluded on prioritizing product-market fit for consumers at feature-level over value proposition for ECA partners. The reasoning is rather simple: ECA is only meaningful if consumers we are trying to help buy into a feature-level value proposition. While the existing plan was to deliver value proposition to ECA partners and consumers in parallel, we noted that doubling down our resources and effort into consumer-side first will give us better chances of success.
Keeping this in mind, the team shifted gears from building an enterprise-friendly service platform to consumer-focused product for mass adoption. Succeeding in our new initiative will only present ECA partner candidates with more compelling argument for joining the Carry network as growing user base and transaction base will only work to further substantiate Carry’s mission statement.
2–2. Focus on non-data value proposition for mass consumers for wider adoption
This is the topic that team Carry spent the most on in the past few months. This was the topic of intense discussions over sessions and sessions of marathon meetings.
The end-game for Carry is enabling an average consumer to take control of the way his or her data is used. Over the course of the last couple of months, our team had a major dilemma — will people love an app whose main feature was data management? Will such value proposition resonate with real consumers and will it result in user retention and organic user engagement? What type of end-users will rave about their data management and monetization rights?
The answers to the above questions led us to believe that app whose main feature was data monetization would attract only a small segment of the user pool. For data to be valuable to advertisers, it is important that we collect data from as wide of user base as possible. Therefore we concluded that we should design our service whose value proposition resonates with larger user base since we have at our disposal large merchant and user base to leverage. So this change in perspective does not change the product roadmap but simply changes the method we employ to execute it. In summary, instead of developing an app whose main feature is data management and monetization, we will have an app for consumers whose main value proposition has wider resonance to larger demographic, with data management and monetization features.
What is the new app? How will it be positioned in the offline world? We ran intense weekly sprints and got great feedback from would-be users with our prototypes. We are excited to share updates to the positioning of our app and thus new use case possibilities in the near future, so please stay tuned for updates.
2. Changes in Buy-back schedule
The team has decided to temporarily suspend CRE buy-back. The bought-back CRE will remain locked possibly after the original unlock date of December 31st 2019.
A few months ago, the team announced CRE buyback plans to purchase Carry tokens needed for upcoming airdrop events with named brands in the online and offline space.
We concluded mass-marketing and airdrop events have minimal impact on eventual product adoption, especially in this market. We will continue to focus on product development to maximize value proposition to consumers. We will therefore delay any mass-airdrop or co-marketing campaigns with named brands in the online/offline space until the official launch of our product. The team therefore decided to suspend CRE buyback for marketing purposes until marketing campaigns are about to be executed.
We will keep the bought-back tokens locked. The bought back tokens will remain locked for as long as we announce airdrop campaigns or marketing campaigns in future. This means the bought back tokens will remain locked possibly after December 31st 2019 like as originally announced.
If there are any updates on this subject matter, we will share with the community via official channels.
Original buyback announcement:
https://link.medium.com/Pyfm0cBOS0
3. Changes in Korean community management
As we are setting up more specific product roadmap and are getting closer to product testing, communication and feedback from potential users and participants of the ecosystem is more critical than ever.
To open up accessibility to Korean consumers and to focus our discussions, we will migrate the Korean Telegram channel over to Kakao Talk, Korea’s largest mobile messenger service. (Kakao Talk is much more popular than Telegram in Korea) Members of the team and the CEO will participate in the team to open a direct line of communication to share project progress with supporters and participants. We will also post regular updates and host AMAs in the official Korean Kakao Talk channel. The English Telegram channel for the global users will remain the same.
4. Events/Activities
Carry Protocol Speaks at Startup Alliance Korea Seminar
Carry Protocol attended ‘Trend Seminar’ held by Startup Alliance Korea and presented at ‘Payment and Blockchain’ session. In the seminar, Co-CEO Richard Choi has discussed the innovation and potential risks blockchain and cryptocurrency payment will bring into the traditional payment market with other experts attended.
Thank you
