☀️Introduction

The Stack Report is a publication covering the evolving tech stack for the public internet. Specifically investigating adoption of decentralised and community-owned systems.

You can find the publication itself over at thestackreport.xyz. This documentation book exists as a companion piece to the website to provide further context to the ideas, concepts and technical implementation of the project.

Starting point for the Stack Report is the Tezos network. Which is an eco-friendly smart contract blockchain system with an on-chain governance mechanism to evolve its own protocol over time. Among other things it powers some of the leading de-centralised art publishing platforms such as the community-driven Teia, generative art platform (fx)hash and aggregator objkt.com.

This project originated from design studio Dialectic Design with grant support by the Tezos Foundation.

Audience

The Stack Report serves creators, developers, investors and early adopters of experimental web technologies through data tools, research and analysis. Providing independent data-driven reporting to learn and keep track of technology usage and adoption in practice.

Method

The starting principle for The Stack Report is to investigate the reality behind the narrative, by looking at publicly & legally accessible data streams from actual deployed technologies and networks that make up the stack.

We have a data aggregation tool-chain that compiles datasets from publicly available sources. These datasets feed interactive visualisations and dashboards for exploration by the research team as well as the broader community. We then search for and capture the stories found in data, distill these into articles, enriched with further analysis and embedded interactive charts.

A further layer of context and meaning-making can come from the community through the tools that make up the Interpretation Layer.

Publishing platform

thestackreport.xyz is the main point of access into the network of stories and tools that make up The Stack Report as a publication. Some key pages to take a look at are:

• Categorised articles

• Tezos smart contract dashboards

• Dataset catalog

• Interpretation layer introduction

Value

Through its activities of data aggregation and analysis, The Stack Report aims to contribute knowledge development in the broader community building decentralised systems and networks on the public internet.

Individual creators, start-ups and community groups are testing and experimenting with new apps. Each iteration hopefully taking the learnings from the previous ones. With concepts and technology eventually becoming valuable as they discover and converge on newly uncovered use cases.

The ambition for the stack report is provide support at each stage of this learning journey.

We can model this roughly on the hierarchy of competence:

Competence stage	Data value
Unconscious incompetence	Engaging storytelling to guide newcomers to discover (articles & social content)
Conscious incompetence	Enable playful exploration of the data space through charts and dashboards
Conscious competence	Test & validate concepts with detailed charts & data provenance
Unconscious competence	Support people to educate others. Custom charts, chart notes & dashboards for sharing

Long-term income for the continuing development of The Stack Report is intended to come from the community of users that visit the stack report for their further education goals and to spread their knowledge to others.

This is captured in the interpretation layer. A set of tools that allow community members to lead the way for others. Using the data storytelling tools from the stack report platform to learn and educate the broader community about building long-term sustainable de-centralized systems and networks. The Interpretation Layer Access Pass is the entry key towards this deeper set of token-gated functionalities.