Blockstack Pauses App Mining Pilot Due to Challenges in Running Program

Privacy-centric computing network and app ecosystem Blockstack has paused its App Mining pilot due to a range of challenges.

Rolled out in 2018, the App Mining project is designed to incentivize developers to build apps on Blockstack. Although the startup has ostensibly seen a healthy app growth throughout 2019 — from 46 to more than 400 apps so far, — it admitted an array of challenges in running a program of increasing size and complexity, according to a Feb. 10 blog post.

Three key challenges to be solved

As such, Blockstack has decided to pause the pilot until it resolves key issues, which include objectively fair distribution, privacy-preserving analytics and decentralization. Blockstack expects to produce better ranking metrics used to reward apps that provide high-quality user experience and put users into control over their data and privacy.

Further, the company is set to develop a tool for tracking an app’s user activity that does not use users’ data and privacy. Such quality metric would help Blockstack identify how successful an app is. Finally, the company is faced with the task to determine what potential independent entity or tool can fairly distribute Stacks (STX) tokens to App Mining participants.

“Blockstack PBC will no longer run the App Mining program. We’re calling for a major overhaul of the App Mining program and not incremental improvements. Any new version of App Mining will be driven by individuals or entities other than Blockstack PBC and likely will not launch until Stacks 2.0 is operational,” the post pointed out.

Blockstack’s recent developments

Last August, Blockstack partnered with Lambda School to enable students enrolled in the program to learn how to code Blockstack apps and earn monthly revenue through its App Mining Program.

At the time, Blockstack also planned to supply a range of tools needed for quality control. Each student-developed, decentralised app was set to be subject to reviews and comprehensive user-testing videos.

As Cointelegraph reported last July, Blockstack gained SEC approval for its $28 million public token offering. That was the first SEC-sanctioned offering under Regulation A+, which would offer a token rather than a share.