Coming up: Who are the card makers? Watch out for Chris’ next tech talk, where he explains in detail how the different types of card makers can contribute to the Cardstack ecosystem.

Join our brand-new, official Cardstack Discord channel! We’re switching Discord servers in an effort to consolidate and boost the communication between our team and our community. You can read the full announcement here: https://medium.com/cardstack/the-brand-new-official-cardstack-discord-channel-4a2ffd925cee

Our current server will become read-only, but joining the new one is easy—just click on this link: https://discord.gg/Vw3Eyjv. See you on the other side!

Introducing the different types of card makers! Listen to Chris’ new tech talk, where he explains it all in detail: Who are the card makers? Which skills do they need? How many do we need for a rich ecosystem? And at which stage do they get involved? The “inverse pyramid model” presents them all—from the framework and product team to the back-end and front-end engineers, plus the Web developers and the power users.
https://youtu.be/zrGLmAYYpqQ

What have our developers been up to?
Ed is working at the framework level to refactor the Card SDK, which is being enhanced to support workflows with multiple participants. We want to make sure cards can truly move between different workflows, different sites, different hosts, and different hubs. Jen is concentrating on the quick start to building cards using this software development kit. Meanwhile, Hassan and Alex focus on the Cardstack Protocol, while Derrick, Will, and Burcu are working on a library of reusable UI components (for Card Folio / Tally), with the aim to provide an accessible UI that allows end users to tap into our capabilities.

The Cardstack quick start is here! Let our engineer Jen Weber walk you through building cards using the Card SDK. Watch as Jen clones an existing project (Card Board) to create a new one—and try it out yourself. You can add cards, configure them, style them, and finally view them in action.
https://youtu.be/_iYu1rJujFk

This week, the Hyperledger team visited us at our office in One World Trade Center. On July 30, Chris will be at the Hyperledger Member Summit 2019 in Tokyo, where he was invited to give a talk in the "Exciting Developments" category. The topic: "Building a Media Registry with Git and Sawtooth.” We look forward to sharing what we have been working on with the members of the Hyperledger community.
https://hyperledgermemberssummit2019.sched.com/event/QQ8v/building-a-media-registry-with-git-and-sawtooth-chris-tse-cardstack

Developers attention please! Come and check out our first tutorial on how to build a movie tracking application using the Cardstack Framework. By the end of this tutorial, you will have a live application where you can add movies to track without needing to write additional code: https://docs.cardstack.com/release/developer-cookbook/movielist-tutorial/

If you’re interested in the CARD Protocol, read the lightly edited transcript of Chris’s recent tech talk. With links to individual sections of the video, it will help you understand this rather complex multi-currency payment & billing network that makes the Cardstack Ecosystem worthwhile for all participants.
https://medium.com/cardstack/the-card-protocol-explained-c78e8e091a72

Next week, we will launch Tally, a metering and billing network for purchasing Software-as-a-Service in a decentralized way.

Here’s our July update to bring you up to speed on our recent developments, in case you missed some of our previous announcements.
https://medium.com/cardstack/whats-new-at-cardstack-e83c5418acfe

If you missed Chris’ talk at the Hyperledger Member Summit, don’t worry! We have consolidated it into one video, where Chris walks you through the architecture and demos of blockchain-based registries. Come and learn how you can build the next enterprise blockchain use case using Git, Sawtooth, and Cardstack technology!
https://youtu.be/HBqSpYpqWko

We are about to launch Tally on Rinkeby testnet! This will be the first part of the CARD Protocol for which we are starting this testing phase. Watch the demo by our product manager Dmitry and learn how to play around with Tally both as a customer and as a service provider. Live URL and instructions to obtain test token will be released on Discord next Monday. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REa9Dr1lEMU

Our engineer Jen Weber will be coding live at the BostonJS meetup today, August 1. She will present “debugging secrets of the pros, for everyone,” revealing how to write and debug complex JavaScript codebases, using specific Cardstack examples. The event is free! So, if you happen to be in Boston today, you can still RSVP on the website.
https://www.meetup.com/boston_JS/events/263233387/

We have launched Tally on testnet! Being the metering and billing network for decentralized SaaS and the first part of the CARD Protocol, Tally is now running on the Rinkeby test network: https://staging-tally.stack.cards/ You can find the instructions for our testing phase in this article and watch the demo by our product manager Dmitry, to learn how to play around with Tally both as a customer and as a service provider.
https://medium.com/cardstack/tally-launches-on-testnet-442efa071f44

Developers, listen up! Don’t miss our newest tech talk, where Chris explains one of the basic building blocks of Cardstack: card schema. A card schema defines what a card is and what its relationship with other cards looks like. This definition is used to build applications and allow cards to move around the whole ecosystem.
https://youtu.be/xL7opLril_4

Developers, follow along with our movie list tutorial to enable editing mode for your card types! This editing tool, aka the Right Edge, is a feature of the Card SDK that allows end users to edit Cards from the browser/UI: https://youtu.be/QAzqXLZVjXA

Deep dive for developers: If you’re interested in schemas, peruse this blog post that goes with Chris’s recent tech talk. Accompanied by links to the video, it explains the concepts and design of one of Cardstack’s basic building blocks, aka “Card Schema”, which (along with Gitchain) enables cards to move around. Understanding the principle of card schemas is a crucial aspect of making the decentralized Web a reality—in the same scrumptious UI quality you expect from today’s centralized apps.
https://medium.com/cardstack/card-schema-explained-8c5340a7cd9f

Tally is now running on Rinkeby testnet! Feel free to play around with our metering & billing network for dSaaS, taking the role of a customer and/or service provider (note: you don't have to be a developer to try this out!). All you need to get started is a MetaMask wallet. You can use test tokens to buy prepaid cards, subscribe to service providers, register new service providers, and bill customers. Here’s the link to Tally: https://staging-tally.stack.cards/ You can find all instructions on how to obtain test tokens and start using Tally in this blog post:
https://medium.com/cardstack/tally-launches-on-testnet-442efa071f44

Check out our newest episode of the Cardstack Developer Series! Our engineer Jen Weber shows you how to store card data in a local or remote Git repository, using the Card SDK’s Git plugin.
https://youtu.be/JJjQ9_VzB8c

Here’s an in-depth article to go with Chris’s strategy talk about the Cardstack product! Read about the different participants of the ecosystem, how they are connected with each other, and how Cardstack addresses their needs using the Card SDK, the CARD Protocol, and the Cardstack Hub.
https://medium.com/cardstack/so-whats-the-cardstack-product-dfd9223dc300