This weekend, our engineer Jen Weber is attending ETHBOSTON—the Ethereum hackathon hosted by ETHGlobal, where over 100 developers come together to work on dApps. If you're interested: https://eth.boston/
ETHBoston
ETHBoston 2025
ETHBoston begins September 12, 2025 at the MIT Media Lab. Join Boston's premier gathering of Ethereum enthusiasts, developers, and investors.
Find out in this article: https://medium.com/cardstack/building-the-card-catalog-bf034445d05e
Congrats to Jen Weber and her team, who won the creativity award from Torus at the ETHBoston hackathon last weekend! Their project was all about privacy & identity. They built SkipID—a dApp to simplify sign-in processes at conferences. The app lets you log in with Torus OAuth and generates a QR code that can be scanned at sign-in, thus eliminating the need for ID checks. It shows a preview of your conference badge too. You can find more details and a quick demo here: https://devpost.com/software/skipid
Devpost
SkipID
Isn't it strange to need to show a photo ID for sign in at a crypto hackathon? With SkipID, fill out your profile online, customize your badge, and then show your QR code, not a driver's license.
Our engineer Jen Weber recaps her experience at the ETHBoston hackathon she attended last weekend. Jen talks about the different challenges faced by developers; she provides tips for hackathon sponsors to improve the developer experience; and finally, she explains how her takeaways from this event tie into Cardstack’s strategy and potential.
https://medium.com/cardstack/out-of-the-box-tools-for-outside-the-box-thinking-464f622ba0df
https://medium.com/cardstack/out-of-the-box-tools-for-outside-the-box-thinking-464f622ba0df
Medium
Out-of-the-Box Tools for Outside-the-Box Thinking
Elements of a successful hackathon event
Get ready for EmberCamp! On Sept. 16, our lead developer Ed Faulkner and our engineer Jen Weber will give a talk at the second annual EmberCamp in Chicago. Learn more about the event and/or buy tickets: http://embercamp.com/
Embercamp
EmberCamp Chicago
Congratulations Chris Tse & Hassan Abdel-Rahman on being granted a patent as co-inventors for rights transfers using blockchain transactions by the USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office)! This work, which was done as part of Monegraph in 2014, laid the foundation for a lot of digital collectible projects ever since.
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=10380702.PN.&OS=PN/10380702&RS=PN/10380702
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=10380702.PN.&OS=PN/10380702&RS=PN/10380702
A customer uses a prepaid card to pay a service provider, by staking some crypto value into the smart-contract-based token pool (where all crypto assets are pooled together). Customers who only have fiat money can buy prepaid cards from retailers, who do the staking on their behalf. Through usage accounting (on-chain and off-chain), we meter the usage and provided services across the network. Tally (acting as the accountant or bookkeeper) marks the prepaid cards, the value, and the spend history to market—so that people know how much they can deposit, how much their deposit is worth, and how much can be withdrawn.
For more details, check out this part of Chris’ talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwO_ZGCk410&t=710s
For more details, check out this part of Chris’ talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwO_ZGCk410&t=710s
In most systems, developers run the server, so the user’s files are stored in the developer's data center. At Cardstack, developers deploy their cards to the Cardstack Hub—the decentralized application server that powers the entire system (connecting to various data sources like devices, clouds, and blockchains), which is run by service providers of the users’ choice. This way, users have their own hub/server, their own little personal cloud, where they have all their code—whether it’s for note-taking or music-making or image-editing. It can be hosted by a service provider, but it belongs to the users.
A prepaid card is a store balance that facilitates the providing of services in the Cardstack Network.
As a customer, you deposit fiat or cryptocurrency into a virtual prepaid card. This card has an address (similar to a credit card number), an original value (your deposit), the amount you have spent so far (measured in USD cents/§), and your available balance (which is denominated in USD, but may fluctuate based on the market value of the currency you used to buy that prepaid card). Now, you can use your card to pay for services wherever the CARD Protocol is accepted. Service providers will simply bill you by deducting your usage fees from your balance. In essence, this prepaid card is meant to be the pass for all the things you can do in the Cardstack Ecosystem.
Wanna see Chris talk about the concept of a prepaid card? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwO_ZGCk410&t=165s
As a customer, you deposit fiat or cryptocurrency into a virtual prepaid card. This card has an address (similar to a credit card number), an original value (your deposit), the amount you have spent so far (measured in USD cents/§), and your available balance (which is denominated in USD, but may fluctuate based on the market value of the currency you used to buy that prepaid card). Now, you can use your card to pay for services wherever the CARD Protocol is accepted. Service providers will simply bill you by deducting your usage fees from your balance. In essence, this prepaid card is meant to be the pass for all the things you can do in the Cardstack Ecosystem.
Wanna see Chris talk about the concept of a prepaid card? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwO_ZGCk410&t=165s
Watch Jen Weber’s new developer series on how to enable authentication on Cardstack Hub. By the end of this tutorial, you will be able to program access control for who can and who cannot access your Cardstack Application:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAmy6dOo-3Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAmy6dOo-3Q
YouTube
Enabling Login with GitHub OAuth - Cardstack Developer Series
Authentication is a necessary feature for most software products on the Web. A developer should have the power to grant certain users access to desired fields. In this video, Jen Weber walks you through the steps to enable real access control using the Card…
Yesterday, Cardstack hosted Ember Meetup at our office in One World Trade Center. Our team senior developers Ed and Hassan both shared their insights about Ember, Blockchain and Cardstack to a passionate group of developers. Here are some photos that captured the highlight of the event
Developers, this talk is for you! In case you missed it, here’s a chance to learn all about card schemas. They are essential, as they define what a card is and its relationships with other cards, plus they allow these cards to move around!
https://youtu.be/xL7opLril_4
https://youtu.be/xL7opLril_4
What is a token pool?
In the Cardstack Network, customers will usually deal with more than one service provider. To enable frictionless billing of mutual customers, we use a smart contract called a “reward pool”. This is like waiters pooling their tips by putting them inside a jar. At the end of the night, they determine what portion of this tip jar goes to each person, just like we figure out what portion of this reward should go to each service provider, based on some usage accounting.
To know how much that reward pool is worth, especially when it contains multiple fluctuating tokens, we need Tally—our accountant or bookkeeper. Tally knows which transactions are happening on-chain and can access cryptocurrency-to-fiat exchange rate services, to calculate the current market rate of the reward pool.
Hear more about the token pool: https://youtu.be/FwO_ZGCk410?t=1070
In the Cardstack Network, customers will usually deal with more than one service provider. To enable frictionless billing of mutual customers, we use a smart contract called a “reward pool”. This is like waiters pooling their tips by putting them inside a jar. At the end of the night, they determine what portion of this tip jar goes to each person, just like we figure out what portion of this reward should go to each service provider, based on some usage accounting.
To know how much that reward pool is worth, especially when it contains multiple fluctuating tokens, we need Tally—our accountant or bookkeeper. Tally knows which transactions are happening on-chain and can access cryptocurrency-to-fiat exchange rate services, to calculate the current market rate of the reward pool.
Hear more about the token pool: https://youtu.be/FwO_ZGCk410?t=1070
YouTube
The CARD Protocol - Cardstack Tech Talk
Chris Tse, Founding Director of the Cardstack Project, takes a deep dive into the multi-currency payment & billing network called the “CARD Protocol”—which i...
Introducing the Card Makers
Users, developers, engineers, back-end, front-end, with or without framework-level experience—whichever category you fall into, you can play an important role in the Cardstack Ecosystem! By utilizing your individual skills, you can actively contribute to the making of cards, thus to the Card Catalog. The inverse pyramid of card makers tells you how that works. In the next few days, we will introduce each type of card maker, with the corresponding skill sets that are needed in each layer of this pyramid.
Learn more about our pyramid of card makers: https://medium.com/cardstack/who-are-the-card-makers-504f784881fb
Check out our early-access guides: https://docs.cardstack.com/release/
Users, developers, engineers, back-end, front-end, with or without framework-level experience—whichever category you fall into, you can play an important role in the Cardstack Ecosystem! By utilizing your individual skills, you can actively contribute to the making of cards, thus to the Card Catalog. The inverse pyramid of card makers tells you how that works. In the next few days, we will introduce each type of card maker, with the corresponding skill sets that are needed in each layer of this pyramid.
Learn more about our pyramid of card makers: https://medium.com/cardstack/who-are-the-card-makers-504f784881fb
Check out our early-access guides: https://docs.cardstack.com/release/
Medium
Who Are the Card Makers?
Their skills and their roles in the Cardstack Ecosystem
The Framework Team
At the bottom of our pyramid of card makers is the framework—people who write the software. At the moment, this is largely the Cardstack team who is building the Card SDK.
The Card SDK controls what a card can and cannot do. It is a front-end / back-end framework that runs on the Cardstack Hub, our decentralized application server. The same card can run on many hubs / servers and be hosted on different devices—whether that's on a PC or in a cloud.
The framework team builds the templating UI, tool kits, and server runtime. We want to tap into existing open-source tools as much as possible, so as to enable people who know these tools to be productive right away. Therefore, being a part of the Cardstack framework team means learning our version of tools like Ember Core, NodeJS, Postgres, and Docker.
Learn more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrGLmAYYpqQ&t=387s
At the bottom of our pyramid of card makers is the framework—people who write the software. At the moment, this is largely the Cardstack team who is building the Card SDK.
The Card SDK controls what a card can and cannot do. It is a front-end / back-end framework that runs on the Cardstack Hub, our decentralized application server. The same card can run on many hubs / servers and be hosted on different devices—whether that's on a PC or in a cloud.
The framework team builds the templating UI, tool kits, and server runtime. We want to tap into existing open-source tools as much as possible, so as to enable people who know these tools to be productive right away. Therefore, being a part of the Cardstack framework team means learning our version of tools like Ember Core, NodeJS, Postgres, and Docker.
Learn more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrGLmAYYpqQ&t=387s
The Product Team
The SDK and APIs provided by the framework team are used by the product team to create experiences—by building environments.
Here’s an analogy: There's a home screen, volume control, and camera on your iPhone, which a developer of an iOS app doesn't have to build from scratch every time, since those are standard environments that already exist. That's what the product team at Cardstack is working on; and we want to grow this team to 100+ people. There are many new things coming (workflows, spaces, libraries, etc.), all of which will be standard. Every single card that is built using the Card SDK benefits from these sharing or zooming controls. Product developers are the ones who build these standard experiences for mobile or desktop, so they’re all part of the product.
Since the Cardstack Framework is built on top of Ember, this layer requires a deeper understanding of the Ember ecosystem.
Learn more:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrGLmAYYpqQ&t=563s
The SDK and APIs provided by the framework team are used by the product team to create experiences—by building environments.
Here’s an analogy: There's a home screen, volume control, and camera on your iPhone, which a developer of an iOS app doesn't have to build from scratch every time, since those are standard environments that already exist. That's what the product team at Cardstack is working on; and we want to grow this team to 100+ people. There are many new things coming (workflows, spaces, libraries, etc.), all of which will be standard. Every single card that is built using the Card SDK benefits from these sharing or zooming controls. Product developers are the ones who build these standard experiences for mobile or desktop, so they’re all part of the product.
Since the Cardstack Framework is built on top of Ember, this layer requires a deeper understanding of the Ember ecosystem.
Learn more:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrGLmAYYpqQ&t=563s
Back-end engineers
Once we have the environment, we can start thinking about the type of integration (adapter to back-end systems / data sources) we need. Back-end engineers are people who know how to use NodeJS and the extension we've added through the Cardstack Hub, and who know how to interact with REST APIs and databases. They can build plugins to blockchains, Stripe, GitHub, Gitchain, etc.
Plugins are encapsulated as integration cards. They are configurations like a printer driver—you install it and set up your credential. When something is created, we can use that integration card and the corresponding API and syndicate that data to a cloud or, in some cases, to the blockchain.
Learn more:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrGLmAYYpqQ&t=662s
Once we have the environment, we can start thinking about the type of integration (adapter to back-end systems / data sources) we need. Back-end engineers are people who know how to use NodeJS and the extension we've added through the Cardstack Hub, and who know how to interact with REST APIs and databases. They can build plugins to blockchains, Stripe, GitHub, Gitchain, etc.
Plugins are encapsulated as integration cards. They are configurations like a printer driver—you install it and set up your credential. When something is created, we can use that integration card and the corresponding API and syndicate that data to a cloud or, in some cases, to the blockchain.
Learn more:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrGLmAYYpqQ&t=662s
Front-end engineers
By creating common cards, front-end engineers put front-ends on top of our back-ends. Take an event card, for example. Anyone who wants to build an event catalog can start with the basic event card. Not only does it have all the schema.org language already defined; it also comes with an editing form, because the card is a mini-application. These common cards have built-in dropdowns and design systems, to guarantee a great standard experience for customizing cards.
We use common cards as a starting point to build this decentralized ecosystem, to allow back-end providers, integrations, or even new blockchains (like a calendar or event blockchain) to get into the user experience of the system.
Learn more:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrGLmAYYpqQ&t=948s
By creating common cards, front-end engineers put front-ends on top of our back-ends. Take an event card, for example. Anyone who wants to build an event catalog can start with the basic event card. Not only does it have all the schema.org language already defined; it also comes with an editing form, because the card is a mini-application. These common cards have built-in dropdowns and design systems, to guarantee a great standard experience for customizing cards.
We use common cards as a starting point to build this decentralized ecosystem, to allow back-end providers, integrations, or even new blockchains (like a calendar or event blockchain) to get into the user experience of the system.
Learn more:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrGLmAYYpqQ&t=948s
Web developers
Web developers theme the common cards built by front-end engineers and turn them into template cards.
Yet, when building a theme, they don't have to deal with the back-end; the common card already encapsulates all the data integration and blockchainy stuff. All the Web developers have to do is remap the fields, add some fields and texture, and call it a template.
The only skill set needed is HTML, CSS, and maybe a little bit of Ember, to create some logic around a card—so it shows a particular event, icon, or payment status. Without needing to know anything underneath, Web developers can create new mini-applications, including cards that contain other cards. And once a template is created, it can be published to the Card Catalog.
Learn more:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrGLmAYYpqQ&t=1277s
Web developers theme the common cards built by front-end engineers and turn them into template cards.
Yet, when building a theme, they don't have to deal with the back-end; the common card already encapsulates all the data integration and blockchainy stuff. All the Web developers have to do is remap the fields, add some fields and texture, and call it a template.
The only skill set needed is HTML, CSS, and maybe a little bit of Ember, to create some logic around a card—so it shows a particular event, icon, or payment status. Without needing to know anything underneath, Web developers can create new mini-applications, including cards that contain other cards. And once a template is created, it can be published to the Card Catalog.
Learn more:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrGLmAYYpqQ&t=1277s
Power users
Finally, power users use the tools provided by the lower layers to create full-stack Web applications.
And all they do is use the interface. They don’t have to do any coding. The Four Edges allow them to drag a card from a library, open it, look at different editing options, and configure it to their liking with a few clicks. They don't need to do anything beyond Web-based administration. That's the only tool they need to create research report templates, newsletters, conference programs, tickets, and invitations, to name a few examples. Power users just use the templates that Web developers put out there to create their own version of a reality.
Learn more:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrGLmAYYpqQ&t=1597s
Finally, power users use the tools provided by the lower layers to create full-stack Web applications.
And all they do is use the interface. They don’t have to do any coding. The Four Edges allow them to drag a card from a library, open it, look at different editing options, and configure it to their liking with a few clicks. They don't need to do anything beyond Web-based administration. That's the only tool they need to create research report templates, newsletters, conference programs, tickets, and invitations, to name a few examples. Power users just use the templates that Web developers put out there to create their own version of a reality.
Learn more:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrGLmAYYpqQ&t=1597s