Developers are card makers: The Card SDK

Last year, we launched Card SDK V1, enabling developers to build apps that tap into the full power of the Cardstack Hub—with its indexing, transactional writing, access control, API generation, and UI support, including templating and routing.

Since then, we have been upgrading the Card SDK to support the V2 model that is currently in development. Card SDK V2 improves the encapsulation of code, making it easier for developers to reuse modules they have created in other cards. For example: Once you have built a payment processing card for credit card or crypto payments, you can insert it into any other card you are building (e.g. a concert ticket card), which can use the exact same payment UI, API calls, and wallet integrations.

The future Card SDK V2 documentation will be available here: https://docs.cardstack.com/release/

Users are app makers: The Cardstack Builder

99.9% of humanity does not code. That’s why we facilitate not only code-driven, but also no-code approaches to making composable apps, by providing drag-and-drop tools for card assembly and point-and-click-tools for configuration. These easy-to-use tools will greatly increase the number of card makers who can actively contribute to and profit from the richness of the Cardstack ecosystem. Therefore, the current focus of our research and development revolves around creating the card building tool that makes this possible: the Cardstack Builder.

Read more about the Cardstack Builder: https://medium.com/cardstack/the-ultimate-card-building-tool-25c442e22bed

A Card Catalog of prebuilt templates

When it comes to no-code platforms, most users start with prebuilt templates, to which they make little tweaks. As a result, they can get a SaaS app up and running in as little as 15 minutes.

That’s why we encourage all card makers (both those who write code and those who work with the drag-and-drop tools of the Cardstack Builder) to share the card templates they create with the greater community—by simply adding them to the Card Catalog, which will include premium templates as well.

Learn more about the underlying technology for the Card Catalog: Githereum—which is a git-based file system structure for managing these submissions through the Ethereum blockchain: https://medium.com/cardstack/introducing-gitchain-add61790226e

Inspired by 3D open-world games: The Boxel Design System

We aim to give users a cohesive experience across all the capabilities we offer:

-creating new cards using the Cardstack Builder
-searching and collecting card templates in the Card Catalog
-adding cards to the personal Card.Space
-combining cards to create high-level workflows

The process of combining these actions should be fluid, so we borrow a page from the game world’s book, where everything—dragging and dropping, zooming in and out, selecting and configuring in-game objects—is done in a consistent way.

Our solution for such composable Web 3.0 experiences is based on the principle of box elements (boxel), which we expect to turn into a complete design system that supports full theming for companies and brands. The UI components and boxel engines are under active development and will be part of the Card SDK as well as the Cardstack Builder.

Read more in our latest blog post: https://medium.com/cardstack/2020-the-year-of-launches-82ab84e4a1c7

Communication + Transaction = Cooperation

More and more platforms facilitate communication via chat groups, social media posts, and forum messages. They drive engagement and screen time, but don’t return a lot of transactions in terms of dollar values. On the other hand, transactional systems for e-commerce payments, crypto, or B2B workflows have little support for communication.

At Cardstack, communication & transactions are combined to create cooperative workflows: Let’s say a card contains business transaction data in the form of a purchase order or digital asset. This card can travel from one user’s/organization’s space to another user’s/organization’s space through an interactive workflow that includes messaging capabilities.

Card data services are currently in development. They will make it possible for cards to be imported into a hub; and once a card has been imported, it is fully functional within the hub, including the UI, APIs, security control, and data query capabilities.

Learn more about the Cardstack Hub: https://cardstack.com/technology

Multi-hub interaction for access control

We are designing a distributed query service we call multi-hub interaction, which enables cards to move between realms seamlessly, with each realm representing a certain type of security and access control. Think of your private folder on your computer as the 1st realm, your shared Dropbox folder for your team as a 2nd realm, and a public folder where you drop files others can download as a 3rd realm.

These interactions are based on the git protocol, which allows for version control and tracking, as cards move between realms. Allowing multiple hubs that are run by different organizations to cooperate as one extended network will lead to promising new economic models.

Read more in our blog post about our 2020 roadmap:
https://medium.com/cardstack/2020-the-year-of-launches-82ab84e4a1c7

Revenue from customers drives rewards for makers

A truly sustainable ecosystem runs on top-line revenue, as customers pay real money for products or services. That’s why an essential part of our strategy is our billing and reward system, Tally, which was launched to testnet mid-2019. In order to drive revenue, this system will allow users to pay for their usage of services on the Cardstack network in the currency of their choice.

To achieve this, we will integrate Tally with payment gateways to process credit card payments as well as top decentralized exchanges. Once these integrations are done, we expect to push Tally to mainnet and fully integrate the CARD Protocol with user-facing services.

Check out Tally on testnet: https://staging-tally.stack.cards/

Governing the Card Catalog via the CARD token

Among its many benefits, the CARD Protocol will support staking as a means to govern the Card Catalog. This allows people who are knowledgeable about crypto economics and software quality to act as reviewers for new cards that are submitted. By using the CARD token as a governance token, we plan to delegate the ongoing management of the Card Catalog—decisions like which cards get listed in which categories under which conditions—to a community-governed process.

If you’re interested in more details about the CARD Protocol, here’s our Medium article: https://medium.com/cardstack/the-card-protocol-explained-c78e8e091a72

Anyone can offer their services in the network

A registry of service providers will be built on the Githereum (a git- and Ethereum-based) registry system. It will allow providers who want to offer services in different geographic locations, as well as developers or designers who want to offer consulting services to customers on the network, to list and promote themselves in a way that makes sense to them. This registry will be curated using the CARD token as the native accounting unit and the fee denomination for registry maintenance.

Learn more about the role of service providers on our website: https://cardstack.com/

We are proud to announce that the Cardstack Project has reached a major milestone! After months of hard work, we successfully merged the new version of the Cardstack Hub (which implements Card Schema V2) with the main Cardstack Builder codebase last week. Read all about the new hub in this article: https://medium.com/cardstack/milestone-reached-the-new-cardstack-hub-23fff7e64eb2

We’re giving you an early sneak peek into the Cardstack Builder with its GitHub integration!
In the latest installment of our developer series, Jen Weber shows you how the Cardstack Builder and GitHub work together as you build your own cards, with the code being generated for you automatically and your work being stored in your own GitHub repo. https://youtu.be/WjylQ7Emgwc

Developers, listen up: Here comes Dev Mode!
In the latest video of our developer series, we show you how to run the Cardstack Builder locally and how to create cards—both within the UI and within the code editor.
https://youtu.be/JEHgZ_yOM7E

Can we reboot society? That’s the question Chris poses in his blog post, where he looks at the current crisis through the lens of human psychology, surmising what comes after—what will change significantly and what’s likely to stay the same?
https://medium.com/cardstack/rebooting-the-world-after-the-covid-19-shutdown-3c53c989e499

We have completed the internal beta version of the Cardstack Builder! This demo gives you a walkthrough of the different steps and modes to build cards using our card building tool.

Next, we are working on the GitHub integration, so developers can start playing around with the builder on Card.Space soon. Stay tuned for Dev Mode!

https://youtu.be/1n4apuT-JPk

We have updated our 2020 roadmap to reflect the current status of our work. Have a look: All the items we completed in Q1 across the various layers of the stack are highlighted in pink. We are currently working on the items in light blue.

Chris is giving a talk at Consensus: Distributed tomorrow (Friday, May 15) at 10:50 am ET. Tune in to hear him speak about the “Building Blocks for the New Creative Economy”. This virtual conference is free, just register here: https://www.coindesk.com/events/consensus-2020

Chris spoke at Consensus: Distributed last Friday. The topic: “Building Blocks for the New Creative Economy.” In case you missed it, you can rewatch Chris’ presentation in this short video we put together for you:
https://youtu.be/zhdjpwbeiOA

PS: Stay tuned for a longer version of his talk, which will be published soon.

As you know, Chris spoke at Consensus: Distributed last week about the “Building Blocks for the New Creative Economy”—if you’d like to hear more about this topic, check out the longer version of his talk on our YouTube channel:
https://youtu.be/TO0CsjbZXXc

Here’s a sneak peek into our media registry work!

It showcases Boxel (our design system), which provides many of the capabilities offered by other no-code tools, like Airtable. It also shows you how we integrate Card Flow (our conversational workflow system), to handle the transfer of media assets in this music industry use case.

We are currently working with Verifi Media to bring this enterprise solution to the market. It is based on our open-source technology; and we are increasing the capabilities continuously, as we run the technology through more and more sophisticated workflows.

https://youtu.be/GE3G1O5t2_Q