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“Choose from a library of prebuilt templates. Adjust and combine them to create your very own apps, which help you manage your projects, sync your tasks, and grow your business.”
The new Cardstack website presents the powerful tools we offer users—like a form creator, access control, white-label support, and interactive messaging, as well as task synchronization (based on our Gitchain technology) and automation (e.g. to generate invoices and multi-currency payments).
https://cardstack.com/
Working together to break the status quo
“Users, designers, developers, and service providers cooperate to create the shared software catalog for the next decade.”
The new Cardstack website visualizes the competitive focus of the last decade, which led to application silos that required multiple logins from users. The next decade will be all about cooperation across individuals, businesses, and industries instead—as all network participants will be connected through an open and fair protocol.
https://cardstack.com/
Build it on your own
“The Cardstack Builder brings the fun (and profit) of building software to non-coders, which is 99.9% of humanity!”
The new Cardstack website gives you a sneak preview of our user-friendly app building tool, which allows users to assemble, configure, style, and publish their own apps without writing any code.
If you would like to learn more about the Cardstack Builder, check out this blog post: https://medium.com/cardstack/the-ultimate-card-building-tool-25c442e22bed
https://cardstack.com/
Design it to fit your needs
“Do it in style. Create templates and themes for others to choose from, while you grow your client base with custom and premium themes.”
The new Cardstack website conveys the relationship between designers and users—as users get to choose from a shared catalog of themes, which are created by designers, who in turn get paid for their work based on usage.
https://cardstack.com/
Code it to do more
“Most SaaS products are proprietary, so one company owns your data. Because Cardstack is open source, you own not only your data, but your customized software too.”
The new Cardstack website gives you an overview of the benefits Cardstack offers developers—being open source, fully documented, and (due to the underlying CARD Protocol) profitable too! Plus, there’s a detailed list telling you which skills you need to extend Cardstack yourself via UI customization, feature enhancements, or system integration.
https://cardstack.com/
Host it anywhere you want
“Similarly to other open-sourced software like WordPress, users can choose any hosting provider to manage and run their Cardstack-based app for them. A large number of hosting providers in the Cardstack ecosystem will ensure that users from around the world get tailored services that fit their budget and requirements.”
The new Cardstack website introduces the first hosting provider of the Cardstack ecosystem—Card.Space—and tells you how your company can join the Cardstack membership network. Service providers will benefit from a global software catalog, unified billing & payments, cross-honored memberships, and a token-curated registry.
https://cardstack.com/
The Cardstack Mission: “We are building the alternative to centralized SaaS apps that lock users into the platforms of Silicon Valley’s tech giants.”
The new Cardstack website reflects our mission to jumpstart Web 3.0—by offering connections without intermediaries between individuals and organizations through a three-part approach: Open Source, Open Marketplace, Open Protocol
https://cardstack.com/
The tech stack beneath Cardstack
The new Cardstack website gives you a detailed overview of the Cardstack technology and architecture. Learn all about our decentralized application server, user experience, SDK, schema, runtime, security model, protocol adapters, integration plugins, module registry, and deployment options.
https://cardstack.com/technology
Our goal: Cooperation instead of competition
We aim to steer the decentralized tech ecosystem away from the competitive mindset of the last 10 years, where all tech companies competed against each other for eyeballs, dollars, developer mindshare, and screen time. At Cardstack, we believe that the next 10 years will be about cooperation between network participants instead:
Users drive usage → They are the source of economic value in the ecosystem.
Developers create new tools → They broaden the capability of the ecosystem.
Protocol community members manage the incentive & governance model → They ensure successful cooperation between participants of the ecosystem.
Read more about our roadmap: https://medium.com/cardstack/2020-the-year-of-launches-82ab84e4a1c7
Our plans for 2020: A shared foundation for our apps
In 2019, we focused on various use cases for our software, building open-source apps around decentralized finance, content syndication, and media registries.
In 2020, we aim to unify the features of these apps into one common runtime, based on Card Schema V2—which allows users to mix and match cards from different suites (whether the focus is finance, content, data management, or workflow) and run them on the same server, in the same framework, with the same hosting provider. All our applications will share the same foundation.
You can read more about Card Schema V2 in this blog post: https://medium.com/cardstack/card-schema-explained-8c5340a7cd9f
The first hosting service: Card.Space
Card.Space will be the first hosting platform for dApps in the Cardstack ecosystem. It empowers users who don’t have the technical capabilities to run their own decentralized apps, by offering them a one-click hosting service that is reliable, cost-effective, and easy to use.
It works just like any other platform: Once you have an account, you can create your own space for yourself, your team, your private/public group, or a hierarchy of interrelated subteams. Then, you can run any Cardstack app written in Card Schema V2 just by opening a template in the browser—and start interacting with it immediately.
All service providers in the Cardstack membership network will benefit from a global software catalog, unified billing & payments, cross-honored membership, and a token-curated registry. To learn more about the role of service providers, take a look at our website: https://cardstack.com/
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
At Cardstack, 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, which is why 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 blog post about our 2020 roadmap: 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
[moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]
