April 7: Inside Cardstack This Week
Card Pay, Ember Conference & an open-source sponsorship
Card Pay
The Cardstack team is focusing on bringing together all the technology necessary to deploy and release Card Pay in Q2. We continue working on the system integration of the front-end Boxel system, the React Native mobile app, and the supporting service for the smart contract to be deployed on both Ethereum mainnet and xDAI chain.
On the Boxel design system front, we are reimplementing the mobile wallet screens with the latest Boxel UI components. We’re also focusing on getting the dashboard layout and the WalletConnect modal working within a responsive system.
On the Cardstack mobile app front, we are making sure that the build system is automated, so that we can rapidly release new versions and add new capabilities, new screens, and new handling for user actions. The Web app and the mobile app access a common set of APIs, including many proven services (hosted by the Gnosis, xDAI, and WalletConnect organizations) as well as additional services (hosted by Cardstack). We are automating the deployment of all services using Terraform, so that they can be deployed to multiple public cloud accounts, which ensures geographic redundancy to support a growing user base after launch.
Ember Conference 2021
Cardstack lead developer Ed Faulkner, who is also on the EmberJS steering committee, gave the closing keynote at Emberconf 2021 — a virtual conference for the Ember community. Ed showcased a new type of build system that eliminates the need for npm install, shifting the work for building JavaScript applications from the server to the browser through service workers. We developed this architecture at Cardstack and have been working on it as part of CatalogJS.
CatalogJS is a much more ambitious project that includes its own globally distributed content distribution network (CDN), which can support card deployment for millions of users. The version demoed in the keynote focuses on the developer experience. It is simplified and optimized for a high-speed iteration cycle on a local development machine. This codebase is open-sourced in GitHub as ef4/mho, so we can gather community feedback that will inform our broader work on the build system at Cardstack.
Cardstack’s Open-Source Sponsorship
Cardstack has been an active sponsor of open-source tools for multiple years, especially ones that help realize the full Cardstack vision. This week, we open-sourced two libraries: mho and a new enhancement of Ember Animated (cardstack/animations-experiment) — an animation library that we are developing to make it easier to program the motion presented in the Card Space presentation.
We are offering an open-source sponsorship for developers worldwide to work on these libraries, so we can continue making progress on reusable infrastructure, even while we are working on the full integration of the customer-facing experience.
If you are interested in working on the cutting edge of JavaScript tooling, you can apply via jobs@cardstack.com. We are fully remote and interested in anybody in any part of the world who has a passion for and commitment to open-source excellence, to work as part of our distributed team on a contract or full-time basis.
Cardstack’s 2021 Roadmap
Chris Tse presented the Cardstack roadmap for 2021 this week, talking about the upcoming product releases. Watch this video to learn about the products that are currently in development, the milestones and timeline for this year, how Cardstack is building these interrelated products using the existing technological foundation, and how the technical workstreams are grouped to support an iterative product release.
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