Feb 23: Inside Cardstack This Week
Server Side Rendering, mobile app & Card Pay ecosystem
Server Side Rendering
Our dApp team is creating user profile pages for all users of the Cardstack ecosystem, especially those who created merchant or business accounts as part of the Card Pay beta program. Web3 dApps are typically used only by those who have wallets, and as a result of the structures behind MetaMask and other injected wallets, the data displayed in webpages is not often sharable via URL or indexed by search engines like Google. This is because all the information displayed onscreen is retrieved entirely on the client side using browser APIs and, thus, remains visible only to the user.
Cardstack’s dApp team is working on adding server side rendering (SSR) to our entire Cardstack app suite, so that the pages displayed to the wallet holder can also be shared over messaging apps, social media platforms, or other Web2 collaborative tools. Of course, sensitive private information will always be excluded from such rendering. However, information that benefits from the inclusion of preview images — such as our payment request link in the Card Pay Protocol — will show previews of recipient information and value amounts before users click on the link. We plan to incorporate SSR using the FastBoot technology (originally funded as an open-source project by Cardstack) as a server-side JavaScript runtime that can render complex mockups in Node.js. Then, we aim to use those mockups to communicate with the rest of the web without requiring those applications to support the Web3 protocol powering the data.
Mobile Application
On the mobile application front, the team is working to improve the user experience on Android. The similarities between the Android and iOS build are increasing, and beta users who downloaded the Android app from the Google Play Store as part of the early access program are receiving steady updates equipped with more consistent modal window handling and settings panes consistency.
The mobile team is also working on a functionality that will permit users to sign up and receive payments as a Card Pay merchant entirely within the mobile app, without having to connect their wallets to a desktop-based dApp.
Since our mobile app and web dApp share the same Card Pay SDK, we are able to add features into the mobile applications without too much hassle; we just need to adapt the user experience to a compact viewport and streamline the steps into resembling the more common workflows faced by most users. We will release some of these features under a feature flag, which allows selected beta testers to enable those new user experiences by using the same app downloaded from the same app stores.
Keep your eyes on our Discord channel. You may receive instructions on how to enable these upcoming features by tapping the screen in a particular way. One could even call that an Easter egg!
Card Pay Ecosystem
In response to user feedback, we are migrating the default currency view in the Card Pay ecosystem to a local currency selected by the user. To ensure that users are transacting in a known denomination, we will make USD the default currency displayed when users first install Card Wallet. But users can use USD or their preferred currency in their display of balances and transactional history.
Under the hood, the system still operates on SPEND (equivalent to 1 USD cent), which we believe is enough granularity to encode most day-to-day commercial transactions. SPEND will continue serving as a measurement of spending and earning, and it will still drive the loyalty reward portion of our protocol regardless of how much local currency users spend. Users will earn a certain number of SPEND in their ledger, which can then be used as proof of purchase to redeem tokens, NFTs, or other goodies from merchants. It can also be used by other players in the crypto network seeking to add new users as customers.
We will continue making improvements to the wallet, streamlining it for day-to-day use, so that we can facilitate the commercial phase of Web3, where revenue from customers drives the growth of businesses, cooperatives, and networks.
To get all our latest updates, sign up for our newsletter on cardstack.com, star Cardstack on GitHub, and join our Discord channel or our Telegram group and announcement channel.
