Overview
Gimbalabs YouTube is a free archive of coding classes recorded as they happen, so you sit in on a session rather than read a finished tutorial1. It suits people who want to learn to build blockchain applications by watching others work through the same assignment. Little is polished away: the questions from the group and the wrong turns stay in2.
The subject is Cardano throughout. The channel is where Gimbalabs, a developer-education group, published its weekly meetings through April 2026: group reviews of smart contract code, the programs that hold funds and enforce rules on a blockchain2; live coding with the Mesh developer toolkit3; and open governance calls4. Its courses go under the name Project-Based Learning, and each lesson is titled as something a learner should be able to do by the end5.
Key Features
- Smart contract code read line by line. Community Code Review was a weekly call where a host shares a screen and the group works through an Aiken validator together, the on-chain program that decides whether a transaction is allowed. Gimbalabs' public calendar listed the series weekly through April 2026 and lists no later sessions.2
- A shorts library where each clip is one question. Code Review Shorts cuts the review calls into short clips6, each narrow enough to answer a single question: what a transaction's validity interval means7, or what a validator actually is8.
- Courses numbered as things you can do. Project-Based Learning lessons carry titles like "I can build a UI component for a simple transaction"5. Separate tracks run for the Marlowe9 and Mesh3 toolsets alongside the Aiken material.
- Governance meetings published whole. Open Spaces ran as ninety-minute sessions of shared learning, coordination and decision-making, and went up as a complete recording rather than a summary4.
- The code on screen is public. The Aiken validators picked apart on the review calls sit in an open Gimbalabs repository10, and the Mesh sessions build a web app in a second one11.
What to Expect
A session opens with a host sharing a screen and naming the countries people have joined from, then setting out what the group will work on that day2. Two people usually co-host. The pace is conversational: someone reads a few lines aloud, another asks what a piece of it does, and the answer gets worked out on the call.
The catalogue comes in two shapes. The long recordings are the meetings themselves, running an hour or more2. The short ones lift a single idea out and answer it on its own7, which makes them the cheaper way in when the material is new to you.
Expect a working group rather than a lecture hall. A governance call moves through an agenda the room sets together and puts proposals to the group for consent, and the group reports on its own tool for collecting members' reasoning before a Cardano governance vote4. It also talks about its funding on camera, down to a close-out report for the grant that paid for the work12. That money came from Project Catalyst, the Cardano community fund where ADA holders vote on which proposals get paid13.
Recordings stay free to watch, and the public calendar lists any sessions that are scheduled14. Gimbalabs describes its own work as easing the developer journey on Cardano by building Project-Based Learning courses, keeping them updated, and hosting live coding sessions13, and the cardano.org app catalogue lists the group under education and open source15.
