It is async and donated cards get queued in the server so you will get them when you log back in. I just sent a couple to all the recent players (the player list on the right is sorted by most recent interaction).
Thanks for playing!
And yes, my original inspiration was https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/822/carcassonne but I really like hexagonal tiles. It was only later that I learned about Tantrix and Kaliko. Both of these reward “path” length with I wanted to do as well but I ran out of time.