In an opinion piece, Erick, co-founder of Cartesi, believes that the industry needs to collaborate more to make the work of blockchain developers easier. Cartesi is a second-layer protocol based on Ethereum that is committed to simplifying blockchain development and promoting the development of modular blockchain infrastructure.
 
The blockchain industry is at a critical inflection point. Web3 lacks consumer applications that can achieve mass adoption, but new infrastructure projects continue to emerge. We have to face an unpleasant reality: 15 years later, our dream of a decentralized web has not yet been realized.

Ethereum is one of the first chains to support decentralized applications (dApps), whose backend is built on “smart contracts” and has on-chain event processing mechanisms. In order to solve the blockchain trilemma - scalability, decentralization, and security - various Layer 2 (L2) solutions and rollup technologies have emerged. These L2 solutions process transactions off-chain and use Ethereum as a data availability layer. However, while L2s are designed to scale Ethereum, they do not fully solve the computational scaling problem. Rollup technologies, even when running off-chain, still rely on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) to process transactions, which results in higher gas fees. Some of the challenges faced by most rollup frameworks include:

The complex journey towards Web3

Since its inception, blockchain has been hailed as a revolutionary technology. We are getting closer to building the next generation of the Internet. But despite the rapid development of the industry, progress can sometimes seem slow, and the promise of Web3 still seems out of reach.
Modularity is the next stage of change in our industry. It breaks up and rethinks the blockchain stack to overcome the friction points that come with a monolithic design. It’s a new paradigm that gives developers more power to help them achieve what they’re looking to build.
Yet, as an industry, we often get stuck in tunnel vision — focusing on a small piece of the puzzle and losing sight of the big picture we’re trying to create. We worship jargon that disconnects us from the people we’re building this technology for. We waste time reinventing the wheel and lose sight of what’s already been accomplished. Our vital progress can get obscured by the noise, competition, and hype that’s increasingly favored in our industry.

August 2nd - July was a very busy month, highlighted by EthCC. Cartesi participated in seven events in total: we hosted or co-hosted two, and participated in five as a partner or sponsor. The highlight of the week was the "Drinks & Debate" event co-hosted with Cartesi, where we had some great speakers from top projects discussing important topics such as interoperability and fraud proofs! Spoiler alert, Felten was pretty intense in the first panel.

Let's also celebrate Honeypot reaching the 1 million CTSI mark and still not being cracked!

Exciting news! The Cartesi Honeypot Challenge has now surpassed the 1 million CTSI mark and remains unhacked, demonstrating the strong security and resilience of Cartesi Rollups.
The Honeypot dApp, launched in September 2023, is Cartesi’s first dApp on the Ethereum mainnet. It is intended as a testing ground for developers to explore the security of the Cartesi Rollup infrastructure. The challenge is simple: hack the Honeypot and drain the funds within, no strings attached. Despite multiple attempts, the Honeypot remains secure and the funds continue to grow.

July 5th - Avail Partnerships, DevAd Podcast, Labs Week Build, Roundtable Space, and More! Things are going strong here at Cartesi and we’re excited for the future. This has been a very fruitful month on all fronts and we’ll cover it all in this recap!
But first, let’s dive into the updates from the development review call and see what Cartesi has been working on lately.
Technical Update
View the last Site Development Review to see how each department is progressing in development.
Highlights
Experimental Unit
Exploring Linux as a Coprocessor

Cartesi is a modular execution layer protocol that provides developers with access to a complete Linux environment; Avail is a modular blockchain framework designed to unify web3 and optimize data availability for scalable and customizable applications (DA), the two are pleased to announce a close collaboration to significantly advance web3 development.

The integration will leverage Cartesi’s Linux-based RISC-V execution capabilities and Avail’s reliable data availability solution, Avail DA, to provide developers with a seamless and intuitive experience. This user-friendly approach will simplify the complexity of decentralized application development, enabling faster and more efficient project deployment.

Week 2 of Cartesi Experimentation Week has concluded, a week-long online hackathon for grantees and the wider community to explore use cases using the Cartesi technology stack. The event invited everyone to focus on exploring the limits of Cartesi technology and unleash their creativity, either individually or in teams. It was a fun challenge and we’re excited to see all the ideas come to life!

The week started with a kickoff call where we had Alysia from Espresso Systems talk about their project. During the week we also had Ottomorac give a talk about PrivadoID (formerly Polygon ID) focusing on decentralized identity and its surroundings.

June 7th - It’s fair to say that May has flown by with all the things that have happened in the Cartesi ecosystem! From participating in events and hackathons in Brazil, Egypt, Poland, and Africa, to various decentralized applications (dApps) being developed and soon to be deployed in the Cartesi ecosystem - it’s been an exciting month for sure.

Of course, we can’t forget about the recently launched ecosystem map, which highlights the amazing players in the Cartesi ecosystem! But let’s start with a technical update first, before we get ahead of ourselves.

technology
Check out the latest live development recaps to see how teams are moving development forward.

The second Cartesi Experiments Week is here!

The Cartesi Foundation will once again be hosting a week-long online hackathon for funders and the wider community to highlight Cartesi and explore experiments, applications, and more based on all the awesome things we’ve been building.

The official communication channel for this event will be the #experiment-week channel, please feel free to use this channel to discuss ideas, find teammates, and ask questions.

Dates, duration and other events

Start date: June 10, 2024

The Cartesi Experimentation Week will kick off with a community call from the Cartesi Foundation on June 10, 2024 at 13:00 UTC in the Cartesi Discord community channel.