Uncovering The Power Of Cartesi

Cartesi (CTSI) is shaking up the blockchain scene by equipping developers with access to a full Linux environment through its native virtual machine, and high performance rollups designed to support next-generation dApps. This means developers can now build decentralized applications using the tools and languages they already know and love, enhancing the scalability and composability of dApps without compromising on decentralization.

What's Cartesi All About?

Web3 development has been held back for years by the limitations of its tooling and scalability. Cartesi’s mission is to ensure that developers don’t waste their time or their potential on reinventing the wheel when it comes to the development stack and instead equips developers with a full Linux OS onchain to empower them to build the apps they want to bring to life. 

Here’s the lowdown on what Cartesi brings to the Web3 space:

• Powerful, supercharged development of dApps with all the benefits of Linux: With the integration of a Linux environment, the Cartesi Virtual Machine enables developers to build decentralized applications with the benefit of decades of battle-tested programming languages, tooling, and libraries. 
• Real-world scaling and computation with unique rollup framework: Cartesi also provides a unique rollup framework that scales for real-world applications and overcomes the computational limitations of current blockchain platforms. 
• Composable and compatible development stack, an essential part of the modular future: Cartesi allows developers to have more control and flexibility over the application stack, allowing for customizable gas metering, data availability solutions, and other dApp-specific needs.

Let’s unpack it!

Linux Meets Blockchain

One of the coolest things about Cartesi is how it brings Linux into the blockchain world. This means developers can tap into a treasure trove of existing software libraries, tools, and services.

Why is this a big deal? Here’s why:

• Verifiability: everything that happens in the Cartesi Virtual Machine is reported back to the blockchain via Cartesi Rollups. As a result, the CVM can provide verifiable computation that enjoys all the benefits of security, transparency, and immutability that are offered by blockchain networks.
• Abstraction Scalability: gives web3 developers the ability to build better dApps by referencing the work of other developers that are not necessarily in web3 and reusing it as building blocks for their own creations. Abstraction scalability saves them from having to “reinvent the wheel” in order to adjust to the limitations of other blockchain virtual machines.
• Flexibility: Cartesi paves the way for real-world applications in areas like gaming, finance, supply chain management, and asset tokenization.

The Cartesi Virtual Machine is designed to work with RISC-V, an open standard for an abstract model of a computer that is supported by large corporations like NVIDIA, Intel, Google, QUALCOMM, and Tencent.

RISC-V is powerful enough to run an operating system like Linux as well as the software that it supports. Linux, specifically, can now be a blockchain operating system where web3 developers build dApps that transcend the limitations of the EVM.

By merging the reliability of Linux with the security and decentralization of blockchain, Cartesi is setting the stage for a future where building decentralized applications and smart contracts is not just easier, but also more efficient and versatile.

App-specific Rollups (Appchains)

In search of maximum scalability, customizability, and fee predictability, Cartesi has moved beyond shared rollups architectures, specializing instead on building app-specific rollups (or appchains). App-specific rollups act as off-chain execution layers that inherit security and censorship guarantees from the Ethereum base layer. But now, instead of sharing space inside a single rollup, each dApp has its own dedicated rollup to process off-chain computation.

With this increase in computational capacity, dApps deployed on app-specific rollups can now begin to more closely mimic traditional software applications in terms of programmability, cost efficiency, fee predictability, and user experience.

Cartesi Token (CTSI) & Staking

CTSI holders can stake their tokens to participate in the ecosystem’s community-driven governance mechanisms. In addition to this, when staking, they earn rewards for validating blocks, with rewards automatically compounding. Users just connect their wallet, pick a pool, deposit Cartesi tokens (CTSI), and stake!

Interested in staking CTSI? Check out everything you need to know to get you up and running, from prerequisites to a comprehensive staking delegation guide here.

To learn more about participating in governance and voting on proposals, visit the Cartesi Governance Page.

Teams building on Cartesi

Cartesi currently has over 50 contributors, including over 10 external teams. Instead of a single development company with outsized influence over core development, the core Cartesi infrastructure is primarily developed by many independent working groups and individual contributors. By dispersing influence and decision-making authority across a much more horizontal plane, the Cartesi ecosystem minimizes the potential for any one single point of failure for the project.

To address the coordination challenges posed by building core infrastructure in a fully distributed manner, Cartesi contributors recently adopted a new governance process for setting the ecosystem’s technical direction in the project’s Mainnet era.

Cartesi’s Technical Evolution Plan stands as a dynamic, evolving technical roadmap, maintained by the Technical Vision Council and created through a decentralized process driven by Cartesi contributors, ecosystem grantees, and the broader community.

Cartesi is opening up new possibilities for dApps in AI, Gaming, DeFi, and other frontiers of innovation. Within the Cartesi ecosystem, there are a number of exciting applications being developed along different verticals, check out:

• RIVES: Onchain fantasy console enabling a permissionless ecosystem for co-creating and sharing cartridges (small games & software), where players can verify runs, join decentralized contests, generate replayable logs, and modify or extend cartridges.
• DCA.Monster: Automated Market Maker (AMM) leveraging ERC20 streams for granular, efficient on-chain Dollar Cost Averaging (DCA).
• Bug Buster: Trustless bug bounty platform for web3 that streamlines bounty programs by putting them onchain.
• Drawing DApp: Digital canvas on Cartesi Rollups, where users can create onchain artwork using a shared 'paintbrush application,' decentralized and accessible to anyone.
• Comet: Co-writing platform where anyone can start the co-creation of a shared rhyme, poem, song, or story that can be minted, with profits and/or donations distributed evenly among all contributors.

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