Cartesi Ecosystem Recap - October 2023

Newsletter/Nov 9, 2023/KARMEN TRUONG

Thursday, Oct 9th – how much do you know about Cartesi? This month, we launched a new campaign designed to help you grok the basics and give a high-level overview of Cartesi tech from Cartesi Rollups all the way to smaller components you might be less familiar with, such as State Fold or Transaction Manager. Take a look at all the articles published so far over on the Cartesi blog, and test how well you truly grok the stack with our newly launched Zealy quests.

Hold up, hold up. Grok? It’s an actual word, we promise! (Elon Musk knows it 😉) Check out the dictionary definition:

P.S. Talking about definitions, check out the new addition to the CoinMarketCap Glossary, Abstraction Scalability, from contributor Gabriel Coutinho!

After launching Cartesi Rollups on Mainnet last month, it was time to put the infrastructure to the test… and supercharge building with Cartesi Experiment Week! A week-long online hackathon for grantees and the broader community to unleash their creativity and focus on bringing tangible dApp ideas, use cases, improvements, and tooling to life.

Safe to say everyone was blown away by the projects that were born out of this week of experimentation - let’s give a huge congratulations to the top 3 finalists:

🥇 1st Place: BugLess 🐜 by Eduardo, Francisco, Gabriel, Guilherme
A bug bounty program to unite hackers and developers to identify bugs for rewards.
🥈 2nd Place: Cryptopolis 🏦 by Danilo
Bringing the city simulator to the crypto era.
P.S. We weren’t the only ones blown away - Danilo also made ETHGlobal Online’s top finalists!
🥉 3rd Place: LambdaDEX 💃 by Victor Fusco, Diego Nehab, Marcos Pernambuco, Alex Mikhalevic
A bare-metal verifiable token trading exchange. Inspect & advance the state of the machine outside of the machine emulator while maintaining verifiability.

But the true prize of Cartesi Experiment Week? Getting the community together and excited to build with the Cartesi stack! Check out all the amazing projects submitted in the recap written by Marketing contributor Siannie and why an experiment week is a must-try for every project out there from Advisor to the Cartesi Foundation, Felipe.

Now, let’s head over to tech updates! A frenly reminder: if you can’t wait for next month’s recap, don’t forget you have direct access to developments and discussions over on Discord (check out the core-units-update channel) - come and join the conversation!

Tech

It’s been just over one month since the Honeypot dApp was released on Mainnet - what’s happened since then?

Honeypot is now listed on L2Beat and the funds now stand at 55,540 CTSI. That means over one month of proven security for Cartesi’s infrastructure, as no one has managed to breach it… yet! Come try your hand at cracking it and help battle test Cartesi Rollups security! Need a clue where to start? Dive into this article by Felipe to get familiar with the workings of the Honeypot dApp.

Research & Design

Check out the last live dev recap to hear from the units pushing forward on development:

Highlights include:

New features from the Machine Reference Unit as well as continued progress across the Machine Emulator, Web Assembly and Kernel, Tools, and Toolchain workfronts.
Cookbooks (and more!) from Prototype and Support
- World Arcade
- Cartesi Rollups v1.0 the coin-toss DApp.
- Cartesi Rollups v1.0 token-prices DApp.
- Deployment scheme for external contracts used by Cartesi Rollups DApps.
- Updated Echo Plus to Cartesi Rollups 1.0 and Sunodo.
- Updated Go Rollups to Cartesi Rollups 1.0.
- See more over in Core Units Update over on Discord.
Updates for Cartesi Rollups 1.2 and 2.0 release from the Rollups Reference Unit as well as public discussion on pressing research and design questions over on GitHub.
Progress on Reader Mode, Single Container and infrastructure to test the node locally from the Node Reference Unit.
🚀 Sunodo 0.9.4 is out and sunodo-templates updated!
- WARNING: if you have a sunodo application sunodo build can start to fail. Check the Dockerfile of your application and replace the following:
- -curl=7.81.0-1ubuntu1.13
- +curl=7.81.0-1ubuntu1.14
- curl 1.13 has been removed from Ubuntu package repository.
New CartesiScan Features from the Explorer Unit!
- Token deposits into DApps: CartesiScan users can now make ERC-20 token deposits into DApps directly from the explorer. That makes it easier and faster to get started with Cartesi-based applications.
- Safe Global support: CartesiScan can now be opened inside Safe Global, a multi-chain wallet and asset management platform. That feature allows users to view and manage their ERC-20 assets from a single location.
Lots of cool stuff in the works over at Cartesi Compute! From EigenLayer + Tendermint + Cartesi to linking up the Espresso Sequencer with the Cartesi Machine and more, check out the full updates from the month over in Discord or in the call replay.

Tune into the next one by marking your calendars for the first Monday of the month.

Got questions? Don’t be shy - ask your questions to core developers, researchers and contributors directly on Discord!

Ecosystem Updates

♟️ Ultrachess

Ultrachess is a fully on-chain chess application developed with Cartesi Rollups, allowing users to put real value on the line and play chess with more than just their Elo at stake.

A progressive web app for Ultrachess is currently under development.

🎨 Productive

Productive is a Software Development house specialising in web & mobile development projects, with a grant to provide design, development, update, and maintenance for Cartesi ecosystem websites.

Cartesi Explorer Front-End

Rollups-Explorer Ether deposits
Rollups-Explorer Raw inputs
Rollups-Explorer API test coverage

Cartesi.io Site Development

Front-end/CMS new page development

Rolluplab.io Site Maintenance

Redesign implementation
Content updates

Sunodo

Prototyping (completed)
Branding design (completed)
UI Design (in progress)

🎮 Aetheras

Aetheras is a blockchain company with experience in and a deep understanding of game development, with a grant to develop Texas HODL’em Poker and Dazzle (match-3 strategy game).

Texas HODL’em Poker

Exploring alternative options for testnet

Dazzle

(Complete) New Rift mode prototype 1 & 2
- Multiple stages capability
- Mobs generator
- Mobs scaling capabilities
- Reward system after each stage is complete; this allows us to have a new game flow
(In-progress) New: Leveling system
(In-progress) New: Stage Bonus
- This is a concept where, after each stage, players can, for instance, pay a certain amount of gold to get bonus damage next stage.

Follow Dazzle updates on their Twitter or join their Discord community!

🧠 UXBoost

UXBoost is working on comprehensive user research and service flow study for Cartesi's hacker/developer’s experience, including awareness, learning about Cartesi tech, hacking experience and grant applications. UXBoost aims to gain insights, identify improvement areas and devise strategies to enhance the overall user experience.

DevAd/Documentation - Learning experience optimization
- (Completed) Desk research from five projects and design inspirations.
- (Completed) Implemented on-site research on docs.cartesi.io.
Event research & design
- ETH NY- Post-hackathon research:
  - (Completed) Survey report
  - (In Progress) We have three interview applicants who want to give more feedback, and we will create a mixed-method research report with the survey.
- (Completed) ETH NY - Interest survey: Reviewed and modified the interest survey.
- (Completed) ETH Istanbul - Interest survey and post-hackathon research: Aligned with the team and polished the questionnaire.
- (In Progress) ETH Paris report: we finalized the insights. And decided to work on the service blueprint with ideas directly.
Extra support:
- (Completed) Reviewed the rollup lab UX and provided design suggestions.
- (In Progress) Reviewed the UX on the podcast page.
UX Initiatives update:
- (Completed) Prepared research fun facts will be shared on Discord.

Community

Community member Eric’s back at it again! Following his guide on how to create your first Cartesi dApp, if you’ve ever wanted to learn how to build a Python Wallet dApp, check out how you can do so with Cartesi here!

And if reading the guides has got you inspired, come take a look at the recently refreshed rolluplab.io - a community repository full of projects already unleashing the power of Linux in the Web3 ecosystem!

Need funding for your project? Good news! To foster expanding use cases of Cartesi tech, Cartesi Developer Advocacy launched DevAd Seed Grants! The goal? To support the development of innovative, mini-technical projects with a grant of up to US$5,000 per project aimed to be completed in 4-6 weeks. Take a look at the Notion page to learn more and apply!

And for your awesome contributions to the Cartesi ecosystem, did you know that you can claim a commemorative NFT? Recently, we dropped a unique GitPOAP for those who’ve contributed to Cartesi’s core infrastructure repositories. Contributors to a specific Cartesi GitHub repo are eligible for a free-to-mint POAP. It's straightforward: once your pull request is merged, you qualify!

Find out more and see if you’re eligible to claim yours.

GitPOAP is a building block of your on-chain identity. After minting, share it on social media to celebrate your contributions with the Cartesi community! We’d love to see! ✨

Don’t forget! If you’re looking for ways to get involved, there are a range of DevAdvocacy initiatives you can get stuck into:

💬Earn cool badges for your contributions over in Discord! We've defined 6 roles for our community-facing channels. Come check out the cool tags that contributors will be assigned, and see if you can rank among the top 3 most active members! P.S. You don’t have to be a developer to take part 😉.
🗝️Boundless Builders Quest - Showcase your Cartesi dApp or Developer Tooling over in our Discord's 'spotlight' channel and receive a commemorative NFT. Plus, you’ll also get a Boundless Builder Discord badge to help you stand out from the crowd!

Contributor Spotlight

With so many incredible things happening within the Cartesi ecosystem in October, it’s hard to shine the spotlight on just one standout contributor - there are just too many!

This month, let’s shout out Carsten for breaking the Espresso Sequencer with an iconic Rickroll and Danilo for making his second (not to mention consecutive!!) ETHGlobal final with Cryptopolis, the original city simulator but with real economics.

Community Grants Program

Activity remains strong on the CGP front - ETHGlobal Paris track winner DCA Monster passed the community vote, and development is now underway! But what is DCA Monster exactly? Take a look at Pablo’s article to dive into how it made waves within the Cartesi ecosystem and its growing traction in the broader DeFi landscape.

And that’s not the only proposal that the community voted to fund! Check out the proposal from Think & Dev for an on-chain image recognition system using AI algorithms, running on the Cartesi VM and storing results on the blockchain.

For development updates from projects funded through the Community Grants Program,

⚙️Cartenix, 🔢 Drand for Cartesi, 🖼️ Decentralized Painting Canvas and🚰 BlockOasis, head on over to the ecosystem-updates channel over on Discord.

Events

Our focus isn’t just on Devconnect and ETHGlobal Istanbul! Over in India, Shaheen and Jathin hosted a Cartesi developer showcase (peep the community reaction on Cartesi-powered games) for the Chennai Web3 community, while over in the US, Gabriel and Zach attended All Things Open. Gabriel gave a stellar presentation on how smart contracts need programmability and why Cartesi brings it to a whole new level - recap the weekend with Zach’s roundup thread! In Lisbon, Joao shared insights in a panel on Security beyond Audits at Epic DeFi Security Day, while Augusto joined ETHLisbon as a hackathon judge.

Jathin was on fire this month, hosting a workshop with SRM University’s Blockchain Club, not to mention a trilogy of workshops over in the LearnWeb3DAO community - excited to see even more builders get Cartesi-pilled and can’t wait to see what they build!

Over in the online realm, a powerhouse of a Community Manager and core contributor, Cynthia hosted a panel inviting an incredible range of women from the Web3 space to share their insights about getting started. Make sure to catch the replay and share it with someone you know who’d be interested in getting started!

*P.S. Check out these bonus resources from Deanna, a hackathon finalist at ETHGlobal Lisbon who shared how you can start building with Cartesi.

Without fail, Max brought another star guest to the Game Builder Community Call - we heard from Small Brain Games, who’s on a mission to build a new on-chain game every 6 weeks. Check out the replay:

On the road to Devconnect and ETHGlobal Istanbul, we’ve joined forces with YTU Blockchain, BUChain, OTDÜ Blockchain and ITU Blockchain - hosting a Spaces session all about blockchain innovation and how Cartesi opens up the BUIDLing possibilities! From hosting a spaces session to an online Discord workshop to explore app-specific rollups & PoCs using Cartesi Rollups, there’s also an in-person Cartesi ideathon coming up - make sure to attend!

And it’s alt VM season! Join us for VM Day, co-hosted with Fuel, to explore alternative VMs and how they're opening up a vast new design space for execution! We have a great line-up of speakers from RiscZero, Stackr, Fluent, Arbitrum, PolygonMiden and Aztec - make sure to sign up if you’re in town!

Upcoming Events

That’s just a glimpse of the events we have coming up! Stay in the loop and never miss a beat with Cartesi's exciting lineup of events - subscribe to our supercharged public events calendar, and take part in event-related campaigns over on Link3*, Galxe and Zealy!

*Psst.. Did you know you can own a piece of Cartesi history and mint the Honeypot announcement as an NFT straight to your wallet from Link3?