Cartesi Ecosystem Updates #11, 2025

Newsletter/Dec 5, 2025/Marketing Unit

November vanished in a blink, launching us straight into the final month of the quarter and the year. But before it flew by, it delivered a power-packed period of activity! Tech advancements, major Dev Advocacy and Ecosystem Growth wins, the highly-anticipated launch of PRT Honeypot v2 (now featuring bonds and improved security - hello again Stage 2), and the show-stealing momentum from Devconnect Argentina after an eventful weekend at ETHLatam in Brazil, all made headlines.

The excitement didn't stop there: CTSI stakers are set to be rewarded by Espresso's airdrop, and podcasts, media features, and community threads have been well served! Let’s dive into the ecosystem highlights from last month.

Tech

November has brought us an upgrade to the fraud proof system with stronger security and smoother developer experience. The features we introduced in the last monthly updates have now moved from sneak-peek to a public release, delivering the Permissionless Refereed Tournament(PRT) v2.0.0 system. The new version brings major on-chain improvements - including revertible advance requests, a Sybil-resistant bond mechanism, reduced deployment transactions, and improved interfaces and events, while also resolving a fail-stop bug.

Off-chain, reliability is boosted through safer snapshot cleanup, fixes for empty-epoch panics and sentinel errors, and a leaner node client. With artifacts now published directly via GitHub releases and improved devnet builds, PRT 2.0 is now more secure, polished, and developer-friendly.

With the old Honeypot gone, the new Honeypot was poised to resurface. Secured by Cartesi's PRT fraud-proof system, Honeypot is our bug-bounty rollup application designed to test the security of Cartesi's appchain framework. Anyone can put it to test by hacking the application and draining the funds locked in the rollup contract.

After PRT-Honeypot v1 surfaced a liveness bug, a new version has now been deployed on Ethereum mainnet, complete with the upgraded PRT v2 algorithm discussed above, which brings Honeypot back to the L2BEAT dashboard as a Stage 2 rollup.

The onchain Cartesi machine has also seen progress. And Cartesi RISC-V Solidity Emulator - the onchain host implementation of the Cartesi Machine Specification - has advanced with a new PR that introduces enhanced memory translation capabilities. The update adds support for Translation Lookaside Buffer (TLB) management through new ECALL functions and a dedicated shadow TLB region in memory, improving the fidelity and precision of the Cartesi Machine’s low-level execution model. Read more details on the PR here.

Developer Tooling

On Developer Experience, our dev advocates have been busy shipping explainer threads and doubling down on X posting. João Garcia shared insights on fraud proofs and ZK proofs, and why both still matter as core validation mechanisms for rollups in a ZK-leaning world. Check out this overview of the trade-offs, and intuitions about a future where hybrid models emerge, with fraud proofs as fallback and ZK amplifying verification:

On another topic, contributor Shaheen Admed shared an overview breaking down the developer experience across Aztec, Risc Zero, Arbitrum Stylus, and Cartesi, four protocols that broaden Ethereum’s execution options and enable development beyond Solidity through Noir, RISC-V, and WASM. Make sure you don’t miss these key takeaways from the comparison, and drop a follow to stay connected:

And that’s not all. If you thought you couldn’t vibe with coding a Cartesi application, think again. Shaheen walks you through a quick voting application built with Cursor in this tutorial here.

Ecosystem

Cartesi has launched a “time to deploy” challenge with students from the Cartesi-based course at Fluminense Federal University (UFF in Brazil), aimed at better understanding and improving the developer journey. Students will build a simple Beacon crowdfunding app to help measure how efficiently newcomers navigate Cartesi’s documentation, tooling, and asset workflows. By implementing the backend logic, testing deposits, and emitting the final output when the goal is reached, they will generate valuable metrics for refining resources and onboarding, directly contributing to Cartesi’s continuous improvement efforts.

Events

November kicked off with ETHLatam in São Paulo, Brazil, and progressed strongly with Devconnect in Buenos Aires, Argentina.ETHLatam has seen great participation, and Vitalik Buterin’s first visit to Brazil highlighted the region’s growth, with energy doubling when he took the stage. Our contributors didn’t hold back either. Cartesi was represented at the main event by Carlo Fragni, who presented on RIVES, and Henrique Marlon, who spoke about zk proofs and fraud proofs, highlighting that there is no silver bullet and that both solutions have their matching use cases:

And a sneak peek at their proof of presence during Vitalik’s visit:

At the side events, our Ecosystem Growth Lead, Bruno Maia, spoke at Arbilink, Arbitrum’s Portuguese community event organized by Modular Crypto, on a panel about the future of payments and stablecoins in LATAM. And he also fit in an in-person interview on Exame’s Future of Monday podcast, Brazil’s top financial media outlet, that you can watch here if you speak Portuguese.

Later in the month, it was time for the most awaited event of the year, Devconnect Argentina, and it did not disappoint. Cartesi marked its presence in the L2District and cohosted a dedicated Stage 2 rollups stand with L2BEAT:

Swag was on point, photos on the ground were snapped, the venue was captured, and Stage 2 glasses made history:

Throughout the week, contributors engaged participants on rollup decentralization and security, the need for more Stage 2 rollups, and the L2 risk rosette features essential to strengthening the Ethereum ecosystem. And in case you’re wondering what the fuss is about Cartesi being Stage 2 and why it matters, get up to speed with this thread here and check out the trustless t-shirts that got everyone hyped, through the lens of a local participant:

A star emerged among our contributors who worked hard on the ground to ensure Cartesi was well-represented, to connect and make the most out of leads and networking opportunities, and even to create content and post updates for the community to get a sneak peek, firsthand, of what was happening there.

A much-deserved kudos is due to our Solution Architect and contributor to the Ecosystem Growth Unit, Carlo Fragni. Click that button and offer him your follow on X in appreciation!

To wrap up Devconnect, here’s a quick roundup of the week’s top highlights:

Community & Media

The community has had some great news this past month. Espresso Foundation announced rewards for long-term CTSI stakers. Cartesi’s partner for composability and fast finality (remember the three Cartesi dapp prototypes that were first to integrate Espresso? If not, refresh your memory here) has included the Cartesi community as one of the paths to receive their airdrop. Anyone who has staked CTSI onchain via Cartesi’s Explorer should verify their wallet address as soon as the claim goes live. Stay tuned for updates as the ESP token launch seems to be approaching fast:

On the PR front, Devconnect gave our contributors the chance to do in-person interviews with media outlets like DL Research and Genzio. Right on the ground at the L2District main venue, Carlo Fragni spoke with Eli from Genzio. Watch the interview here:

Meanwhile, Co-Founder Felipe Argento walked the DL Research hosts through Cartesi’s journey from an AI marketplace idea to today’s RISC-V-based execution layer, covering Stage 2 and the PRT fraud-proof system with bonds, as well as our Ethereum-first, trustless approach to building systems no one controls. Give it a read:

Our Portuguese-speaking audience and Brazilian community got a treat as well: they could watch a podcast hosted in their native language by Modular Crypto, featuring our contributor Carlo Fragni, who also authored their latest newsletter edition at the start of the month.

Among the community members, Perrie did it again and dropped a new banger explainer in response to our Dev Advocacy Lead’s thread about the role of fraud proofs in a ZK world and the related trade-offs. Santa has already rewarded her with a hoodie for always diving in and unpacking tech threads with ease. Totally well deserved, right?

Psst: another hoodie hides in this month’s newsletter edition. The fastest reader to claim it will get it delivered to their door. If you are not yet a subscriber, sign up here.

And a heads-up for everyone reading this and willing to score some holiday swag: keep your eyes peeled for a campaign counting down the days to Christmas with daily quests. This December it’s raining, or should we say snowing, Cartesi merch packs and hoodies!

That’s a Wrap

That's all for now after a packed and productive November. From protocol upgrades and developer insights to major conference moments and ecosystem wins, the month pushed Cartesi forward in all the right ways. December is already shaping up to keep that momentum going. Catch you in the next update, and in the meantime keep in touch and follow the latest updates on Discord, X, Telegram, and beyond.