Cartesi Ecosystem Updates #8, 2025

Newsletter/Sep 5, 2025/Marketing Unit

August was a month of broadening accessibility and polishing the groundwork for what has been delivered so far. Cartesi’s fraud-proof system, PRT, became more approachable than ever through new tutorials, explainers, and community contributions, while integrations like Espresso and Chainlink Automation were completed.

At the same time, contributors carried Cartesi’s vision to podcasts, media, and RISC-V research circles, and momentum built toward Devconnect as Cartesi joined forces with Facet to propose a Stage 2 rollups community hub. It was a month of refinement and prioritization, reinforcing Cartesi’s role as a proud member of the Ethereum rollup ecosystem while making its infrastructure clearer and more accessible to builders everywhere. Let’s dive in.

Tech

Research discussions went deeper into the implications of Ethereum’s proposal of pivoting to a RISC-V based execution layer, and our experience in using it inside Cartesi’s architecture is being put to good use. Co-founder Diego Nehab joined the ETH Proofs call to share why supporting the privileged ISA unlocks new possibilities and why Ethereum itself could benefit from enshrining RISC-V. Hear it directly from him here:

For anyone not yet familiar with the Cartesi Machine and its capabilities, our contributor Eduardo Barthel’s NotebookLM-powered breakdown explored how the Cartesi Machine works, using as a resource a previous presentation by Diego given for the Ethereum Engineering Group last year. Everyone should give it a watch for an accessible way to get up to speed fast.

On the fraud proof system front, this month Cartesi’s PRT has taken a major step forward with the kickoff of development on the bonds and refund mechanism, which forms the economic backbone preventing delay attacks and ensuring secure dispute resolution, making claims modestly costly and covering dispute costs, while keeping honest validation nearly free.

Here’s how it works in a nutshell: validators post bonds when making claims, protecting the system from spammers and Sybils, while honest participants can recover gas costs. Eager Validators actively pay for transactions, and Casual Validators step in only if needed, keeping the protocol running smoothly. MEV-Share bundles handle key actions like bisection and steps without race conditions, and slashed bonds from dishonest actors are fairly redistributed, making the system secure, fair, and efficient.

By combining economic costs, automated refunds, and coordinated transaction execution, the bonds system keeps validation nearly free, mitigates delay attacks, and maintains the integrity of the fraud proof process without creating distorting incentives. If you want to follow the R&D discussions closely, jump on our Discord where all coordination happens in public.

Making content more accessible and especially fraud proofs was front and center this month. Our contributor Chinonso prepared a new video breaking down how PRT tournaments work and how disputes are resolved off-chain, showing step by step how honest computation is determined in practice.

And if you missed it last month, this is a good moment to revisit Chinonso’s PRT explainer article for non-mathematicians.

To continue explorations with NotebookLM, we also tasked it with explaining the PRT based on the original research paper and the Fraud Proof Wars article by L2BEAT, and the results have been pretty remarkable for breaking things down in an accessible way. If you are curious about it, watch it here:

To make things even more intuitive and Cartesi’s stack even more approachable, contributors are developing a PRT visualization tool that, in its initial phase, will showcase a status view whenever a dispute is underway, making it easier to see how fraud proofs play out in practice. Stay tuned for updates, and in the meantime, get yourself familiar with the PRT Honeypot, our bug-bounty app challenging the fraud-proof architecture, and try to drain the smart contract holding the sweet rewards:

Developer Tooling

Two integrations advanced significantly this past month and are now marked as completed: Espresso and Cartesi-Chainlink Automation library.Espresso Reader v0.4.1 is live and fully compatible with the latest Cartesi Rollups Node (v2.0.0-alpha.6), making it easier than ever to develop applications using both frameworks together. And complete documentation is now available for builders. Explore the updates here.

The Cartesi–Chainlink project, a TypeScript library and CLI toolkit integrating Chainlink Automation with Cartesi apps, funded by CGP after passing the governance vote, was successfully completed. Read about it here, and if you are ready to dive into GitHub, grantees have put together some video presentations to break it all down for you.

Ecosystem

RIVES, the Cartesi-powered retro gaming console with verifiable execution, kept expanding its reach. Co-founder Carlo Fragni joined Base’s Gui Bettanin for a Portuguese-language session highlighting the project’s vision and specifics. If you haven’t yet, try it yourself at rives.io, play some cartridges and share your tape on socials for us to see it.

From the team, we also get news of a mobile version, and more precisely a minidapp release that’s in the works and will be live in Base’s app as soon as this opens up broad access for everyone.

Meanwhile, Brazil remains a hot spot of Cartesi adoption and usability. A resurfaced podcast episode put the spotlight again on the academic initiatives led by Professor Antonio Rocha at UFF, including university courses, published papers, and real-world prototypes such as public transport dApps supported by local municipalities. Do watch it if you haven’t already.

And for anyone curious to dive into more of the scientific research led by the student groups there that uses Cartesi, look no further and give this a read to see how students leveraged Cartesi Rollups to enhance resource allocation and virtual network service provider selection in telecom and cloud environments:

Another paper featuring Cartesi, "Blockchain-Based Location Validation in an Environment of Mutual Distrust," was published in the Journal of Internet Services and Applications, and we’re excited to see our tech powering academic research on decentralized infrastructure in Brazil.

Community

Cartesi’s presence across media and social channels expanded further this month with highlighted features on Interesting Engineering, Cointelegraph Brazil, and Exame.

On the podcasts side, a fresh new episode featuring João Garcia breaking down Cartesi for the BlockHunters audience has recently dropped. In it, he discusses Cartesi’s potential to transform the landscape of crypto applications by unlocking complex computation with verifiable Linux. Watch it here:

Previously, our Ecosystem Growth Lead, Bruno Maia, joined Jack Goodridge’s podcast to unpack all things business development in the blockchain space and took the stage on Sam Kamani’s show to share what Cartesi is building:

But that’s not all, and Bruno also joined two episodes of Web3 Global Media Spaces alongside other key players, with one focused on ethics and innovation and the other on legacy and privacy.

The wider community stepped up as well. Special mention goes to Perrie, who did it again and distilled the PRT system into an accessible explainer for everyone curious about fraud proofs. Anyone interested in following her lead can dive deeper into the PRT research paper and bring their questions to Discord.

Speaking of Discord, the community server underwent a cleanup with streamlined channels, archived discussions, and improved navigation thanks to DevAdvocacy efforts. If you missed the announcement, check here. More improvements are on the way, including smarter bots to support the ecosystem on this platform.

For those new to Cartesi, and there were quite a few this month, we put together an introductory explainer thread. Plus, if you want a cheat sheet to get the high-level picture of what Cartesi is, dive into bite-sized YouTube Shorts to cover the basics quickly. And for an overview of Cartesi’s presence on other channels where community engagement extends, like Farcaster or Reddit, check here to join us on your favorite platform.

Events

On the events front, Carlo Fragni was out on the floor at BlockchainRIO, connecting with attendees in person and gathering leads at one of the largest blockchain events in Latin America this year.

In the infinite garden of Ethereum’s ecosystem, Huddle01 organized a mega space to give hundreds of builders the mic to share why they chose Ethereum. Our co-founder Felipe Argento proudly represented us, delivering a powerful message in just two minutes. See what he said here.

It’s also been a while since the last Reddit AMA, and this time the Ethereum Foundation hosted a lineup of contributors ready to answer every question. This marked their 14th AMA on r/ethereum, offering insights across technical directions, ecosystem verticals, collaborations, and the broader ethos. Dive in for the full overview.

Devconnect is on the horizon and the countdown has begun. Together with Facet, the only other optimistic rollup at stage 2, Cartesi co-proposed a Stage 2 Rollups Hub, to spotlight the importance of fully trustless rollups for Ethereum’s future. This collaborative effort shows how aligned projects can come together to advocate for decentralization and security at the highest level. Show your support for this proposal if you’ll be in Argentina for the event, and don’t hesitate to get in touch with us if you think you might be able to contribute meaningfully to the hub.

That’s a Wrap

August highlighted Cartesi’s mission: deepening tech accessibility, expanding tooling, and amplifying awareness, while actively contributing expertise to the advancement of Ethereum’s infrastructure. From fraud-proof tutorials and tooling integrations to community explainers and research sessions, these initiatives are coming together to create a developer-friendly, trustless ecosystem poised to set a new standard in the appchain rollups space. With Devconnect on the horizon, Cartesi is steadily continuing its efforts on new tech releases, expanded documentation, and visibility through podcasts and media.

As September unfolds, we keep exploring, keep building, and invite you to join in and keep the conversations going across Discord, X, Telegram, and beyond.