Introducing Honeypot: The First Cartesi Rollup dApp on Mainnet

Honeypot 🍯is now live on the Ethereum Mainnet! Take your shot at hacking it and see if you can win 35,000 CTSI (and counting).

If you’re a web3 builder, you can jump straight into Honeypot’s Github repository to start poking around the dApp. If you don’t consider yourself a web3 builder, stick around to see if someone is able to hack it…

What exactly is Honeypot?

Generally speaking, a “honeypot” is defined as follows:

“In cybersecurity, a honeypot is a network-attached system set up as a decoy to lure cyber attackers and detect, deflect, and study hacking attempts to gain unauthorized access to information systems.”

But what exactly is Honeypot, the dApp?

It's a game of sorts. A hacking challenge based on the concept of honeypots. Consider it a treasure hunt with no map, or a pot of gold at the end with one rule: if you can hack it, you can have it — no strings attached.

What Honeypot is not is a Bug Bounty or a Capture the Flag (CTF) program. Winners will figure out how to withdraw funds directly to their account. No need to submit a hacking recipe or take any other step. Likewise, there is no previously known solution to the challenge. The Cartesi team is not aware of any possible breaches to the Cartesi Rollup logic.

The game is designed to be a challenge for web3 developers. While attempting to withdraw the funds in a smart contract powered by Cartesi Rollups, they will be testing the security of Cartesi Rollups V1.

How does it work?

In the backend code of the Honeypot dApp there is logic that only allows Cartesi’s depositor account to withdraw funds. Players face the challenge of breaking the code and withdrawing the funds to an account that they own. Go through the Cartesi Rollups documentation to come up with your own idea of how this could be done.

The original size of the honeypot will be 35,000 CTSI. It will then grow based on compounding 8% weekly allocations from the Cartesi Foundation.

What happens if the honeypot is cracked? The winner gets the funds — that’s it. Cartesi will then study the breach, solve it, and deploy another Honeypot to keep strengthening the core technology.

What are Cartesi Rollups?

The Honeypot dApp operates within the Cartesi Rollups framework, wherein its backend logic runs in a dedicated Cartesi Node on the execution layer. In the case of the Honeypot, the execution layer will be layer-2, with the base layer being Ethereum itself. Asset operations are managed by Cartesi smart contracts on the base layer (layer 1), facilitating communication between the front-end and the Cartesi Node.

This architecture of a Cartesi dApp enables developers to realize substantial enhancements in the computational scalability of the blockchain. This is achieved by relocating the execution logic to nodes on the execution layer, while using the base layer for asset settlement, composability, and dispute resolution.

Not only do Cartesi Rollups address the computational limitations of the blockchain, but they also remedy the absence of a mature software stack for decentralized applications. Cartesi Rollups achieve this by offering modular application-specific optimistic rollups with interactive dispute resolutions, coupled with a mainstream virtual machine capable of executing real operating systems, such as Linux. This effectively allows developers to build scalable dApps with mainstream software stacks, like Python, NumPy, Rust, and many others.

If you’d like to dive deeper into Cartesi Rollups, read this previous post on app-specific optimistic rollups and why they’re important. Or itching to build something awesome? Check out our developer documentation!

Are you up for the challenge?

Give it a shot! Stay tuned for an in-depth technical breakdown of Honeypot or try to crack it now on Github. You can also stay in the know or flex your skills with other players by following on socials or joining the Cartesi community via the links here.