Cartesi - Behind The Brand
A deeper dive with Cartesi’s founder, Felipe Argento, on scaling Ethereum, empowering developers and unlocking the next generation of decentralized applications.
Cartesi - Behind The Brand
Our founder interview series offers an opportunity to gain insights directly from the innovators shaping the future of crypto and Web3. By speaking with founders firsthand, we hope to uncover valuable perspectives on the challenges, opportunities, and trends driving the industry forward. By speaking with founders firsthand, we hope to uncover valuable perspectives on the challenges, opportunities, and trends driving the industry forward.
Each conversation takes us behind the scenes of different brands Noir has helped to shape, exploring their distinctive approaches, strategies, and vision. We hope these conversations will not only inform and inspire but also provide practical lessons and deeper understanding for anyone working in crypto and Web3.
Q: "Hi Felipe, let's start with the challenges Cartesi helps to solve for Ethereum: both data and computational scalability, as well as programmability limitations. Could you explain how Cartesi's rollups solution addresses these challenges."
A: Sure! Cartesi Rollups tackles two main challenges in the blockchain landscape, computational scalability and execution environment capabilities. The first piece is commonly attenuated by all rollups by the sheer fact that they move computation from L1 to L2 without creating validator fragmentation - this means that applications can be executed on rollups without imposing extra computational cost to the entirety of L1. However, most rollups are shared rollups - applications executed on those rollups impose extra cost on all users of that rollups. That's why, shared rollups simply attenuate the problem of computational scalability.
Cartesi rollups are application-specific, an application launched and executed on it doesn't impose a computational cost on any other Cartesi chain or L1. This is a fundamental improvement in the scalability of blockchains. Applications can grow as complex as they want, can be as computationally intensive as they want (as long as the people interested in it have the computers powerful enough to perform those computations), can be as popular as they can be, without making every other application next to them more expensive or slower.
The second challenge Cartesi addresses is the quality of the execution environment. Because of the limitations explained above, our industry was forced into creating a very specific execution environment, the EVM, that was great for being able to run various applications in the same place while ensuring they were safe from one another and kept costs under control. With the computational scalability gained by being an application-specific rollup, we had the freedom to be more ambitious with our execution environment - and we created the Cartesi Machine, a RISC-V based deterministic emulator that is capable of booting up a linux runtime.
As far as data scalability challenges, we left that one for our friends at Ethereum and other data availability solutions - we're already too focused on creating the best execution environment possible.
I'll say this, however, data scalability is only relevant if you have the computational power to make use of the extra data.
Q: "Cartesi's integration of Linux allows developers to use familiar programming languages like Python and C++. Can you explain how leveraging existing ecosystems benefits developers, particularly in terms of accelerating the development of complex dApps?"
A: The software industry has only been as successful as it currently is because of our ability to reuse existing code and ideas. We have built, over the decades, thousands of libraries, compilers, tools, interpreters etc that are invaluable to anyone trying to write an interesting program. However, there is a huge problem: all of those were built for "normal computers", regular, existing and battle tested execution environments.
The EVM is a very new computer and is not compatible with everything that was previously built. Not having those tools means having to rebuild them, which is inefficient, expensive, time consuming and very dangerous. There is a reason why "don't rebuild the wheel" is such a popular saying.
Cartesi Machine runs Linux - which is not a very new computer. In fact it's the target of the majority of those libraries, compilers, tools and interpreters that I mentioned above. This means that one can use Python and C++, but not only the syntax of those languages as some other blockchain projects do, they can use the decades of open source libraries and tools built for them. This means a lot of things, they don't have to rebuild the wheel, they can just import it from someone who has built it already. The implications of that for speed of development are obvious, less obvious are the implications for security.
Rebuilding the wheel instead of using the wheel that has been rolling well for ages is a clear red flag. Any tiny mistake can slip through the cracks and cause a security flaw in the future. In an industry such as ours, this is very very dangerous.
Q: "The recent collaboration between Cartesi and Avail aims to create a robust modular stack for decentralized applications. How does combining Cartesi’s RISC-V Linux-based execution with Avail DA enhance computational power and data availability? What are the expected impacts on the performance and scalability of next-generation dApps?"
A: Data scalability and computation scalability walk hand in hand. You can't fully enjoy the benefits of having lots of data available if your execution environment is not capable of intensive computation. And you can't fully utilize the power of a good execution environment if the data inputs are very limited.
Imagine a pocket calculator with access to gigabytes of data. Could it really utilize that data well? Or a supercomputer that can only receive 4 bytes of data…wouldn't the data be wasted?
That is why the combination of Cartesi Rollups and Avail is so powerful - a machine capable of processing larger amounts of data and a data-focused layer ready to make that data available.
The design space for applications grows immensely with this combination, making applications that were not previously possible a coming reality. Next generation apps will look very different from the blockchain applications we're used to, because they're utilizing these gains in computation and data availability.
At Cartesi we talk a lot about the cone of innovation, a concept that helps us explain the interplay between data and computational power:
Of course the cone is not meant to be taken literally. The applications mentioned are just intuitions of what becomes possible. The squares without labels are meant to represent the use cases that we haven't even thought about yet and the areas that are black on the graph represent areas in which unbalanced gains don't really lead to a meaningful increase in the "possible applications space".
Q: "Attracting developers is crucial for any platform. How has Cartesi’s new brand identity and digital experience helped attract and retain developers? Can you share any success stories or feedback from your community?"
A: Applications can date their base layers, data availability layers and so on. But they marry their execution environment. What do I mean by that? Moving an application from execution environments is full of friction.
Changing the deployment of your app from Base to OP is significantly easier than moving your app from the EVM to an alt-vm.
This means that developers should devote a significant amount of their time to study the execution environment they'll choose for their application. A strong brand that is able to inspire confidence and honestly explain the tradeoffs of your solution is paramount. The digital experience and the branding will dictate if developers will give you the attention you deserve. Our brand identity is what draws them in and our tech, which also inspires confidence and honestly provides the advantages promised, keeps them from leaving.
Q: "How important are UI and UX in the development of Cartesi's solutions, and how do they enhance the overall user experience?"
A: Building software is already super hard. Developing novel applications for the end user adds many more challenges to that.
Our job, as the infrastructure in which these dapps will be built/run, is to make the developer worry only about the solution they're building - let us take care of the rest.
It is with good UI and UX that we allow the developer to focus fully on their app. They don't need to worry about where to find the tools or how to use them or how to set up their infrastructure etc.
Q: "Cartesi has recently achieved several milestones. Could you share some highlights and what these achievements mean for the future of your company?"
A: Cartesi has recently reached several important milestones that reinforce our commitment to staying at the forefront of Web3 innovation and decentralization. Our R&D team has been hard at work expanding Cartesi’s capabilities, from advancing technical research in decentralized computation and enhancing vouchers, to pioneering breakthroughs like Stage 2 Rollups and Hypervisor technology.
We’re also making significant progress on modularity, integrating seamlessly with blockchain layers and data availability layers, while building bridges with platforms like EigenLayer and ENS to further expand our ecosystem compatibility.
Infrastructure-wise, Cartesi continues to grow robustly, providing comprehensive support for decentralized applications on both Layer 1 and Layer 2 mainnets. Our tools, including Multi-dApp Rollups Nodes and CartesiScan, simplify the deployment and monitoring of applications, significantly enhancing developer experience.
Convenience remains central to our vision; we’ve launched advanced tooling like reproducible builds and high-level development frameworks, making Cartesi dApp creation more accessible and efficient.
Lastly, our team is actively exploring futuristic experiments, including Rollups in-browser, Zero-Knowledge integrations, and even Cartesi computation on Bitcoin.
Q: "Looking ahead, what is your long-term vision for Cartesi? How do you see your platform evolving over the next few years, and what impact do you hope it will have on the broader blockchain and Web3 ecosystem?"
A: I believe that Cartesi will extend the benefits of blockchain to a much wider array of applications, industries and ecosystems. I don't believe that resilience, censorship resistance and decentralization are only useful for finance! I want those extended to the healthcare sector, to online games, IOT, robotics, governments, legal tech etc.
The best way to achieve that is to combine radical simplicity, computational scalability and content scalability. That is what Cartesi is doing, providing an easy to use machine compatible with Web2. I hope we'll convince the industry, with next generation apps, that we can do so much more. I want us to kick off the era of decentralized applications that look much more like the web2 apps we all use than with the blockchain apps we're currently used to.
Thanks Felipe!
Our founder interview series offers an opportunity to gain insights directly from the innovators shaping the future of crypto and Web3. By speaking with founders firsthand, we hope to uncover valuable perspectives on the challenges, opportunities, and trends driving the industry forward. By speaking with founders firsthand, we hope to uncover valuable perspectives on the challenges, opportunities, and trends driving the industry forward.
Each conversation takes us behind the scenes of different brands Noir has helped to shape, exploring their distinctive approaches, strategies, and vision. We hope these conversations will not only inform and inspire but also provide practical lessons and deeper understanding for anyone working in crypto and Web3.
Q: "Hi Felipe, let's start with the challenges Cartesi helps to solve for Ethereum: both data and computational scalability, as well as programmability limitations. Could you explain how Cartesi's rollups solution addresses these challenges."
A: Sure! Cartesi Rollups tackles two main challenges in the blockchain landscape, computational scalability and execution environment capabilities. The first piece is commonly attenuated by all rollups by the sheer fact that they move computation from L1 to L2 without creating validator fragmentation - this means that applications can be executed on rollups without imposing extra computational cost to the entirety of L1. However, most rollups are shared rollups - applications executed on those rollups impose extra cost on all users of that rollups. That's why, shared rollups simply attenuate the problem of computational scalability.
Cartesi rollups are application-specific, an application launched and executed on it doesn't impose a computational cost on any other Cartesi chain or L1. This is a fundamental improvement in the scalability of blockchains. Applications can grow as complex as they want, can be as computationally intensive as they want (as long as the people interested in it have the computers powerful enough to perform those computations), can be as popular as they can be, without making every other application next to them more expensive or slower.
The second challenge Cartesi addresses is the quality of the execution environment. Because of the limitations explained above, our industry was forced into creating a very specific execution environment, the EVM, that was great for being able to run various applications in the same place while ensuring they were safe from one another and kept costs under control. With the computational scalability gained by being an application-specific rollup, we had the freedom to be more ambitious with our execution environment - and we created the Cartesi Machine, a RISC-V based deterministic emulator that is capable of booting up a linux runtime.
As far as data scalability challenges, we left that one for our friends at Ethereum and other data availability solutions - we're already too focused on creating the best execution environment possible.
I'll say this, however, data scalability is only relevant if you have the computational power to make use of the extra data.
Q: "Cartesi's integration of Linux allows developers to use familiar programming languages like Python and C++. Can you explain how leveraging existing ecosystems benefits developers, particularly in terms of accelerating the development of complex dApps?"
A: The software industry has only been as successful as it currently is because of our ability to reuse existing code and ideas. We have built, over the decades, thousands of libraries, compilers, tools, interpreters etc that are invaluable to anyone trying to write an interesting program. However, there is a huge problem: all of those were built for "normal computers", regular, existing and battle tested execution environments.
The EVM is a very new computer and is not compatible with everything that was previously built. Not having those tools means having to rebuild them, which is inefficient, expensive, time consuming and very dangerous. There is a reason why "don't rebuild the wheel" is such a popular saying.
Cartesi Machine runs Linux - which is not a very new computer. In fact it's the target of the majority of those libraries, compilers, tools and interpreters that I mentioned above. This means that one can use Python and C++, but not only the syntax of those languages as some other blockchain projects do, they can use the decades of open source libraries and tools built for them. This means a lot of things, they don't have to rebuild the wheel, they can just import it from someone who has built it already. The implications of that for speed of development are obvious, less obvious are the implications for security.
Rebuilding the wheel instead of using the wheel that has been rolling well for ages is a clear red flag. Any tiny mistake can slip through the cracks and cause a security flaw in the future. In an industry such as ours, this is very very dangerous.
Q: "The recent collaboration between Cartesi and Avail aims to create a robust modular stack for decentralized applications. How does combining Cartesi’s RISC-V Linux-based execution with Avail DA enhance computational power and data availability? What are the expected impacts on the performance and scalability of next-generation dApps?"
A: Data scalability and computation scalability walk hand in hand. You can't fully enjoy the benefits of having lots of data available if your execution environment is not capable of intensive computation. And you can't fully utilize the power of a good execution environment if the data inputs are very limited.
Imagine a pocket calculator with access to gigabytes of data. Could it really utilize that data well? Or a supercomputer that can only receive 4 bytes of data…wouldn't the data be wasted?
That is why the combination of Cartesi Rollups and Avail is so powerful - a machine capable of processing larger amounts of data and a data-focused layer ready to make that data available.
The design space for applications grows immensely with this combination, making applications that were not previously possible a coming reality. Next generation apps will look very different from the blockchain applications we're used to, because they're utilizing these gains in computation and data availability.
At Cartesi we talk a lot about the cone of innovation, a concept that helps us explain the interplay between data and computational power:
Of course the cone is not meant to be taken literally. The applications mentioned are just intuitions of what becomes possible. The squares without labels are meant to represent the use cases that we haven't even thought about yet and the areas that are black on the graph represent areas in which unbalanced gains don't really lead to a meaningful increase in the "possible applications space".
Q: "Attracting developers is crucial for any platform. How has Cartesi’s new brand identity and digital experience helped attract and retain developers? Can you share any success stories or feedback from your community?"
A: Applications can date their base layers, data availability layers and so on. But they marry their execution environment. What do I mean by that? Moving an application from execution environments is full of friction.
Changing the deployment of your app from Base to OP is significantly easier than moving your app from the EVM to an alt-vm.
This means that developers should devote a significant amount of their time to study the execution environment they'll choose for their application. A strong brand that is able to inspire confidence and honestly explain the tradeoffs of your solution is paramount. The digital experience and the branding will dictate if developers will give you the attention you deserve. Our brand identity is what draws them in and our tech, which also inspires confidence and honestly provides the advantages promised, keeps them from leaving.
Q: "How important are UI and UX in the development of Cartesi's solutions, and how do they enhance the overall user experience?"
A: Building software is already super hard. Developing novel applications for the end user adds many more challenges to that.
Our job, as the infrastructure in which these dapps will be built/run, is to make the developer worry only about the solution they're building - let us take care of the rest.
It is with good UI and UX that we allow the developer to focus fully on their app. They don't need to worry about where to find the tools or how to use them or how to set up their infrastructure etc.
Q: "Cartesi has recently achieved several milestones. Could you share some highlights and what these achievements mean for the future of your company?"
A: Cartesi has recently reached several important milestones that reinforce our commitment to staying at the forefront of Web3 innovation and decentralization. Our R&D team has been hard at work expanding Cartesi’s capabilities, from advancing technical research in decentralized computation and enhancing vouchers, to pioneering breakthroughs like Stage 2 Rollups and Hypervisor technology.
We’re also making significant progress on modularity, integrating seamlessly with blockchain layers and data availability layers, while building bridges with platforms like EigenLayer and ENS to further expand our ecosystem compatibility.
Infrastructure-wise, Cartesi continues to grow robustly, providing comprehensive support for decentralized applications on both Layer 1 and Layer 2 mainnets. Our tools, including Multi-dApp Rollups Nodes and CartesiScan, simplify the deployment and monitoring of applications, significantly enhancing developer experience.
Convenience remains central to our vision; we’ve launched advanced tooling like reproducible builds and high-level development frameworks, making Cartesi dApp creation more accessible and efficient.
Lastly, our team is actively exploring futuristic experiments, including Rollups in-browser, Zero-Knowledge integrations, and even Cartesi computation on Bitcoin.
Q: "Looking ahead, what is your long-term vision for Cartesi? How do you see your platform evolving over the next few years, and what impact do you hope it will have on the broader blockchain and Web3 ecosystem?"
A: I believe that Cartesi will extend the benefits of blockchain to a much wider array of applications, industries and ecosystems. I don't believe that resilience, censorship resistance and decentralization are only useful for finance! I want those extended to the healthcare sector, to online games, IOT, robotics, governments, legal tech etc.
The best way to achieve that is to combine radical simplicity, computational scalability and content scalability. That is what Cartesi is doing, providing an easy to use machine compatible with Web2. I hope we'll convince the industry, with next generation apps, that we can do so much more. I want us to kick off the era of decentralized applications that look much more like the web2 apps we all use than with the blockchain apps we're currently used to.
Thanks Felipe!
