Cartesi 🀝 Bankless

Recorded: March 20, 2024 Duration: 0:32:30

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All the lives
Brian happy first 30% pullback in the bull market my man
Oh, it's a very exciting time buying opportunity David or is the bull market over?
Well, we're getting this fud about the aetherian foundation being an investigation from some state authority
And so that's just giving me another buying opportunity because I missed the one yesterday David
I just treated tweeted something out. That was very scary. Did you read it? No, I didn't I miss it
Okay, so imagine if instead of delivery delivering a theory media of Gensler
Delivers us a lawsuit against the aetherian foundation for being a security imagine
Like it's something I can only think in my nightmares
All right. Well James Safer says it's not gonna happen. That would be the nuclear option
So don't don't worry about that for now David
We've got other subjects to cover on this beautiful Twitter spaces. Who do we have on?
We're talking to read the Cartesi folks
I actually had the pleasure of meeting the Cartesi folks over at East Denver at the bankless meetup and they kind of got me
pilled on
Linux as a runtime for virtual machines things that I'd like don't really think about because I don't have the technical brain
But that's why we have Eric and Felipe in the Twitter space the X space here today Eric Felipe. How's it going guys?
Pretty good. Thank you very much for having us
Maybe we can just get started with the basics
We me and Ryan not technical so we kind of need some help. How would you explain Cartesi to the non-technical minded people?
Yeah, so I guess I can start I
usually start by saying that Cartesi is a community project that is developed and research fully in public and
It's a product that has spent the last six years tackling the execution layer aspect of
Blockchains, right?
So our main contribution is the Cartesi machine, which is I guess a little bit technical
Which is an old VM that runs deterministic risk 5 ISA and supports a Linux runtime and don't worry
We'll get like into that in a second
But we have this Cartesi machine and then we work on the different methods of delivering it
To the to the developers, right? So like you can have for the Cartesi machine
As a Cartesi rollups, which is like an app chain that can run on layer 2 on top of Ethereum
Can run on top of other EVM rollups as layer 3 for instance
And we're also like targeting the modular stack so you can have Cartesi on top of celestial for sovereign rollups
I can layer as co-processors and
stress or for shared sequencing in the A and so on so the the basic idea for me is that you have these very powerful execution environment and
We work on the delivery methods of that. So I guess Eric
compliment
Yeah, I'll just compliment by by saying I we usually say on our website and explain a sentence that Cartes is at specific rollups
with the Linux runtime
So what we detected when we started the project is that when you look at?
Ethereum and other blockchains as a computing platform
It's very divorced from the reality of a mainstream software the software industry, right?
so when you when you build
smart contracts on Ethereum and you face yourself in the situation that you don't even have 14 points and
You are limited in your ability to to write more complex codes
Whereas in the mainstream software world, you know, you can people just take for granted to use
Compilers that evolved throughout 40 years or so like GCC
And running things on our OS that gives access to five systems and things like this
So our objective was to unite these two things right brings the benefits of the mainstream software industry
Without losing the all the guarantees that you love about blockchains
You know being decentralized and inheriting the security of Ethereum for instance
Okay, so the way that I understand this is that
There we've seen this trend in the crypto space
Recently with the right like I think maybe the way that it got started at least with my focus was we saw
Eclipse bling the Solana virtual machine as layer 2 as a layer 2 on Ethereum and then people's like mind
Expanded as to what could be a virtual machine on Ethereum
But you guys aren't really like beholden to a theorem specifically you guys are actually kind of just trying to propagate
This Linux runtime as a virtual machine across web 3, right?
Yeah, correct. We started from Ethereum, but we
Cartes is a modular
protocol and execution layer that you can run on layer as layer 2 or as layer 3 on top of other roll-ups on
Ethereum but also on top of other protocols. So now we do experiments with the Espresso
Celeste and other projects for instance
Well, one thing I should mention which is a pretty exciting for everyone who's listening particularly if you are a developer is that
Cartesi is
offering up to 1 million ecosystem grants for building on top of Cartesi and I should mention Cartesi is
sponsoring this Twitter spaces to help get the word out about that that grant and so there's a lot of
Exciting opportunities to build on top of this this new execution environment this new runtime
I think that a lot of folks listening to this might be familiar with some of the existing
virtual machines out there, of course the EVM which you've
Mentioned which is the Ethereum virtual machine and I would say a lot of crypto right now is kind of built on top of that
The the Solana virtual machine which of course is a native to the Solana ecosystem
We're starting to see that pop up in various other layer twos and then we have the the move VM
Developed by Facebook, but now kind of being propagated by other projects and you know Cartesi is another
VM, I suppose that stands kind of shoulder-to-shoulder with those and
Could you kind of describe maybe the differences?
So what are the the specific strengths that Cartesi has versus some of the other virtual machines that that we've seen today
Yeah, that's a great question
So actually one thing that I talk about a lot is that the execution environment?
That you're gonna choose is highly context-dependent, right? So there's a bunch of different
parameters when
Designing an execution environment that cater to different types of applications
So the EVM a lot of people in the old VM movement, they like to
Criticize heavily the EVM. But for instance, I believe that the EVM is a great execution environment for shared rollups
So rollups in which many applications share the same execution environment and the same thing is true for
The Solana virtual machine right this like local few markets and the parallelization of EVM
Etc. So I like to split the execution environments in these two bigger groups the shared rollups and the application specific rollups and
When it comes to application specific rollups
So when you when you run an application specific rollups
You gain these extra computational power and we chose that Cartesi to use part of that extra computational power
to put up this very powerful machine, which is the Cartesi machine and
the idea is that
this Cartesi machine runs a RISC-V ISA, which is a
Just not definitely not invented by us. It's a very popular ISA out there open source
Very mature and it has the ability to boot up this Linux operating system
So the ability to boot up OS is actually what gives us
The bulk of advantages that we're offering developers because that allows us to to use all sorts of programming languages and not only the syntaxes
Of those programming languages, but also like the standard libraries and the open source code that was built for say normal computers
So it allows us to to bridge this gap between the code that is written by for web 3 and the code that was written for
Web 2 and still being written right because like the open source community for web 2 is massive
So the idea that we have this old VM, which is actually a normal computer that people use on their day-to-day lives on web 2
This bridges the gap
as Eric was saying
So the the key element here is Felipe or I think just someone to highlight is that it's not only about
Supporting mainstream programming languages, right? And there are several projects doing that as well
the point here is that we want you to give the
something that looks exactly like
Real computer in the world, right? So with the risk five I say you're able to to
Run compilers like GCC or boot Ubuntu for instance, and now you can you can build and develop applications that
Like use SQLite for instance or or computational vision
Algorithms or libraries that are available for anyone to use
Okay, so so this makes sense and I think a lot of folks listening
Who maybe aren't developers they they generally understand that the world's kind of runs on Linux
Is it the case that all of this stuff from sort of the web 1 world and the web 2 world?
All the stuff that's been built that kind of like runs on Linux today in the real world including like our mind folks
Maybe a Mac OS that that you're using you like right now
Is it the case that all of that stuff will work on top of our blockchains now?
Or is there still some sort of work to you know
Like deport these libraries and to port this code base or to skill up on some Cartesi specifics here
Can you just pay the landscape of that?
Yeah, I think it's important to say that there is no expectation that people just support entire worlds
Onto Cartes or the Cartesi machine, right?
When you when you build applications for blockchains, they you know, you come with different assumptions different design options and
different constraints
So you start from from what you have in mind they want to build something but you want to use
Libraries or let's say files write files read files things that are inconceivable on the blockchain
All we are trying to say is that it's possible for you to
Invents your decentralized applications using the tools the compilers the libraries the stacks
This myriad of software that has been available for 30 years or more
How many how many Linux developers are out there today?
I mean is this the kind of and when I say Linux
I sort of mean like the broad people building apps on top of the the Linux OS and Linux firmware
I mean, is this a large portion of the developer community?
Yeah, it looks like like most most developers from mainstream the the use Linux, right if you are a web to developer
developing for for back developing back ends
Probably are going to deploy your back ends on Linux if you are developing for androids that is a variation of of Linux
Just wanted to point out just like something that sometimes goes on not unnoticed
Which is that it's not only about
developers being able to have all these like tooling and like ease of development and developers being able to actually focus on what they're building rather
Than the constraints. There's also something here that is very important for blockchain, which is the security aspect of it, right?
When you're coding for like like same solidity, you'll have very often to reinvent the wheel
So you have to recode your mathematical libraries your logarithm functions and so on
whether when you're using these
Like codes that were built on web 2 and have been battle tested for years
You you get a the security aspect of that as well, right?
So you use mathematical libraries that are actually used on planes as well
right, so he's rebuilding the wheel and
Writing all this new code is in itself a security vulnerability of the blockchain world, which is why we see a lot of hacks and
security flaws on web 3 protocols
Is there like an example that we can use to make this really tangible to the listeners like is there what's the story of a
App chain that's using Cartesi or what if I wanted to ask like what's like the most?
The best example that you guys could bring and that's like either in production or being bail. What would you guys say?
Let me give you an example that may be very easy for for the listeners to understand
Something that that has been done and some active projects now
It's possible for you to run run a Doom gameplay and have it provable and verifiable on chain using Cartesi, right?
Yeah, so there is a there is a project called Rives now
Which is a generic kind of world arcade decentralized platform. It is a project that's ongoing now
They they ported
Doom and they are now building new cartridges for this platform
Okay, and let's see why so you could have that as be like the outcome of that game or the state of that game
Could then become like a verified
Verifiably interoperable with a web of with a rest of web 3, right?
Yes, and you can have a let's say a world-wide
Leader leaderboard and anyone can prove that they have a certain position on that leaderboard in a decentralized way. I
Can I can give another example of something that?
People developed and actually they were one of the winners at if Denver in the hackathon
Which is a very Fido project, which is a is a decentralized indexer
Maybe Phillipi wants wants to talk a bit more about this
Yeah, so so
Basically the graph but you can actually have a deterministic way to dispute the information the indexer gave you won't chain
So you can slash indexer that have misbehaved or stuff like that
I think a really cool example. I like to use Eric is the one also from a hackathon, which was put in very few days
Which is the change EPT?
So these woman actually ported I think it's called llama
So is the LLM
So a large language model on AI model to the Cartesian machine that was running basically out of the box
So it's written in C or C++
And then she created a deterministic
So shot chat GPT, right?
So the idea was that you could like actually like prove to others the conversations that you had with this chat GPT
and that's only doable because we have Linux, right so that you could just port the
The at this lama model to to the Cartesian machine
But actually have like so many cool examples now of things being viewed
I have bugless which is about to launch is like a sort of immune system for the internet
So you can have like decentralized
bug bounty programs
So what they did recently is that they just ported the the solidity compiler to it
so actually have a Cartesian machine with the solidity compiler inside and if you
Manage to break the solidity compiler then you get a bonus, right?
So it serves as a decentralized a verifiable deterministic bug bounty program or say solidity
Yeah, so there's a lot of cool stuff
That's actually a very good example because since you can you can run you can run anything like
Compile anything for a bugless on the Cartesian machine. You can have this little compiler
Have a bug bounty for these or you can for instance think of a node of some protocol and port it to to
Bugless as a bounty and also have a bounty
Campaign running on top of it everything decentralized and managed by by the community
So this is my my non-technical like pattern recognition brain coming and trying to drop a metaphor
Let's see if you guys like it or not
The concept of like an emulator is coming to mind
Like if you're telling me if like you can run doom
But as like an app chain hooked into like a theorem or Celestia or wherever
It seems to be like you guys like what Cartesi is enabling is like allowing you to spin up a it's like an emulator
Engines that lets you build any sort of like internal engine. Does that does that metaphor land with you guys?
Yeah, it's it's perfect. It's actually an emulator that is provable won't change
So you can run anything on that emulator and that emulator is actually running Linux
So that as we've been saying that's expensive a lot what you can do
And so it's a provable emulator that can actually run a verification game for
In a manner that is cheap enough on a theorem
So like the design space for this is like pretty like as as constrained as the design spaces for like Linux itself
I don't know if doom itself was built on Linux
But like I think Linux itself is supposed to be some sort of engine
That is the least opinionated so that you can build the most on it
And so this is kind of like the the same vision that you guys have a at Cartesi right like a pretty unopinionated virtual machine
That can emulate any sort of activity that you can build with with Linux
That's that's correct in the case in the case of doom. You don't necessarily have to compile it for Linux
but you used we used things like
Standard compilers the mainstream libraries to to be able to to have it running on the Cartesi machine, right?
So this is something that would be very difficult to pull off on
The EVM or wasm or something like this
It's not impressive but but oh go ahead
I just want I just want you to complement because I think you're your understanding is correct
so it's basically what you're proposing is like
Evolving from a model of smart contracts that are more
They are they are fit a good fit for you to develop programmable money and see publications like defy simple defy or
And things like this to having actually a generic a general purpose computational environments that you can run in a decentralized fashion
One thing that I think is really cool about this with with Cartesi and and I'm catching a vibe here
And I'm wondering if you agree that basically that the Cartesi machine this virtual machine is
Open-source and it's kind of Cartesi's gift to the crypto world, right?
So basically any ecosystem whether that's the theorem ecosystem
Whether that's the celestial ecosystem whether that's even you're like if Solana
Created app chains on top of them any of the crypto ecosystems can benefit from this this virtual machine
And that's really what it sounds like you guys are trying to propagate
You're building up this virtual machine and then and then providing it to the crypto world
You're saying now all of the the web one web two libraries and code bases that you've worked with before
And all the devs who understand these things now this can work in a in a blockchain
Computer ecosystem as well. And if that's the case, that's really cool
I know there's a Cartesi chain, which is a proof-of-stake chain
Of course, it sounds like what you're about is not just that chain
You're about propagating this this this new machine and kind of gifting it to you the crypto world
You are totally right. We want to give it to the world, right? That's it. I think that's our dream
That's that's what they're working for. That's why we opted for an open standard like risk five
That's why we we
decentralized our
Research and developments everything's done in public on this court and we're trying to make it as available as possible to people out there
Yeah, just a quick clarifier we do have like a POS network as well
But that is not related to Cartesi machine or the Cartesi rollups
The POS network is called nodar is a staking system that is used is used for governance
But it's unrelated to the Cartesi machine the Cartesi machine doesn't depend on it as you perfectly said
It's a it's a gift that it can can be plugged to many different
Many different layers and many different protocols as long as they do have the ability to support
dispute verification games
So speaking of gifts, can we talk about this grant program that I mentioned earlier at the top of this?
This X space is here. So there's a 1 million dollar ecosystem grants initiative
That is now live with what I think you guys are calling wave 1 and what you're trying to do is just fund great ideas
You know, these could be innovative dApps. This could be research
Integrations it could be developer tooling. It's just like builders and building on top of the the Cartesi ecosystem
Can you can you talk more about this this grant? So how does someone apply? What are you looking for?
What's the the criteria for getting some grant funding from this?
So I just starting off by saying that it's definitely not a gift
it's a grant of requirements and
We're like we have a requirements for you to be public good to be developing in public to help the general ecosystem and so on
so we have different like as I said many different categories or have
Like core development
So we want to attract people to to help out to build the core protocol and to extend the capabilities of say the Cartesi machine
The Cartesi roll-ups we want to attract people to help us integrate
With different protocols or building these bridges between like a Cartesi machine and celiacia for instance or as a machine and an espresso
so I don't know if Eric wants to talk a little bit about the the Cartesi grants program, but just wanted to point out that it's a
Super cool initiative everyone should check it out
No, that definitely I would just say that we are
Very pleased to help people to know to make sense and to review their applications carefully
Of course, it takes some effort for people to immerse themselves a bit into what we're doing
understand
Cartesi minimally right to propose things that that makes sense. We also have some RFP
So it's easier for people to propose something that we already know are necessary for Cartesi
Okay, and just finish the grant side of things. Where do people go? I think there is a
You know in the Twitter space at the top of Twitter space. You'll see a tweet
With a Cartesi blog post where people can apply is that is that the main location?
Yeah, so we have the blog post linking to the the Cartesi grants program can also come to our discord check it out
We have some like
Channel for questions about the CGP and actually a Helen which is our program lead
Is a listener here. So can also find her on the
Twitter spaces Helen stands and follow her. She's a great help
Yeah, so the link the Cartesi discord will have a governance forum in which the proposals are posted
We have a charm verse with lists of RFPs and requirements
So we're very approachable. So please just send us messages go to our discord send us private messages on telegram
And and so on
For all the listeners who are interested in applying for this grants program
What would excite you guys as an application? Like what is Cartesi really looking to get built?
Give some of the builders here who are listening some inspiration as to like what to think about and how to maximize their chances is getting
there's a lot of tooling that
Could help us because it's funny that we have like a lot of you have the entirety of web tooling
But the web free tooling side we had to reboot it all so we built a block explorers. We built like wallets
Good all of like their web tree tooling
Can always improve that can always improve a internal tooling as well
But on the application side, we've been seeing applications pop up on a different like a very wide array of
Verticals so I have a lot of games coming board games
Card games we have infrastructure projects we have decentralized exchanges I've governance projects, so
very big design space
but just show up on our discord and
Throw in your ideas and love to chat about it
We have a channel called ideas and use cases in which we are constantly debating
Like different things that can be cute
Yeah, just adding that of course people to Cartes are full of great ideas
But they also opening these for people from the world to come with great ideas that you could never imagine, right? So
Yes, we invite creativity
Guys, this has been super cool
Thank you for joining us on this Twitter spaces and making the crypto world and make this nation aware of what you're doing with
Cartesi and thank you for doing it
you know it yeah, it seems like you guys are here for the for the tech and
To propagate a new virtual machine for the world and to bring aboard more developers. Give us more capabilities. This is a
Rising rising tide that's going to lift all boats in crypto
So I appreciate you guys and everything you're doing over at Cartesi
Let me ask you this question in close. So if Cartesi is is maximally successful in sort of the the app chain world
Like what what does that look like to you kind of like if we zoom out three to five years from now
What does maximum success for Cartesi look like for for crypto?
Well, I would like to say I would like to see like real applications with with real use for people in the world
Right. I really want to see
Crypto evolving from the early days of defy and NFTs and and to show better and
Why did CDC for people in the world and I and I really believe that's what we're doing will contribute with a with a piece
In the into the mosaic to to make it happen
So my in my in my view would like to see some some decent well adopted applications and Cartesi running on different protocols
And being used by people around the world with contributions from you know everywhere
Sorry, I'll be quick I think there were three gives us like very
Useful coordination tools and is like ability to build censorship resistant stuff predict predictable stuff immutable stuff
But now that is constrained to a very specific set of applications
so as Eric saying mainly like defy and NFT so for me the the
Best of worlds for Cartesi is us helping to unlock these coordination tool to more
ambitious and complex applications and
Inserting these characteristics onto like more and more things and also you can have a truly open and unpredictable when fair web
Eric Felipe, I have learned quite a lot. I'm pretty excited for this
I've always been just kind of over the longest arc of crypto and the believer that
Every single thing will get a chain and so this is definitely fitting into that thesis as well
So thank you for helping us move the needle in that direction really appreciate
I appreciate you guys coming on here and educating us about Cartesi and also giving away money
This is the best kind of activity
Yeah, you do have to earn it you do have to earn it yeah, yeah nonetheless Eric Felipe, thank you so much for coming on here