Cartesi Ecosystem Recap #6

Newsletter/Feb 9, 2024/Siannie Quartero

February 9th - We did it, we made it through the 4 months of January! 🎉 Congratulations everyone. Is it just us or does January always feel incredibly long? Or… a lot has happened in January that made it feel long, such as onboarding devs during the Cartesi x Web3Bridge Masterclass, Aetheras launching their playable demo of Dazzle, and integrations continuing being strong together with other epic Web3 players such as Syscoin, Celestia & Espresso!

Have you checked out the updated transparency report? The Cartesi Foundation is one of the many teams, units, companies, and individuals that advocate the ecosystem’s collective vision and contribute to the development and adoption of the Cartesi technology. You can read about the ways in which the Cartesi Foundation supported and contributed to the ecosystem in the latest transparency report for 2023.

Tech

Check out the last live dev recap to hear from the units pushing forward on development:

https://youtu.be/QkYwEf7R3ME

Research & Design

Highlights:

Introducing VirtIO - a new feature implemented in the Cartesi Machine.
- What it is and what it does:
  - Means Virtual Input Output
  - Allows a VM to access the host machine state.
  - Specification is supported by many emulators and virtualization software.
    - QEMU
    - VirtualBox
    - And now also supported by the Cartesi Machine Emulator 🎉
- Why it’s useful for the Cartesi Machine
  - Allows internet access from the Cartesi Machine and facilitates the operation of web servers within a Cartesi Machine, exposing them to the external world.
  - Useful mostly for prototyping applications.
  - Make live changes to an application while testing directly in a Cartesi Machine environment.
  - Remote debugging applications running inside a Cartesi Machine.
Rollups Explorer
- CartesiScan - improved presentation for inputs table on smaller devices. In progress - support for ERC-721 token transfers and voucher executions and search capability for inputs.
Sunodo - a framework for developing decentralized applications built on top of Cartesi technology.
- Learn more about Sunodo over on its website!
- Check out a little sneak peek of the documentation here!
❌ Prototype & Support > ✅ App Experimentation Unit
- New unit scope - focus on app experimentation. Could be new stuff or expand on existing promising ideas.
- First project - expand ❌ World Arcade > ✅ Rives (RIsc-v Verifiable Entertainment System)
  - Rewrite in Python
  - Being built along with Cartesapp
  - New UI
  - New DevOps tooling
- Check out Rives for yourself over on their website!
Zippie
- 💃 Cartesi Lambada - come and participate in the discussion over in the Technical Vision Forum. Lambada is a technological stack designed to provide an alternate means for people to adopt the Cartesi technology.
  - Check out the code walkthrough here!
  - Lambada from 10000 ft.
  - Main plans: spreading knowledge, having devs and developer advocacies build with, on Lambada, and build itself. You can find more links over on Discord in #cartesi-compute too.

In case you want to follow the developments in detail AND in real time? Head on over to Discord and check out the core-units-update channel - and be part of the conversation!

Also be sure to set a reminder for the next Monthly Dev Recap Call, Monday March 4th. This will be your opportunity to ask questions to core developers, researchers, and contributors about Cartesi tech.

Two more grokking blog posts were added in the month of January! Check out Grokking the Cartesi Explorer and Grokking Dave!

In case you’re not up to speed on Cartesi tech or want to revisit and sharpen your knowledge on the rollups, the machine, the nodes, or even Dave - you’re in luck! This series of blog posts will have you grokking the Cartesi stack in no time.

Ecosystem News

Dazzle is now ready to be played! Aetheras launched their beta test version of Dazzle, an RPG match-three strategy game with beautiful visuals and collectable NFTs. Be one of the first to test our gameplay!

Curious about other projects in the Cartesi ecosystem? Follow their socials to get updates firsthand: Ultrachess, Productive, Aetheras, Dazzle, UXBoost, Rives.

🍯Let’s celebrate Honeypot’s 4-month birthday! It’s not too late to crack it and take that prize money home. Want to give it a shot? Have a look at this deep dive into its code and unpack the trust assumptions involved in its infrastructure. Want a quick cheat sheet that covers the most asked questions? You got it too!

We also partnered up with TechWithTim on a ‘Python Web3 Development’ video series which explains everything you need to know about how to create dApps with just Python! You can check out how he guides you through the process of constructing a Rock-Paper-Scissors game on the blockchain, leveraging the most widely used programming language. All 8 episodes are now available over on YouTube!

Who hasn’t caught up on the full scoop of the integration with Celestia? In case you missed it, have a look at this quick-read thread on what Cartesi unlocks with Celestia underneath!

Cartesi Grants Program

The CGP Wave 1 is now live on CharmVerse! 🎉 Take a look at the revamped CGP and what this could mean for you if you’re thinking of starting a new project!

In case you need a bit more context, Community Grants Steward Hellen hosted the second CGP Spotlight session covering Wave 1 and more! We were also joined by a bunch of amazing guest speakers namely past CGP grantee Dimitar as well as guests Ebunayo (Web3Bridge)Geraldine (Think and Dev)Solene (H.E.R. DAO) and Gabriel (Cartesi Developer Advocate).

You can have a listen here: https://twitter.com/cartesiproject/status/1752375927856574624

In more news, 🤖AI-Powered System for Detecting License Plate Violations on Vehicles completed their CGP with their demo WhistleBlower! If you’re curious to learn more about it, here’s a few links for you to check!

GitHub: https://t.co/7Q4wAkXvSK

Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZK1Pq-q9Ec

For development updates from projects funded through the Cartesi Grants Program,

⚙️Cartenix, 🖼️ Decentralized Painting Canvas and🚰 BlockOasis, head on over to the #ecosystem-updates channel over on Discord.

Want to stay in the loop about what else is being built on Cartesi? Check out the #✨spotlight channel over on Discord where project submissions are continuously added!

Community

Need a breakdown of Modular DA Layers, AltVMs, and the Cone of Innovation? Brandon made sure to have your back in case you wanted to dive deeper into the topic of exploring how modular layers work to unlock blockchain’s cone of innovation! Cartesi being one of the only altVMs on mainnet, the Cartesi Virtual Machine offers an execution layer for devs to integrate with modular DA layers such as Espresso, Celestia, Syscoin, and EigenLayer.

Expanding our outreach beyond the usual channels, we recently hosted a Reddit AMA in r/ethtrader. Our core contributors delved into a variety of thought-provoking inquiries from the community, sparking great enthusiasm! Explore the session to uncover more about Cartesi.

Contributoooor Spotlight

Big kudos to João for making sure quality content is recorded to be turned into more #BUIDL shorts! He tirelessly guided builders in using Cartesi at the Web3Bridge Masterclass, but that didn’t stop him from shooting all this amazing content! In case you missed it, you can find the playlist of all Web3Bridge shorts here!

Events

That’s a wrap on the 4 week long Cartesi x Web3Bridge Masterclass in Lagos, Nigeria. The aim of this Masterclass was to explore various use cases and push the boundaries of Cartesi tech. Thank you to everyone who participated in this Masterclass! Here’s to more DevAd initiatives in onboarding many talented and passionate developers into the Cartesi ecosystem. 🚀

And we cannot forget about GBCC #9 hosted by our beloved Max! During this session, we were joined by Yijia, co-founder of Curio. You can watch the replay here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwgPliY25rk

In case you want a TL;DR on the entire call, Karmen has your back with a handy thread summarizing the main conversation points.

Upcoming Events

Keep your sexy butt up to date with where Cartesi will go next by subscribing to our live public events calendar, and take part in event-related campaigns over on Link3, Galxe and Zealy!

And if, just if, you feel like ‘’damn, I really feel like binging all previous Cartesi events and community calls’’, then check out our YouTube channel, where you’ll find all of these and more.