Building Layer-2s with Erick De Moura, CEO of Cartesi - Ep. 68 Podcast Notes

Ep.68 Podcast Summary / Notes

Web3 and Developers 

• Blockchain technology will disrupt the world in many ways 

• Web3 is a way for developers to recover agency and realize their dreams

  • Builders and coders are heavily underrated in the space 

  • Cartesi looks to empower and give developers the tools they need to realize their dreams. 

How does Cartesi compare to other chains? 

• Cartesi is not just about language support 

  • Supporting developers with everything built on Linux

  • Bring all the open source stacks that are available to smart contract developers 

  • Host of libraries behind Linux

  • Express powerful and sophisticated smart contracts and dApps 

  • No need to reinvent the wheel 

• Other blockchains support other languages like Rust 

  • Only have very basic features of the language 

  • Don’t have access to components and features outside of native language 

• Objective:  To reduce a lot of entry barriers for a non-crypto developer 

  • Master Solidity, understand a new language, etc. 

Thoughts on Polygon and Solana’s phone integration 

• Cartesi currently focuses on the backend and smart contract platform

  • Remove the barrier for developers to create applications 

  • Make it easier and more efficient for developers to create web3 applications

  • Not focusing on the front end at the moment 

Thoughts on the recent ZK-proof trend 

• ZK is like magic

  • Erick recently wrote a Twitter thread about ZK

• ZK-rollups is the best solution for a range of dApps 

  • Particularly for the dApps similar to the DeFi apps of today 

  • DeFi implements very simplistic smart contracts

  • Better security and efficient for validation than optimistic rollups 

• Developers have to be economical in the way they use computational resources due to the cost of gas and resources

• Cartesi doesn’t implement ZK-rollups 

  • Impossible to run a Linux Virtual Machine on a ZK-rollup L2 due to technical reasons 

• Sorting Arrays in ZK-Rollups

  • Limited to very small memory ranges

  • Smart contracts on EVM model are very limited by memory and data constraints

  • Unable to deal with large amounts of data and memory spaces of Operating Systems 

Are there too many L2s?

• Liquidity fragmentation 

  • More chains than what the community needs?

• Multi-chain has huge technical issues and security risks from transferring assets through bridges 

  • Very hard to make a secure, interoperable bridge across L1s 

  • However, bridges across other L2s of the same base layer are very secure

  • Due to the inheritance of strong security of the base layer (ETH)

  • Bridges across L2s of the same L1 could be a solution to liquidity fragmentation

Where do you see the future of L2s?

• Traditional OS will implement blockchain tech or blockchains adopting Cartesi’s developer-friendly approach 

• Firmly believes the future of web3 and blockchains is embracing mainstream OS and software components 

• Long-term vision of web3 

  • Web3 will start to onboard users just like web2 

  • Real-world uses instead of people trying to make money 

  • More sophisticated applications to bring user base and value 

Is there a timeline for the testnet 

• Tricky to work with a timeline in Crypto 

  • E.g. Ethereum delays 

  • Largely due to the complexity of the research required

• Cartesi moved away from a deadline approach to focus on 

  • High frequency and transparent updates for the community to try things out 

  • Reports and codes were released for the community to see the progress

• Currently very close to a testnet-ready version