Cartesi’s 6 Months in Review: A Retrospective Roadmap
Tags: Cartesi, Transparency, Newsletter, Ctsi, Ecosystem

Cartesi’s 6 Months in Review: A Retrospective Roadmap Cartesi Follow Jun 22 · 7 min read

This year has so far seen DeFi, smart contracts and the still largely untapped potential of blockchain technology make more headlines than ever before, with some of the biggest names in the global industry paying attention. Things have moved just as quickly at Cartesi and as we move into the halfway point of 2021, we would like to take a minute to look back at everything that has been accomplished in what has been an exciting and landmark 6 months for the Cartesi team and the development of our platform.

From our relentless product development that has seen various rollouts and updates announced each month, to a flurry of strategic and deep-rooted collaborations that will enable the industry as a whole to grow. We have been working tirelessly to keep up the pace in what is a rapidly evolving and ever-exciting landscape.

Let’s take a look at what has happened at Cartesi HQ in the last 6 months.

Partnerships and Collaborations

The first half of this year saw Cartesi join forces with some of the most recognized and long-standing projects in the blockchain industry; from forming a collaboration with IOTA that will work towards accelerating smart contract adoption for IoT; to adding a new layer of computational power to Elrond’s high transactional throughput capabilities; and integrating with Avalanche to expand layer-2 infrastructure within DeFi.

We are serious about the future of smart contract development and we want the near-infinite possibilities that accompany decentralized computing to be made more accessible to millions of developers worldwide. By working with these trailblazing blockchain platforms we are accelerating what is already in motion, building towards a future that sees traditional software developers able to easily enter the blockchain industry and utilize their years of knowledge to take smart contracts and decentralized systems to the next level.

As well as plans to port Cartesi’s Descartes v1.1 to the Gather Network blockchain and giving Injective’s developers more opportunities than ever to launch new applications on top of their chain, we’ve worked hard to forge long-lasting relationships with protocols, platforms and institutions both inside and outside of the blockchain industry, helping to bolster a more accessible future for software developers looking to get into smart contract development.

Our appetite for supporting tomorrow’s next big blockchain project stretches even further with our partnership with PAID Network. We will be collaborating with PAID to identify and fast-track promising projects from Cartesi Labs for PAID Network’s Ignition Launchpad, also in the future evaluating the integration of the PAID mainnet into the Cartesi Ecosystem.

Another hugely exciting partnership that has been formed in the last 6 months is that of Cartesi and Polygon; not only is Cartesi now integrated with Polygon’s Matic PoS chain and listed on their increasingly popular DEX QuickSwap, but we are also building a completely decentralized poker game with the rapidly growing L2 blockchain platform to highlight what is possible with decentralized gaming.

With this much of a collaborative effort coming out of Cartesi HQ in just 6 months, you can certainly expect even more exciting partnerships in Q3 and beyond!

Product Development

A plan is nothing without execution. It is so important to create milestones and aim to hit them as efficiently as possible, in order to keep the support of investors, platform participants and the overall community. We are very proud of what we have achieved in such a short space of time at Cartesi HQ.

Last year marked the release of the Cartesi virtual machine and Descartes, a decentralized computational oracle; this year, our main focus has been to bring our previous implementations to Mainnet and so far we have smashed through all of our milestones in 2021.

Q1 2021 saw the release of Noether 1.1, an upgrade to the Noether Node and CTSI staking system that was unveiled last year. Noether’s PoS Delegation system is in the final stages of development and still on track for release before the end of Q2. Another main milestone during the first 3 months of 2021 was Descartes 1.1, an upgrade to the Descartes SDK that included Support for Avalanche’s FUJI C-Chain Testnet amongst other things; these 2 major milestones saw us move into Q2 proud and with an appetite for more product development than ever before!

Cartesi Governance was recently announced and is another big step forward for us, as it is the first in several moves towards decentralization of the Cartesi ecosystem as a whole. In the words of Erick, Cartesi CEO,

“Blockchain technology was built on open-source, collaborative foundations — Therefore it makes sense that Cartesi’s future growth and development is mapped out with decision-making power given to our platform participants and community”.

The Cartesi Improvement Proposal (CIP) system is heavily derived from the Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) system, with several changes made to make it a more accessible process that was itself inspired by Polygon’s PIP process.

The end of Q2 may be near, but we still have yet more exciting things to unveil before the second half of 2021 begins including delegation, Cartesi Rollups on testnet and our already highly anticipated decentralized poker showcase!

Listings & Integrations

CTSI, our native token used for several functions including staking and (in the near future) governance, was this year listed on several of the world’s premier cryptocurrency exchanges. These events coupled with the integrations of CTSI into various popular payments platforms meant that CTSI saw lots of action this year as a result; we are very happy to see CTSI available to buy, trade, stake, and pay with on so many reputable platforms!

Exchanges

We are proud to say that today CTSI has been listed on almost every reputable cryptocurrency exchange in the industry, with more than 8 major listings taking place in the first half of 2021 alone! Crypto.com this year announced it has over 10 million users; Coinbase has 56 million verified users respectively and $223 billion in assets. Several other high-ranking exchanges, both centralized and decentralized, have enabled CTSI trading pairs as shown below:

Integrations

The utility of a token is proven by its use cases and integrations. We have worked hard these last few months to integrate CTSI with a variety of platforms and the result is that our token serves several functions on several innovative platforms; from payments to staking and more in addition to its regular utility.

Integrations include:

Expansion

At Cartesi we look to play a central role in fostering the development of aspiring project founders and teams in the blockchain industry. We this year announced the unveiling of the Cartesi Labs program; this continuous program consists of grants, accelerator and academic programs aimed at incentivizing the development of decentralized systems with Cartesi’s technology stack and, by partnering with SOSV’s dlab, we are able to further fund some of the most exciting upcoming projects in the industry.

The Cartesi Labs program provides project teams with technical and strategic advisory from some of the industry’s brightest minds. With key members of the Iota and Polygon team on board as mentors and with all of Cartesi’s tools at their disposal, early-stage projects can receive all they need to build the decentralized applications and protocols that will change the face of technology in the coming years.

Having already successfully begun the incubation of 3 amazing projects last year as a result of the Cartesi DApp Incubation Program, we this year opened up Cartesi labs to the world, with $1 million in funding (not including matching rounds and extra contributions from partners such as SOSV’s dlab) up for grabs to those looking to build on Cartesi’s technology stack.

Another exciting development this year was forming a dedicated Cartesi Lab at the IMPA (Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics) in Rio de Janeiro, where we’ll be working closely with PhDs and professionals to push the envelope for the development of distributed systems.

With so much development taking place in all areas of the company, it became clear that Cartesi could benefit from an expanded workforce and we proudly welcomed a total of 11 highly qualified individuals to the Cartesi team over the course of 6 months. With specialties including marketing, project management, software development and blockchain engineering, these welcome additions to the Cartesi workforce are already accelerating the pace at which we can move into Q3.

Moving Into the Rest of 2021

The third and fourth quarter of 2021 will entail the continued development of our main products, with features and services on the platform being added such as:

A Rollups aggregator service

A Rollups validator marketplace

Descartes v2.0: Cartesi Rollups on Mainnet

We also have some very exciting events planned for both the Cartesi community and the mainstream market that will further showcase the power of Cartesi, also bringing more mainstream media attention to the various benefits of blockchain technology in the “real world”. Keep your eyes peeled for news in the coming weeks!

We would like to thank everyone who has supported us on our journey thus far — Our community means a lot to us and we greatly appreciate all feedback, suggestions and input into how we can continue to improve on existing and future Cartesi products. Our ethos is to make the benefits of blockchain technology and smart contracts available to everyone and, by building a bridge that enables the traditional software development community to enter into the world of blockchain, we hope to see an explosion of growth in the coming months and years; knowing that so many people believe in and support our mission drives us to continue our hard work!