About the Noether: Cartesi’s Solution that will Enable Blockchain Applications to Use More Data Than Ever Thought Possible

5 min readMay 27, 2022

Scalability has always been one of the significant problems facing cryptocurrency networks. Many projects have tried different means to solve scalability issues but at the expense of efficiency, decentralization or security.

Ethereum, for example, employs the sharding solution, but Cartesi adopted a more tailored approach to scaling data on the network by building a Sidechain.

Noether

Noether is a sidechain of the Cartesi network that ensures data availability. It is a part of Cartesi’s technology that will allow blockchain applications to utilize far more data than Ethereum or other blockchains would support.

In their most basic form, blockchains keep track of any activity that occurs on them. Such a setup is too expensive and unnecessary for most decentralized applications (dApps). Noether serves as a cheap and efficient storage ledger for Ethereum-based applications. It can record and store data that is only required for a limited period. This saves space and improves the efficiency of the blockchain.

The Noether idea stemmed in two ways. First, it is a tribute to the German Mathematician Emmy Noether and her first theorem, which states that every differentiable symmetry of the action of a physical system with conservative forces has a corresponding conservation law.

Secondly, it is also a word-play (No-ether), suggesting that data storage should be cheaper on Cartesi’s side chain than Ethereum.

Features of Noether

The following features were put into consideration for the creation of Cartesi’s Sidechain:

Powerful - The Noether was built to contain enough power to sustain a high volume of transactions per second.
Data Only - The Cartesi Core has already solved the problem of computational scalability on blockchains; this enables Noether to concentrate on the issue of Data Availability. Processing transactions can be done effectively and cheaply once they are available to all interested parties.
Local - Similar to Ethereum’s Sharding proposal, not everyone needs to oversee transactions on the network. Rather than a fixed process in the network, the Locality approach of Cartesi’s Noether is flexible and decided by the users.
Cost-effective - The use of dApps cannot be hampered by transaction fees. The combination of numerous technologies is expected to reduce the cost to the extent it no longer affects adoption.
Proof of Stake - The Proof of Work cannot be relied upon to secure the Noether idea because it raises serious concerns about its long-term viability and security. Proof of stake consensus algorithm was used instead.
Garbage Collection - Keeping all processed transactions on the network forever will significantly limit the system’s functionality. However, disposing of them entirely will hamper seamless adoption for new users looking to tap knowledge from the history books. Cartesi, however, will be providing a Data Availability Protocol solution.
Embedding - Cartesi is a layer-2 solution and relies on the underlying blockchain to do the heavy work. This makes it easy to solve complex problems.

About Cartesi

Blockchain technology is currently making waves in the financial industry, but it lacks global adoption due to its limitations. Cartesi is working towards minimizing the flaws that come with adopting blockchain technology.

Cartesi is a layer-2 decentralized platform that uses the sophisticated Linux infrastructure to offer developers adequate tools to enable them to develop top-notch decentralized applications.

Most blockchain platforms prevent developers from creating decentralized applications using a file system, SQL database, or a machine learning model. They often face severe limitations like gas limits and high fees. With Cartesi’s unique idea, developers can create decentralized applications with a sophisticated standard software stack and at a cheaper cost.

What Makes Cartesi Unique?

The main goal of Cartesi is to enable decentralized applications to operate both on-chain and off-chain, with verification assured once transactions reach the network.

The core components which enable seamless operation on the Cartesi network are; The Cartesi Machine, Cartesi Rollups, and Noether.

The Cartesi Machine was created to give decentralized applications mainstream scalability and the developers’ productivity.

2. Cartesi Rollups allow smart contracts to run off-chain on Cartesi Machines.

3. Noether is a high-performance side chain for data availability that will serve as storage and memory for the Blockchain OS.

Mission of Cartesi

To provide a complete operating system for blockchain applications.
To handle sophisticated computations and ensure scalability with Optimistic Rollups, the Cartesi Machine and Noether.
To ensure dApp developers are not overspending or demoralized with the cost of developing applications.
To create dApps of any complexity using standard development tools and software stacks while running on well-known blockchain networks like Ethereum, Avalanche, Binance Smart Chain, and Polygon.

Cartesi Token ($CTSI)

The CTSI token is the native token of the Cartesi network, and it was created to encourage Cartesi Node operators to interact with the system transparently and efficiently. The $CTSI performs the following functions :

Cartesi Core: The Cartesi Core relies on an arbitration process that utilizes CTSI as collateral to ensure honest behavior.

Cartesi Side Chain: Cartesi Side Chain users pay CTSI for temporary data storage for Cartesi DApps. CTSI block rewards and fees paid by users uploading data to the Side Chain are distributed to block producers.

Consensus Mechanism: CTSI is used to participate in the Proof-of-Stake consensus system on the Side Chain (Noether). The miners with the most significant stakes have a better chance of being chosen to generate the next block.

Data Availability Protocol: CTSI is also used to power the data availability protocol to help with the transfer of a massive amount of data used for machine snapshots.

Conclusion

Since its creation, Cartesi has become blockchain agnostic and has witnessed increased adoption. Their aim of eliminating the limitations developers face when building dApps yields benefits.

The Noether is just a vital piece of the large Cartesi network, and it has since been improved upon. Not only does it enable any size of data to be stored and made available for effective dApps development, but it also enables the proof-of-stake consensus mechanism in a project that is adopting a proof-of-work blockchain (Ethereum).

For more information about the Cartesi project, you can check out the links below:

Cartesi Website: https://cartesi.io

Twitter: https://twitter.com/cartesiproject

Blog: https://medium.com/cartesi

Telegram Community: https://t.me/CartesiProject

Telegram Announcements: https://t.me/cartesiannouncements

Discord (Development Community): https://discordapp.com/invite/Pt2NrnS

GitHub: https://github.com/cartesi

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/cartesi/

Want to start staking your CTSI in a pool? Go to https://explorer.cartesi.io, it’s really easy to follow…

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Article Written by Helen IMAH — Cartesi Nigeria Ambassador