Cartesi’s AMA Recap with Crypto Syndicate
We’ve recently conducted an AMA in Crypto Syndicate, a vibrant Nigerian Crypto Community. The AMA was held with Helen IMAH, Lead at Cartesi Nigeria and moderated by the host, Ayuba Muhammad Bashir.
The AMA session took place over the community on WhatsApp where Helen discussed several exciting facts about Cartesi, especially the need to build solid dApps and the role Cartesi is playing to ensure Nigerian have scalable products of decentralized applications while maintaining security.
Some of the questions, answers, responses and sequences may have been edited or modified for clarity and readability.
We present the Recap:
Ayuba — Hello guys, welcome to the Crypto Syndicate AMA series, today we have the Cartesi regional manager for Nigeria, Helen to tell us more about the Cartesi project and it’s ecosystem.
Helen — Thank you. It’s really nice to be with you guys.
Q1: Can you tell us a bit about yourself, how did you get into crypto and what did you do prior to crypto?
Helen — I’m Helen IMAH by name, a Computer Science graduate.
The first time I came across Bitcoin was in 2015 while engaging in my most prized hobby of surfing the Internet, then I was still an undergraduate.
I read related articles and watched YouTube videos to get started on my fascinating blockchain journey. So in 2017, I became ICO (initial coin offering) investor, from there to crypto trading and now I represent notable blockchains as brand ambassador. It has been a interesting journey so far.
Ayuba — That’s an interesting journey of 5 years.
Helen — It’s been fun all the way.
Q2: So can you shed some light about Cartesi such as why the project was started and Cartesi main focus?
Helen — At Cartesi, we empower DApp developers by helping them build products that are ever more compelling to users, and bring us all closer to a future in which decentralization becomes less burdensome.
For the second part of your question, Cartesi main focus is to close the gap between centralized and decentralized applications, both in terms of possibility and convenience.
Q3: However there are a lot of projects in the crypto space, tell us a few things that set you apart from your competition/similar projects.
Helen — In regards to competitors, Cartesi is a unique project in a certain way. TrueBit and Offchain Labs both have a similar protocol for off-chain computation that involves an interactive dispute resolution (verification game).
However, in our case, we have different choices of virtual machine architecture and cryptoeconomic incentives in order to fulfill our vision. Namely, to provide DApp developers with a wealth of software infrastructure already available for Linux.
In that respect, there’s no project that is similar to Cartesi currently.
Q4: The focus of Cartesi as you mentioned earlier is huge, can u tell us a bit about the Cartesi team. How big is it? Tell us about some key members working on the project.
Helen — The Cartesi project is blessed with experienced & vibrant team members and advisors which has been helping the project to soar high in the space.
Erick de Moura is the Chief Executive Officer at Cartesi. He hails from Brazil with experience all over the world. He is a software engineer and technical leader with broad experience including development process definition, management, and system design.
You can learn more about the brains behind Cartesi from here: https://cartesi.io/en/about/#founders.
Q5: Aside the focus of Cartesi, what is the main use case of Cartesi and how do you plan to market your project to gain more awareness especially in Nigeria?
Helen — Both focus and use cases are for the betterment of an ecosystem.
Cartesi is suitable for many purposes which ranges from DeFi, Gaming, Research, Machine Learning, and so on.
Creepts is a functioning product of Cartesi which happens to be the First Fully Decentralized Tower Defense DApp. You may want to learn more about Creepts most especially the gamers in the house: https://creepts.cartesi.io/en/
We recently launched a digital presence in Nigeria via social media on Twitter and Facebook which is one step to gaining awareness in the country. We really hope to have a vibrant community in this part of the world.
I will be sharing our community links before the end of this event. We would also be hosting contest for Devs in the nearest future to foster our awareness in Nigeria.
Q6: What is your vision for Cartesi in Nigeria?
Helen — Cartesi Nigeria is a subset of Cartesi global, so we have corporate vision and goal, closing the gap between centralized and decentralized applications for Nigerians, both in terms of possibility and convenience.
Q7: My last question for you is quite not related to Cartesi particularly. If you don’t mind what is your view of the current crypto market? Are we in a bull market yet?
Helen — The crypto market has gained more awareness and of course adoption during this pandemic lockdown most especially in Nigeria and Africa region. A lot of media talked about this recently. You know many seize the lockdown opportunity to learn stuffs online, I guess a greater % of these people came in to learn about blockchain and cryptocurrency.
The crypto market has been experiencing a bullish state for the past few weeks but obviously not the main bull run. Let’s hope for better.
Segment 2 : Community Questions
How does Cartesi intend to stay relevant in the highly evolving crypto market over the next 5–10 years?
Helen — What an interesting question!
In blockchain, 5–10 years is too far as things change extremely fast. Cartesi is not only about bridging the gap between a real OS and blockchain and providing virtually unlimited computational power. First of all, these are not small achievements.
The most important asset for Cartesi is a team of brilliant researchers and engineers extremely excited to create and implement novelty in the blockchain space.
Cartesi has designed and redesigned itself several times, and a necessary space of experimentation has allowed us to understand better and better where we want to get, and our priorities.
- Scalability is a multidimensional problem. With Cartesi Core and Descartes, we can empower computation.
- With upcoming roll-ups, we can essentially have smart-contracts being implemented and running on Linux.
- With the Side Chain, we can achieve much higher throughput, lower latencies, and cheaper temporary storage for DApps.
With these systems in place, we get something that could be analogous to general-purpose Linux servers, however, decentralized, efficient, and with the same security guarantees that the blockchain provides.
This is the fundamental roadmap of Cartesi for 2020 and 2021. That being said, there are other very important side projects being executed by the tech team.
The PoS system of Cartesi Side Chain will allow people to stake and receive mining rewards. This should be ready before the conclusion of the Side Chain itself.
Another important project is related to the creation of an infrastructure for greater convenience for DApp developers and users. We already provide preliminary information about it in the Documentation Portal.
How does Cartesi plan to reach out to the unbanked to showcase their solution, seeing that these population account for over 73% of those needing the Cartesi Solution?
Helen — Cartesi is not a solution to the unbanked or will not directly solve this issue.
Cartesi’s protocol will enable exterior DApp and DeFi creators to solve future problems for the unbanked, by enabling them to create applications that rival traditional banks, while guaranteeing the security of blockchain technology.
Cartesi is known to be an OS for DApp what differentiate it from every other blockchain, why would devs prefer to use Cartesi instead of telos, wax, or any other blockchain?
Helen — First of all, I would like you to know that Cartesi isn’t a blockchain.
We are blockchain agnostic, meaning we can potentially run on any underlying blockchain. It’s a bridge between Linux and blockchain, first of its kind in the Tech world.
By offering a Linux runtime environment, Cartesi is the only software-based verifiable off-chain compute system that gives developers a vast array of software that evolved in the last 30 years and that enable the applications we use on the Internet today.
What are your major milestones to further expand the ecosystem this year?
Helen — I have actually been expecting questions from this angle of milestones!
Just like I said earlier, Cartesi has been doing well in following the roadmap of the project. Am sure going forward, we would smash other notable milestones that we have in roadmap and even beyond. For the remaining part of this year, part of our plans are these ones:
- Launch mining on Testnet
- Launch mining on Mainnet
- Release of P2P Service GRPC (Google Remote Protocol Core)
You can see other exciting milestones we are having for the future: https://cartesi.io/static/roadmap-mobile-f29432b765aebbfba4a1755c791a7b2e.svg
Rececntly, Crypto companies have been introducing Gamification into investments. And it is seen to have increase productivity and consistent participation, which is a win-win situation for the company and the client. What does Cartesi think about this latest development? And, is Cartesi hoping to adopt this Gamification strategy?
Helen — Cartesi is a platform to endless possibilities and is not limited to one specific area.
Cartesi, do not create the DApps, but will be working alongside developers to assist in implementing our technology.
What is Cartesi consensus algorithm and how scalable is its network?
Helen — Here is how it works:
DApps can easily store data temporarily on the Cartesi Side Chain, which is governed by a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism, without having to constantly communicate with the layer-1 blockchain.
Cartesi aims to bring mainstream Scalability to decentralized applications through a network of nodes. The $CTSI token has been designed to incentivize Cartesi Node operators that encourage them to engage with the system honestly and in an efficient way.
Amidst all other programming system. Cartesi is highly scalable and highly reliable. What unique feature does Cartesi possess that is not common to other programming systems?
Cartesi is an off-chain decentralized computation platform. Cartesi is unique in the sense that:
i.) it allows decentralized applications to be run on Linux in a way that’s verifiable by the blockchain.
ii.) complex processing can be executed off-chain free from blockchains’ computational limits and corresponding fees.
How does Cartesi plan on attracting new users?
Helen — Our initial plan for user growth relies on the Cartesi Network and its features. Cartesi will run a mine based on real-world computations with minimal power consumption.
We are look up to building strategic partnerships with several public blockchains where we will benefit each other to rapidly increase adoption and release the killer DApps the community is searching for.
We are also currently exploring a number of promotional activities that will be launched with additional releases of our SDK software and documentation. These will include DApp creation contests, hackathons, and DApp bounty competitions.
Ayuba — Thanks a lot for coming for this AMA, it was so nice to have you tell us about yourself and take a deep dive into the Cartesi ecosystem.
Helen — Thank you so much for having me.
Ayuba (Moderator)
Alright guys, that brings us to the end of this episode on the Crypto Syndicate AMA Series. Feel free to check out the relevant links being dropped by Helen IMAH especially the game… That’s a must visit for me.
Thanks once again for coming Helen.
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