Bruno Maia on Cartesi's Linux VM for Web3 game development

0:01I'm Ashton Addison from blockwest capital for investment pitch media and today on the crypto coin show we have Bruno Maya the ecosystem growth lead of cartesi Bruno welcome to the show and it is a pleasure to have you here thanks for having me here I still today really pleasure to join the show actually great Enthusiast for your for your show super cooling that feels and

0:24very good content thank you so much and it's a pleasure to have cartesi back on it's been since 2021 we did have uh the founder back uh on the show for the first time and I know so much has happened uh with the ecosystem in two years which is like a decade in crypto so I'd love to get some updates on where cartesi is at right now but before we dive into that I'd love to

0:47hear first of all a little bit about your background uh in blockchain and how that led to the ecosystem growth at cartesi and then we'll dive into all the details an absolutely a pleasure so um actually my background I'm engineer I'm telecon engineer so um in the early 2000s I graduated from the University work in mobile networks uh starting from 2008 I started my

1:11International career in Telecom as an international independent strategic consultant working for Qualcomm for almost 10 years um travel and live in some different places including Mexico uh uh give you support mobile operators and around 2016 that get to know blockchain and get super enthusiastic about the technology and it really felt a strong push to learn

1:35and and get more deeper and and 2018 I had an opportunity to jump as a professional uh uh into as a professional so I I quit completely Telecom join a company called bit Theory uh as a director of previous sales on bit on Bitcoin mining and um blockchain they used to have a permission blockchain by the time and where's my first concrete as a professional and and really not only as

2:03Enthusiast but as a part of the ecosystem and Industry um doesn't to any Eric he called me they look just launched the io in binance he was super enthusiastic and and by the time so we're still early imagine 2010 you were super early so so it's very difficult to find people capable to understand technology to talk about technology and think strategically on

2:27how to how to grow that the vision of Cartesian and he he asked me to to join the group I know Eric since from school times we also was in the same University back to Regional Brazil and I he was talking to me about the project but when he mentioned about people that was part of the project then when I got excited right so yeah stop and journey I don't

2:52know I don't even don't know anymore else uh the people that is inside this this decision and the quality of the human capital that Cortez has is was for me the key factor to join it's all about people right in the end it's all about people so joining that the distinguished group for me was a greatest pleasure and and here I am to almost three years

3:15um after joining Cortez so super excited amazing and a company really just is a group of people with common Vision so it's good to have a a great group around you working towards something great and I want to talk about some of the updates for cartesi but before we do that let's get people up to date for those who haven't seen our first interview or for

3:38those who have aren't familiar with what cartesi does maybe you can give a high level overview on just the ecosystem and then we can dive into the details oh thanks for asking that Ashland he's uh actually we were in this process also of self-discovery because Cortez is uh working on the front line of what blockchain is so for us in Cortez was a refinement

4:01through the years of what means Cortez project and and which space we we are adding value and collaborate uh into the ecosystem and and cartesi is what we call a an execution layer a modular execution layer used in a very specifically design of a Roll-Ups called application specifically Roll-Ups right and and what we really have value on top of this unique design on application

4:27specifically roll up is a risk 5 disto machine that runs an entire Linux OS so it's the first time that that the blockchain ecosystem has a a very refined and sophisticated VM running entire Linux and this is for the developers is is a completely Game Changer which kind of programs and and how you can approach programmability in in blockchain

4:56that's it's I'm glad that you mentioned that because a lot most people understand even though who those who aren't deep into blockchain that ethereum runs on the ethereum virtual machine and all of these networks of computers these World internet computers have virtual machines that they're running um and Linux has been a part of you know back in the beginning of the internet it

5:19was like the operating system for developers and I really haven't heard Linux at all so far in blockchain I'm curious why is that and and why Now is cartesi working with it and what makes it so great for the blockchain ecosystem that because also another great question well uh India Linux is present more than 90 of the devices in the world it's a is

5:44a is a common layer for for computing right um and as it said ethereum is indeed uh a very primitive World computer right with a very limited computational capacity and that is one of the bottlenecks and that's what avoid us to really reach mainstream only using uh ethereum because it's impossible to build daily real solve real problems Life's real problems with that so limited

6:14computational capacity and data storage right but indeed it's a very simplify computer that has an extremely decentralized processing and and the most beautiful achievement of the theory and is having the decentralization of the truth right whatever runs in ethereum it's validated by thousands of of of nodes and this gives a super power on on on verificability and and temper

6:41proofs and and other stability right so so this is the greatest uh achievement of indeed and then and what cartesia did is built on top of this achievements so so we are not trying to replace the ethereum by the opposite we are augmenting what ethereum achieved gave in this extra computational capacity which cartels the application specifically roll ups gives so you can

7:06run thousand more computation effort or computation Cycles in academic application specific then you could run an entire ethereum block space that gives you possibility to build much more sophisticated program right and on top of that we put this Linux that has a huge gain on programmability you can choose your program to to develop your your smart contract your your dad right

7:33you can use different libraries to compose with this program bio tooling every tool that is commonly available for a developer in typical web through space right and everything that we use in a Cartesian machine has the same secure guarantees of ethereum so our strong Foundation is still this remarkable achievement of a theory and we do that using this dispute resolution of

7:59optimistic relapse so we had it from ethereum or any other layer that we can integrate our technology the same security guarantees that's why we are modular right we we don't need to to implement only on top of ethereum we can Implement on top of Arbitron optimism and others right this getting this composability of different configurations depends on on the

8:22requirements of the application that the developers will build mm-hmm very interesting and I'm glad you mentioned the modularity there I've had a few discussions this week and over the past few months I've been seeing a lot about modular versus monolithic blockchains and uh almost like a synonymous term to like layer three or other expanding layers on top of uh

8:45ethereum and the other layer ones do you see this as something that's been worked on for a few years it seems like but now it's sort of coming to fruition and that modular blockchains are going to be something that is the status quo moving forward it's it's all it's an interesting question because the whole ecosystem is a great a great Steward in this early

9:10days and and we are still building the infrastructure of the tomorrow's blockchain right so so it's a huge experimentation still the experimental field and and and what happened is ethereum realized a while ago and that's the advantage of ethereum to be the first one they face problems that other monolithic change maybe face in one to three years right so they

9:34realized that they couldn't run enough computation and enough transaction reduced cost of transactions in a scale required to get Mass adoption with a world computer that validates every single thing that happens inside the team right so so they they realize that the way would be concentrate in ethereum based layer the most important fundamental characteristics which is the

9:58decentralization of the truth through the consensus right and also increase the data storage capacity the rest ethereum roadmap is relying to Upper layers the problem is there are layers that has been built on top of ethereum so far the architecture choice of those layers they they face similar limitations of ethereum back tattoo choice right so they are just now unloaded because they

10:25are in the early days but with time they will be busy as well so it's getting in a direction that if you really want scale computation in a level that requires to build real world applications that that touches the real world problems Beyond just the typical Financial Solutions that we have seen with the file we need those uh Indica catchers there are roll ups per

10:53application right on top of all those layers that sits on the on the very Foundation basis of ethereum right um and I believe that this modular solution will be out so very interesting because each use case demands different characteristics of your blockchain so if you have a blockchain with only one single characteristic it's very difficult to to fit efficiently all the

11:20all possible use cases so different use cases will require different characteristics the modularity give this aspect as well plasticity right yeah that's a great point and we've seen a lot of D5 applications that are that are getting pretty big inside of the the bubble that is the crypto ecosystem but we've yet to see some that have reached you know millions

11:44and millions of users outside of web 3 for everyday people I feel like the gaming industry could be one of those industries that helps expand web3 into the mainstream because the the market cap of of gaming is far surpasses anything to do with uh with web3 and there's millions and millions of users um do you think that that would be could be one of the near-term use cases for

12:10having ecosystems like this that that need extra storage data availability things like that absolutely a a game is is a very good example of on how how limited is the the infrastructure available is not meant to build a very compelling interesting games right it's not just because the game in a blockchain that will succeed again fundamentally needs to be fun to

12:36to play and and and get up there you have the gameplay Dynamics right otherwise it doesn't make any sense yeah um and what we have been seeing so far is centralized games adding a small layer of of blockchain mostly on on compensation mechanisms or or wearables or very a very limited usage of blockchain potential and by the

13:04way those wearables and everything they are controlled and minted and and have a role in the gameplay controlled by a centralized logic which is kind of awkward right um so having a massive gain on computation will allow you to build much more Logic on chain on chain meaning in one of those layers that are fully verifiable immutable and protected by

13:29the consensus of the blockchain right so um in that sense you explain a lot what can be done right a typical example is one of uh categic community members a super game developer he he got a novel uh chess game but the fun part is it's not the chess game because chess itself has been developed directly solidly in ethereum but this gameplay they put robots AI robots to battle against each

13:57other so there's AI robots based on python for in a strategic so the gamer is actually programming his robot to go to the battle that's the fun part so this type of different novel setups on gaming you know and and different layers of incentives on how that uh can can can get it and how this composed with other games as well Machine to machine economies so so a lot of interesting

14:25things here that can be built very interesting and you know some of these games are huge as well especially these uh massive online games or that you know with Incredible graphics and I don't think it could at the moment we couldn't just stick it on ethereum uh without the whole blockchain just just breaking um so I'm excited to see how things like these Roll-Ups that you're talking about

14:48and the modularity help bring better bigger stronger games into into web 3. um and I I saw recently you know it's not it's not the biggest or the fanciest Graphics game in in the world but I saw it's one of the most popular and there's a reason I saw a partnership with cartesi and doom and it was like one of the oldest online games that that it became famous I'm curious on what's

15:15happening with that and what can you tell me about this Doom in cartesi yeah that was a funny one actually it's not a formal partnership with the with the softer house that created Doon it's Dune is an iconic game it's maybe the Cradle of the the the the first point at first first shooting games right together with Wolfenstein um and that was a tweet a tweet from

15:41someone in in the whole blockchain Community challenging ethereum right saying if it didn't is the worldwide computer is the internet computer why it didn't manage to run Dunya right which is a valid question by the way um and and one one one developer from our community replied or challenge accepted so here is Doom running sidecar test if you have to machine

16:05which is basically running on top of ethereal infrastructure right with the application specifically roll up so it's the very first time that not the entire like logic of Dune is composed into this Vector machine and execute it right and that gives uh a kind of a flavor uh teasing of what cartesia can do you get you get a a code from a mainstream of 30

16:30plus years developed you get this code you just compile for our our version of Linux and and and and you have you have all the libraries all the programming language everything ready to to execute that right so that shows the the complexity of programming that this virtual machine that katazi runs can handle right and uh it's a very open invitation for experimental developers

16:57to come and do model entry right wow that's very cool I like I love it and with these games uh that with that you know question why doesn't it work on ethereum and the evm uh the ethereum virtual machine I'm curious on how cartesi and all these other blockchains are building it always ties back to the ethereum virtual machine which as you said it's very rudimentary

17:24it doesn't it can't do all these things but we're building on top of it instead of building something new do you think that that will be you know moving forward for years to come everyone will just continue to build on ethereum virtual machine and if so why it's basically I would say that um

17:52the internet is composable right and uh and and you have these choices of implementation is is not that uh as I said Cortez is the only one in single way to implement smart contracts on blockchain right so it's uh it will be a choice of different requirements of the application right different economic value of this

18:21application it's a trend that ethereum based layer will be much more used for settlement and and and storage rather than run directly your code there that would be upper to Upper layers right so I did a vector machine it'd be extraordinarily used for the years gone right um and it it's a simple way to Machine by a reason for a reason because when you have this world computer

18:48with several thousand nodes validating the same computation you cannot have for design choices you cannot have a huge computation capacity so if you cannot have a huge computation capacity you cannot put a very sophisticated vital machine you have to bring a virtual machine to the most simple simplistic Vector machine that can allow any kind of programming to to

19:12program to be created full turning full turning machine right tuning machine so that's what what ethereum is and with a link newly program language so Cortez would allow people that wants to do more sophisticated things have the ability to do that and of course on board millions of developers that have languages like python Java right to bring those own languages

19:41with data libraries with the tooling to leverage that on on on on the on on a theory and ecosystem of using cartel's application specifically robots it have it's already happening in our hackathons we have people building AI tools there was not was an excellent developer from Australia uh called Diane and she developed uh chat DPT inside Cortez so you you

20:08literally Implement a larger llm model inside Cortez which is which is pretty amazing right wow that's very cool and what do you think it's going to take for that influx of you know we're seeing it gradually but there's still so many web 2 developers that have been developing for the past 30 years that have yet to dip their feet into web3 you know is it the

20:33lack of the environment in the programming languages that they've learned or is there some other barriers to entry on why we're not already seeing as you mentioned these decentralized applications Beyond Finance other use cases that are in Industries non-financial yeah it's a good question Austin that there's a lot of reasons for that right it's not of a single specifically reason

20:56but as as stated on a 16z release every year a very compelling report about the state of crypto right and they did it 2023 and and he they CTO was very clear on one of the really key roadblocks to building use case beyond the fight for blockchains this is exactly the lack of computation capacity what the industry call block space right so that is one of

21:24the main key attributes of our our design choice is exactly to increase massively the blood space or the permutational capacity so we believe freeing that computational capacity is one of the very good steps toward new use cases and more more real world applications give you around pop-up blockchain aside of that of course there is a an adoption cycle of new

21:48technologies that play around and the fact that not every solution application that you build in the world needs a blockchain you don't need to build verifiable decentralized program for everything that we do in our daily lives so so there will be things that a blockchain blockchainizable and others that no it's okay to run your AWS centralized with super high performance

22:14with global latency real-time uh response and Etc right so this is is where also we need to understand that blockchain will not completely replace the world of computing right yeah good insights and we don't have a lot of time left Bruno but I'm curious on the next steps of growth for the cartesia ecosystem uh you know towards

22:41the end of this year and moving into 2024 what are some of the major things on the roadmap great well yeah we have in the full full adoption mode we are we are launching mainnet like and and for a application specifically roll up to be launching main apps is a novel concept so meaning that cartes will launch an application called honey bot in the main ad of fiterion and stating

23:07that our technology is ready to be used for other developers that wants to deploy maina right so and and and we will continue our roadmap increasing the usability of the of the technology uh former Partnerships to extend how you can compose Cortez technology to give more publicity to different use cases and better fit the different use cases we are in touch with several uh very

23:33important uh players in in the ecosystem that that's why I believe the blockchain industry is much more collaborative rather than competitive because different projects are really good on building specifically blocks that would be very useful in in the future so we are in constant touch with all those those players and we are open for experimentation

23:58welcoming all developers that wants to do more than web3 with Cortez using any programming language they want and super excited with the future right so yeah very happy with whatever we got and and excited with the next steps that is exciting and what's the best way for uh the viewers to to follow along with those updates and and to learn more about the developer ecosystem and

24:24potentially get involved oh great well we you they they can enter in arts court but also following us you know you know Twitter promotion right or abscessing our page with all our videos is ISO which is pretty comprehensive clean page that can give everyone a very good Insight on what is cartesi uh also we have our telegram community so we have

24:52plenty of media to to to every kind of uh individual excited with blockchain to follow us from developers to enthusiasts awesome thank you so much Bruno for all the insights into just blockchain data availability scalability modularity uh this is something that people that are learning this they're ahead of the curve and uh you have great insights into

25:17where the industry is going so I'm definitely going to be following up with cortesi I'm going to put the Social Links and the platform uh links in the description box below so the viewers can also follow up if they want to learn more I appreciate all the time that you've taken today and let's definitely follow up in the near future oh thanks thanks Ashlyn thanks for

25:35having me and and it was a pleasure to to have this chat today it's really cool