Driving Blockchain Adoption: The Collaborative Efforts of Cartesi & UFF
Onboarding the Next Generation of Web3 Developers
Current State of Web3 Dev Environment
Web3 represents the evolution of the internet, bringing not only the possibility of an exchange of information but a native creation and distribution of value via blockchain technology. This innovation promises to significantly open the design space and business opportunities across various sectors like finance, gaming, supply chain, governance and social media.
So far blockchain tech innovation brought remarkable advances and new ways of connecting stakeholders while decentralizing trust. The decentralization of trust is, by far, the biggest achievement of the ETH network. Over the last few years, we saw disruptive innovation in some verticals, for example, on decentralized finance applications (DeFi) bringing frictionless financial operations from trading to lending
Despite its potential, Web3 is currently facing challenges in attracting a massive influx of developers from the Web2 space. Many developers remain hesitant due to issues such as scalability, complex user interfaces, security vulnerabilities inherent in such a new technology, together with the difficult onboarding and lack of proper mainstream tooling for software development.
In past years, overall blockchain infrastructure and developer UX improved significantly, but still require more maturity to match the ease and stability of Web2 development frameworks. Additionally, the steep learning curve associated with blockchain technology and smart contract programming further limits widespread adoption among traditional developers. While the sectors of decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) demonstrate growing interest, overall developer engagement in Web3 is still emerging, highlighting the need for enhanced educational resources and community support to bridge the gap between Web2 and Web3 development.
To provide a tangible perspective on the challenges facing blockchain technology in attracting developers, the current estimate places the total number of developers engaged in Web3 at no more than 500,000, within an ecosystem boasting over 25 million developers.
Worldwide number of developers, source — Statista
Furthermore, the subset of actively coding developers in Web3 is even smaller, indicating a decline from its peak by the end of 2022.
Crypto monthly active developers, source — Source Electric Capital, developers report
The lack of a substantial workforce in Web3 presents a significant barrier to the broader adoption of blockchain technology by mainstream companies. Not only is blockchain infrastructure still evolving to address its bottlenecks, but the absence of an adequate workforce discourages companies from embracing the technology.
How Cartesi & UFF are Collaborating to Promote Blockchain Adoption
The Fluminense Federal University (UFF), mainly with Professor Antonio Rocha, has established a close partnership with the Cartesi ecosystem. This collaboration aims to support the adoption and utilization of the Cartesi protocol stack for integrating university students into Web3. Additionally, both Guto (as Antonio Rocha is known) and Cartesi share similar visions regarding blockchain adoption and the exploration of new use cases.
Presently, the blockchain ecosystem presents a formidable barrier for Web2 developers, due to the need to grasp a new paradigm, the delayed integration of backend with frontend, the concept of variability, and the necessity of learning a new programming language, Solidity. Furthermore, most blockchain environments impose restrictions on computational capacity, storage, and programmability, significantly limiting the use-case space and further constraining new developers.
Cartesi’s technology, built atop the Ethereum ecosystem, addresses some of these limitations, particularly in scaling computation. This capability enables the development of more complex codes and greatly expands the design space with its innovative Cartesi VM, utilizing a RISC-V architecture to boot an entire Linux OS. This allows developers to use any desired programming language and leverage the full suite of Linux tools, including file systems and support libraries (such as mathematical and image processing libraries), among others.
Recognizing the value of Cartesi in facilitating easier onboarding to Web3 while overcoming blockchain infrastructure limitations, Guto has become an active participant in the Cartesi ecosystem. Recently, he has contributed to creating and delivering training on blockchain and coding using the Cartesi protocol stack.
UFF’s collaboration with the Cartesi ecosystem, led by Guto’s team, dates back to the early stages of the protocol. Antonio received a grant to explore Cartesi’s pre-testnet protocol and provide usability and documentation feedback. Through his use of the technology, it became evident that not only meaningful dApps could be built, for example, water quality control using ML logics, Decentralized voting, Chain2Help (donation platform), gaming etc, but also that students could be onboarded effectively. The Cartesi protocol stack offers an experience akin to Web 2.0 development, making it conducive to educational purposes.
Over time, educational materials about blockchain, utilizing the Cartesi protocol stack, were developed, leading to the establishment of the first blockchain class at UFF in the latter half of 2023.
UFF’s first Cartesi Blockchain Class August 2023
Previous to the start of the classes it was organized as an extracurricular activities, a hackathon and online workshops, those initiatives aim to better integrate the students with the Cartesi ecosystem as a whole.
UFF’s First Cartesi Blockchain Meetup and Hackathon — May and June 2023
The inaugural class proved to be a success, with more than 50 students yielding more than 20 projects and 13 proof-of-concepts spanning various verticals and use cases. These ranged from a decentralized voting system to IoT solutions for water quality, and even a game.
The initial efforts are already generating results with some PoCs currently under development on Smart Cities, supply chains, and finance. We are expecting over the next months have those PoCs be capable of running demos and start to connect on financial layers for frictionless operations
As 2024 begins, we are pleased to mark the continuation and expansion of the UFF-Cartesi collaboration, now encompassing two new universities: UFES and IFES, both in the State of Espirito Santo. Furthermore, with the inclusion of the new universities, the training program has been expanded to accommodate up to 100 university students
What is next?
The collaboration continues to evolve and diversify, with Antonio recently spearheading a community-initiated effort to host a hackathon at the Brazilian Symposium in Distributed Computing, slated to take place at UFF from May 20th to 23rd, 2024. The theme of this event is smart cities and IoT, aiming to showcase Cartesi technology to other federal universities and prominent industry players in Brazil, including Petrobras and Vale do Rio Doce.
The current outcomes have exceeded expectations. With more developers equipped with the knowledge to leverage the Cartesi protocol stack for building sophisticated dApps, the pool of professionals available for new projects continues to expand each month. We anticipate further collaboration with additional universities, enhancing synergies among these groups and unlocking new opportunities for Web3 developers utilizing Cartesi in Brazil.
Furthermore, Cartesi and UFF, through Antonio’s group, are actively engaged in mainstream initiatives, piloting solutions to address significant pain points where blockchain technology can offer an edge by enhancing efficiency, reducing friction, and introducing new, sophisticated business models.
Cartesi is actively seeking to forge new partnerships with prominent universities and blockchain groups across Brazil. Our goal is to establish a cohesive network of centers dedicated to teaching blockchain technology, with the Cartesi protocol stack being integrated as a fundamental tool throughout this educational initiative. Our objective is to cultivate a significant cohort of young developers proficient in coding Decentralized Applications (dApps) using the Cartesi stack.
In the coming years, the unprecedented wave of innovation within the finance sector, spearheaded by visionary regulators at BACEN and CVM, will necessitate a skilled workforce capable of effectively engaging with dApps tailored for the financial industry. Brazil is poised to emerge as a global laboratory for the integration of blockchain technology into mainstream banking systems, and Cartesi is poised to assume a pivotal role in facilitating this transition.
The Cartesi ecosystem is growing and promoting further experimentation in what is possible to be done with Blockchain. Many other institutes, builders and hackers are playing with our protocol stack and producing applications previously assumed impossible to be implemented in Blockchain the Rollup Lab page is a repository showing great projects built by our wide community such as RIVES, DCA monster, BugLess, BubbleWars, AI-Powered Car Plate Detector, among others.
Join Cartesi and learn how entrepreneurs and builders can use blockchain tech and be part of this 1 Trillion USD market disruption, learn more via the Cartesi website, join our discord community or if you are attending the Brazilian Symposium in Distributed Computing and want to start building, register for our hackathon (only congress participants are eligible).
Portuguese version of the article initially posted on livecoins.com (https://livecoins.com.br/cartesi-e-universidade-federal-fluminense-impulsionando-a-adocao-da-blockchain/) on 16 May 2024
