Cartesi Compute SDK Portal — Building Scalable DApps on Linux Operating Systems

Colin Steil
Cartesi
Published in
3 min readJul 1, 2020

As of 2022 Descartes has now been renamed as Cartesi Compute.

June 30th, 2020 — The Cartesi team is thrilled to announce the launch of the Cartesi Compute SDK Documentation portal. This milestone represents a leap forward for Cartesi in becoming the operating system for DApps.

The Cartesi Compute SDK makes it possible for developers to build computationally intensive DApps with all software tools available for a full Linux operating system. DApps preserve full decentralization and the security guarantees of Ethereum.

Developers and software enthusiasts can access the Documentation Portal immediately through Cartesi’s redesigned website. The portal provides tutorials and the information needed to begin coding with Cartesi.

“With this SDK release, we prove our continued commitment to making DApps powerful and easy to build. This SDK launch will allow developers who are already in the blockchain space to not only perform heavy computation, but the convenience and the tools they were lacking. ” — Erick Demoura (CEO of Cartesi)

Note: Cartesi Compute SDK is currently an alpha version. We are publishing the code that’s now usable, although it is not a release candidate yet, being subject to instabilities. The team is currently working on coverage tests and feature improvements.

A Complete Overview of Cartesi Compute

Cartesi Compute SDK is the simplest infrastructure that DApps can use to run computations that would otherwise be impossible or too expensive to execute on-chain, either due to their complexity or to the amount of data to be processed. With the SDK, DApps run these computations off-chain, on a full-fledged Linux environment without compromising decentralization, in a way that is verifiable by the DApp participants.

What does this mean?

  • Learn exactly how to develop a DApp with Cartesi to unlock massive computation and use mainstream software stacks to build powerful and complex logic.
  • Create their own decentralized game competition.
  • Use mature and mainstream ‘Zero-knowledge — Zk’ libraries that compile for Linux.
  • Give smart access to a file system: readopen, modify, process, compress and decompress files, etc — all in a decentralized way among DApp participants, while retaining the security guarantees of Ethereum.
  • Move off-chain complex computation and save on GAS fees.
  • Process massive amounts of data that are made available by reputable and trusted data sources, all in a fully decentralized way among the DApp participants.
  • Give their smart contracts the ability to verify if a complex computational problem has been solved correctly. Evaluate neural networks, solutions to NP-complete problems, and more.

It is difficult to overestimate what can be done with a full operating system and scalable computation. Cartesi’s Cartesi Compute SDK enables powerful new possibilities for DApps.

This release along with a complete website redesign and trust gained from key investors, partners and exchanges; positions Cartesi as a unique leader that will move the blockchain and DApp ecosystem a step forward into the future.

About Cartesi

Cartesi was founded in 2018 by Erick de Moura, Augusto Teixeira, Diego Nehab and Colin Steil and is building an operating system for DApps. Cartesi allows decentralized applications to run within a Linux environment. Complex processing can be executed off-chain, free from a blockchain’s computational limits and corresponding fees but without compromising decentralization. Cartesi has received funding by prominent investors and funds such as SNZ, SOSV, Artesian and recently concluded a public-sale event with Binance. The team’s vision is to make the development of DApps easy, scalable, and cost-efficient by incorporating tools developers already use.

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