Expert Review

Review and Rating

Cartesi System Review and Rating
SVET System (Security – Velocity – Engineering – Transparency)

Security: Cartesi is a layer-2 platform that destined to develop and deploy scalable d-apps. Also, Cartesi is called Blockchain OS. The project Cartesi allows to complete complex computations in a Linux with help all programming languages, outside the blockchain and without compromising decentralization. The main purpose of Cartesi strives to facilitate developing of d-apps and make them more robust, more economical, and easier in developing. For the entire existence of the project there were not noticed publicly known cases of protocol violations. For all time there were only two audits by CertiK and by SlowMist. Audits are considered successfully passed thus, there is no recorded critical rates what tells us that there are no serious breaches. In addition, most of users give high rate to safety of the project.
Security rating - c
Velocity: Inasmuch as the purpose of Cartesi is to facilitate developing of d-apps and improve efficiency of d-apps, two of the main aspects in Cartesi work are scalability and productivity. Cartesi is blockchain-agnostic that currently support all EVM chains: Ethereum, Avalanche, Polygon, BNB Chain etc. Cartesi solves the problem of scalability on blockchains by implementing a variant of optimistic roll-ups. Computational throughput of Cartesi Rollups is >10,000x (no fees), this rate is much more higher comparing to Ethereum, at the same time preserving the strong security guarantees of the underlying blockchain. The success example of good productivity and scalability is the game “creepts”. Cartesi has the native token CTSI, mechanism of consensus is Proof of Stake. I did not manage to find the information about number of nodes.
Velocity rating - c
Engineering: The system of Cartesi consists of two major aspects. The first one is The Cartesi Machine – this technology could be called the core one as certainly Cartesi Machine allows to use a Linux operating system for computing. The architecture of the Cartesi Machine could be separated to 3 aspects: 1) the environment right outside the Cartesi Machine. It includes the emulator's API in all its flavors: C++, Lua, gRPC, and the command-line interface; 2) the environment inside the Cartesi Machine what includes the RISC-V architecture, as well as the organization of the embedded Linux Operating System that runs on top of it; 3) from the point of view of the blockchain, the entire Cartesi Machine state is represented by a single hash. Cartesi Rollups allows to find a full solution for scaling blockchains that uses the Cartesi Machine within an Optimistic Rollups framework. The combination of the Cartesi Machine and Rollups framework enables the development of smart contracts and DApps using any package or library that is available for Linux. The performing of intensive computing operations is transferred from the main blockchain to the off-chain part of the network, that eliminates the need to perform the same parallel computations throughout the network.
Engineering rating - a
Transparency: Сonsensus is reliably achieved on-chain without the need for a reputation protocol, a trusted runtime environment, or central servers in the cloud. DApp states can remain confidential among application participants. The number of holders is constantly increasing, now there is 16,088 holders. But approximately 68% of all circulation tokens belong only 10 holders and approximately 98% of all circulation tokens belong 100 holders, these points have a bad effect on decentralization. The project is open for outside audit.
Transparency rating – c+

References:
1. Website of the project https://cartesi.io/
2. Whitepaper https://cartesi.io/docs/new-to-cartesi/overview
3. Binance https://research.binance.com/en/projects/cartesi
4. CoinMarketCap https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/cartesi/ratings/
5. Certik Audit https://www.certik.com/projects/cartesi
6. https://medium.com/cartesi/cartesi-rollups-rollout-testnet-40c90d10c2f1
7. SlowMist Audit https://www.slowmist.com/en/security-audit-certificate.html?id=a7e4b7347133688ed2ebfca35d98ee290c13d61d6f0aec7daab901897ae802b2

---- THE EDITED VERSION of the Cartesi System Review (for educational purposes) ----------------------

Cartesi SVET System (Security – Velocity – Engineering – Transparency) Review and Rating.

SECURITY:

Cartesi is a layer-2 platform designed to develop and to deploy scalable d-apps. Cartesi promotes itself as the 'Blockchain OS'.

According to Cartesi's ads it allows for off-chain, centralized Linux computations on all programming languages. The stated Cartesi's vision is to facilitate d-apps development process by increasing its ease and efficiency. There have not been reported hacks of Cartesi protocol in media. It has been audited twice - by CertiK and by SlowMist. Both of those auditors had not identified critical flaws in the Cartesi code. On top of that, users tend to rate its safety high.

Cartesi SVET Security Rating: c.

VELOCITY:

Alongside with the above-mentioned goal of boosting a dev-process, increasing a code scalability is yet an another important objective outlined in Cartezi's promotional papers. Cartesi is aimed to be 'blockchain-agnostic'. It claims to support all EVM chains, including Ethereum, Avalanche, Polygon and BSC.

Cartesi's approach to solving the scalability issue is to use optimistic roll-ups. Allegedly, it allows to 10,000x Cartesi platform's throughput (with zero fees).

Additionally, Cartesi claims to not only beat world's blockchain throughput record but also to provide an almost absolute security guarantees to its users.

One of the Cartesi Server usage examples is the Creepts - a decentralized tower defense tournament game, which is implemented on top of the Cartezi protocol.

There is no information available on the exact number of Cartesi live nodes, though.

Cartesi SVET Velocity rating: c

ENGINEERING:

The state-full, single-hash Cartesi Machine includes the emulator's API (C++, Lua, gRPC, and the command-line interface) as well as the RISC-V and the Linux Operating System.

As it has been mentioned above the Cartesi Machine uses the Optimistic Rollups framework. It allows to delegate resource-intensive computations to the off-chain part of a network, eliminating the need to run multiple paralleling processes on all nodes.

Another notable advantage of the Cartesi Machine is its enabling of smart contracts and DApps developments using Linux packages and libraries.

Cartesi SVET Engineering rating: a

TRANSPARENCY:

CTSI is the Cartesi's Proof of Stake native token. At the moment of this review writing, the number of its holders is reaching to more than 16 thousands holders .

However, with ten (10) addresses containing 68% of all circulated tokens and 98% of all circulation tokens concentrating on only hundred (100) accounts, Cartesi's degree of decentralization is less than sufficient.

Cartesi SVET Transparency rating: c+