Season 4Episode 199

Cartesi: Build Appchain Rollups with Any Code

December 17, 2025

34m

1 Guest

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About This Episode

In this episode of DevNTell, Narb welcomes João Garcia, Lead Developer Advocate at Cartesi, to discuss how Cartesi enables developers to build appchain rollups using any programming language. João explains the technical foundation of the Cartesi Machine—a Linux-based virtual machine powered by RISC-V—and how it allows for high-performance off-chain computation with deterministic on-chain verification. The session includes a showcase of diverse applications ranging from on-chain gaming (such as Doom and SimCity) to verifiable AI models and NFTs. The episode concludes with a deep dive into the developer experience using the Cartesi CLI and a preview of the upcoming SDK Node v2.

Key Takeaways

Cartesi bridges the gap between Web2 and Web3 by allowing developers to use standard libraries and tools within a deterministic Linux environment.

The Cartesi Machine leverages a RISC-V emulator to ensure all off-chain computations can be verified on-chain, enabling fraud-proof execution.

App-specific rollups allow dApps to have their own dedicated CPU power and block space, avoiding the high gas costs and congestion of general-purpose blockchains.

Cartesi's SDK and CLI support a wide range of popular languages, including Python, Rust, Go, and JavaScript, making it accessible to a broad developer base.

Showcased projects like Rives and Bubble Wars demonstrate how complex gaming logic and physics can be processed deterministically on-chain.