L{CORE} Node

An expanded overview of the L {CORE} Node that highlights its SQLite store and every Cartesi-level touch-point—still friendly for non–engineers, but with the extra context you asked for.

L {CORE} Node – the privacy engine inside Cartesi

An at-a-glance guide for product managers, founders and curious readers (no deep Rust knowledge required).

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The Bigger Picture

The Node lives entirely inside the Cartesi VM box and never exposes raw sensor data to the outside world.

What the Node Does

1. Ingest – receives each clean JSON payload from the Gateway.

2. Dual-Encrypt – runs a two-stage cipher (AES-256-GCM then XChaCha20-Poly1305) so no one—even KC-Chain validators—can read the content.

3. Store – writes the encrypted blob plus metadata into an internal SQLite database located at /data/iot.db inside the VM image.

4. Prove – generates a zero-knowledge proof (Risc Zero) that the computation was executed faithfully.

5. Emit – packages results as “vouchers” and “notices” that the Rollups framework ships back to KC-Chain, where the Stylus contracts anchor them forever.

Everything runs deterministically, meaning anyone can replay the VM and confirm they land on the same hash.

Inside the VM – High-Level Flow

Why SQLite?

• Fast, tiny footprint—perfect for VM snapshots. • ACID guarantees let the Node roll back cleanly if the VM is reverted during a fraud-proof challenge. • The schema (devices, device_counters, sensor_data, analytics) mirrors the tables that Stylus contracts reference, keeping queries simple.

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Cartesi-Level Integrations at a Glance

Component	Purpose
rollups-node HTTP API	delivers inputs to the VM and exposes GraphQL for notices
Inspect server	allows light clients to peek at VM memory without breaking determinism
Risc Zero guest	compiles alongside the Node and produces the zk-proof blob
Snapshot builder	turns every new release into a deterministic .ext2 + hash archive the framework can pin

All of these sit behind the lcore-node build scripts; end-users just pull the Docker image.

Key Takeaways

• Privacy first – dual encryption and local SQLite mean raw sensor data never leaks. • Verifiable – every computation is replayable and backed by a zk-proof. • Self-contained – the Node ships as a single VM snapshot; upgrading a city is a drop-in replacement.

L {CORE} Node is the beating heart of the network; silently encrypting, proving and storing millions of data points so city-scale dApps can build on trustworthy numbers.