The Baking Sheet - Issue #32

Welcome to this week’s issue of the baking sheet! 

As mentioned in our previous issue, the Baking Sheet is now a weekly newsletter focused on covering all the latest news and insights across the Tezos ecosystem. In this week’s issue, we will take a closer look at NFT’s (Non-Fungible Tokens) and how EDO will begin to accelerate further development of NFT’s on Tezos. Also don’t forget–EDO is in the last phase in the governance mechanism for Tezos, get your baker to vote!

Before we dive into some of the recent developments around NFT’s, I think it’s important to understand just what exactly an NFT is. With that said, by nature an NFT is not divisible. You can think of things such as fine art, or Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon cards as examples. 

These examples represent something that cannot be directly replaced or be able to be swapped for like items, as none are alike. One can think of it like sending half of a Yu-Gi-Oh card - that would not generally be accepted by someone as not only would it not be redeemable, it would be rendered worthless. 

Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tezos and others are divisible on the other hand. One could send another party 0.5 tez and that could be sent back and so forth. The time in which the exchange occurred could alter the value but it remains alike. 

That said, NFT’s have been gaining popularity around the way in which they represent unique digital assets.

A little over a week ago, we witnessed the introduction of an exciting NFT proposal called CricTez. In case you’re unfamiliar with Cricket as many of us in the western world might be, it’s actually the second most popular sport in the world with over 2.5 billion fans worldwide. 

Cricket is a bat and ball game that involves two teams with eleven players on each side with the goal of scoring more runs than the opposition. With the CricTez proposal, they are wishing to turn players into cards for usage in a fantasy sports DApp. These players cards will be realistically assessed through the usage of metadata containing key attributes unique to each player to calculate that cards score. 

Oracles will also provide a means to bring information off-chain about the players such as real-time statistics to contribute to each players unique card. 

To learn more about CricTez, be sure to check out the proposal on Tezos Agora. 

Of equal interest however, native to the current proposed protocol upgrade is a feature known as ‘Tickets’. This feature, which Eli Guenzburger did a deep dive into - will make not only creating NFT’s on Tezos easier but also allow for auctioning them off under a single NFT auction contract through the usage of tickets. 

As we begin to see more development around NFT infrastructure within Tezos and more exciting projects like CricTez and Emergents come along, it remains worth watching what future NFT’s will be built on Tezos. 

Cryptokitties, arguably the most popular crypto NFT that was born during 2017 caused severe network congestion on the Ethereum network. As Tezos has continued to grow and evolve, so has the environment for a robust platform to create NFT’s and auction them off on.

There is only one week to get your nominations in for the the Tezos Community Rewards Program. There will be up 5000 tez distributed monthly for community members, nominate yourself or someone you think that deserves tez for their contributions in January!