The Baking Sheet - Issue #79

Welcome to this week’s issue of The Baking Sheet!

With Christmas upon us and New Year’s Resolutions abound, it’s a great time to reflect on some of the notable events and developments we’ve seen garnered throughout the Tezos ecosystem in 2021. 

It’s been a short year, but there’s been lots of progress made. So, let’s digest it all.

As we approach the end of another year, our psychology always shifts to being more reflectionary. Thoughts of what were, what could have been, and perhaps even what should have been - permeate our minds and beings. 

For this week’s issue, I think it would be good to take a mixture of these questions and also showcase important accomplishments that we witnessed this year in the ecosystem. 

Let’s start off with network metrics. Contract calls have made new highs all throughout the year, thanks to a novel mechanism to Tezos (on-chain protocol upgrades) and real organic adoption of NFTs. 

In other words, protocol upgrades amalgamated with organic NFT interest have encompassed for the vast majority of contract calls on Tezos to date… just since April. 

Tezos has showcased a new movement and pivot for artists and creators furiated from issues plaguing other platforms/networks, not just limited to feature sets. We’ve seen a whole new culture and community emerge from this movement that has begun to define it. 

That culture has led to the creation of original art, creative and intuitive applications of their art, and an experimental atmosphere that would not be available much elsewhere. One would be pressed to find a more vibrant community and group of collectors and artists than what we’ve seen come to Tezos. 

Let’s now pivot more towards protocol upgrades. Ithaca, the most recent and 9th protocol upgrade injected into the Tezos network is undergoing voting. Of all the features, the most noteworthy is the introduction of Tenderbake, a novel feature which will increase transaction throughput from +/- 200 txn’s/second to a much higher figure. 

This has been part of a growing theme within core dev teams to begin to utilize base layer capabilities but also shift towards welcoming layer-2 applications on Tezos to amend them even further. We had the chance to chat with the Marigold team a little while back to extrapolate on that. Gabriel Alfour of Marigold shared some input there. 

Pivoting towards general news, 2021 was not shy of that for Tezos. In no particular order, here were some of the highlights we saw. 

As we draw closer to 2022, it’s worth challenging old perspectives and replacing them with new. What better parallel than a network like Tezos to commensurate that very statement - which is designed to evolve and amend itself over time. 

Merry Christmas, Tezos community!