The Baking Sheet - Issue #114

August 26, 2022

Welcoming our latest grantee to the Tezos Ecosystem

Welcome to this week's issue of The Baking Sheet -- In case you haven't heard about it yet, Tezos Commons has a 'Small Grants Program', an experimental regional effort focused on providing funding for low cost, intermittent, or experimental projects in the Tezos ecosystem. While small in size they are an important step toward maintaining the health of the ecosystem and the pursuit of progress as our communities grow. With that being said, we are pleased to announced our latest grantee from the program, MintCraft, Let's dive in!

TC Grantee Spotlight: MintCraft

In this edition of the Tezos Commons Grantee Spotlight, we had the chance to chat with Cody Mahan, CTO of Coinonía Labs and newly-minted Tezos Commons Grantee MintCraft!

Coinonía Labs has thrown its considerable development might behind several projects in the Tezos ecosystem, including (but not limited to) Artforge, PiXEL POTUS, PixelDebates, PixelPower, and Prjktneon. Such projects have pushed the boundaries of exactly how Tezos users interact with Tezos NFTs.

Up to this point, the Coinonía Labs team has been working as “hired guns”, building out projects on behalf of others. Now, for the first time with MintCraft, Cody and team have set out to test the boundaries of the Tezos NFT user interface by launching their very own product. Described as “an open platform to create engaging NFT experiences”, MintCraft promises to deliver a tool which allows creators to build curated user experiences for interacting with Tezos tokens of any kind, from gamified NFT drops to “randomized faucets”, all built within the easy-to-navigate MintCraft interface. The best part? These curated experiences can be built out by anyone — even those who have no knowledge of smart contracts at all!

The potential value proposition in providing a simple, easy-to-use platform for Tezos NFT creators to generate customized, gamified drop experiences, faucets, etc., is enormous and greatly needed when the learning curve is quite steep.

Let’s zoom in together, and blow the dust off of the stoic visage of Cody Mahan just a little bit to find out what makes this Tezos builder tick, and exactly what NFT madness MintCraft is preparing to unleash upon the Tezos ecosystem.

What does this interesting new project mean for Cody and the Coinonía Labs team in their endeavor to turn the Tezos NFT user interface on its head?

Let’s ask him…

A Quick Q&A with Cody Mahan

1) For those who might not know, what is MintCraft, exactly?

MintCraft is an open platform to create NFT experiences. Use our simple building blocks to create crafting adventures, gamified NFT drops, randomized faucets and more. If you can dream up utility for your NFT, you can likely build it with MintCraft.

2) Where do you envision MintCraft fitting into the evolving NFT space of 2022 and beyond?

We think MintCraft could become the de facto platform for building the next generation of NFTs on Tezos. Why launch a vanilla PFP project when you can time your drop with a choose-your-own-adventure game where your fanbase sends its PFPs on quests, gains loot and crafts those items into rare goodies you dream up?

3) What was the impetus for your team to start working on MintCraft? What was the market gap you identified that you wanted to fill?

Over the last couple of years we have had the pleasure of working on some great NFT projects. We gained tons of experience but more importantly we saw a great need for NFT utility in the market. Some projects have done a great job of developing community around their PFP brand and thus remain strong, but many other projects have languished and dropped off from lack of engagement and thus, revenue. But adding any sort of utility to an NFT is very difficult today, which is why it’s seen as a distinguishing characteristic when a team delivers on their roadmap. The goal with MintCraft is to democratize rich NFT experiences. We plan to launch with capabilities that will allow creators to build complex story-driven flows, completely on-chain. As the platform gains support, we have loads of ideas for making it even more useful and impactful.

4) What can you tell us about the reasons you and the MintCraft team decided to realize your vision for MintCraft here in the Tezos ecosystem?

It wasn’t a hard decision given our deep experience with Tezos smart contracts and our relationships with the community. While we develop solutions for other blockchains in our company, Tezos is our first love. 🧡

5) How did you come into contact with Tezos Commons about this project, and what was it like applying for your Tezos Commons Grant?

Some community members encouraged us to reach out to TCF and I got in contact with a member of the TCF team. Applying was straightforward; we grabbed the submission form from the website and collaborated internally about our pitch. When we were happy with it, I ran it by my contact with TCF and emailed the submission over. One week later, we got approved. There was much rejoicing.

6) What’s next for Cody Mahan and the MintCraft team? Are there any other projects in the works?

Things move quickly at Coinonía! We have a big book of ideas to pursue internally, and we have more exciting projects we are working on for many clients, including Pixel Global. We are committed to ensuring we deliver software

Kathmandu: Time to Vote!

The next Tezos protocol upgrade is in its final voting phase which means its time for Bakers and the community to send this proposal home.

Kathmandu introduces us to to Smart Contract Optimistic Rollups (SCORUs) as another Layer-2 scaling application for Tezos.

This is added upon by several other feature sets, including but not limited to:

  • Improved randomness for distribution of baking rights

  • Event-logging, enabling off-chain systems to react to smart contract execution

  • Validation pipelining: (ongoing block validation tweaks to improve Tezos Layer 1 throughput)

  • Support for ‘Ghostnet’, a permanent testnet that upgrades with Mainnet

Learn more from Nomadic Lab's in-depth explanation of all the features included in Kathmandu.

Last week to nominate for Community Rewards

This is the final week for submissions on who you think deserves recognition and tez for their contributions to the Tezos ecosystem.

There is up to 5000 tez available per month for the Tezos community with all different ranges of skills and contributions.

This Week in the Tezos Ecosystem

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This Week in Tezos Development

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London Blockchain Meetup: September

Details

📅 Date: Thursday, September 1st, 2022

🕒 Time: 6:00 PM BST

📍 Venue: 14 Soho Square, London W1D 3QG

Calling all developers and builders: whether you're new to Tezos or a seasoned fan, please join us for an informal evening in central London to all things Blockchain, Tezos and Web3. You'll have the opportunity to connect with peers, share stories and and get support for any projects you're working on or about to start.

AGENDA:

6.00 PM - Doors Open

7.00 PM - 7.45 PM - Developer-Focused Content TBC (This will include learning opportunities and a panel)

8.30 PM - Doors closed

We host developer Meetups ever first Thursday of the month.

Now Streaming

Join us for TezTalks LIVE featuring artist, Marco Violet- Vianello

In collaboration with Sowvital, Marco is launching 'Metavert' on Tezos. Grown inside a computer Metavert is a conceptual art project exploring the power of AI to generate hypothetical reproduction of flowers.

Now streaming on YouTube