The Baking Sheet - Issue #118

September 23, 2022

Welcome to the Kathmandu Era

Welcome to this week's issue of the Baking Sheet! This is a special week for Tezos, not only is the 11th protocol upgrade has successfully implemented on Tezos, we also have a new product launch -- let's dive in.

Enter Kathmandu

History has been made -- the 11th Tezos Protocol upgrade has successfully been implemented. Kathmandu introduces a variety of features that focus on scaling and is setting up a path to 1 million transactions per second.

That said, where Jakarta2 introduced us to Transactional Optimistic Rollups (TORUs), 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

Bakers and node operators: Remember to update your infrastructure to Octez v14.0.

Let's Blockxer!

Introducing Blockxer, the newest (and memiest) beat ‘ em up game in crypto!

Blockxer is a meme-laden web-based beat’ em up style game that celebrates blockchain & crypto through the nostalgic vibe of 90’s console fighting games combined with crypto meme culture. Currently being designed as a modular, NFT-powered game, players can fight against street thugs, villains, and rug-pullers. The beta version of the game features characters such as Mr. Diamond Hands, WereDoge, Degenera, and villains such as Galaxy Brain, Apefluencer, Mr. Bankman, and The Rug Puller.

In the future, Blockxer will allow players to create their own characters, backdrops, and weapons to make the game even more fun and interactive, allowing players to completely customize Blockxer to their liking. The vision for Blockxer is to allow players to have a completely unique experience depending on what NFTs are in their wallet, which are then loaded dynamically from IPFS to build the game. For example, someone in the future may create a "Blockxer-pack" with a unique environment, different enemies - even a different boss!

For the demo level, the game is unlocked by claiming a free cartridge NFT. In the coming months, there will be sprite-sheet NFTs for characters and other in-game elements that make the game even more fun!

Blockxer was incubated by Blokhaus Inc, a Web3 agency & product lab, in collaboration with Well Played Games.

Play the demo today on https://blockxer.com/ and join the official Discord here:

This Week in the Tezos Ecosystem

The Plenty DeFi, a long running application on Tezos, has now become Plenty Network by introducing a vote escrow (ve) model like Curve finance. Learn more about this innovative model at Plenty's whitepaper site. If you want to read a great summary of how Plenty is evolving without diving in technically, Tezos Ukraine has published an easy to read guide.

Tezos is a blockchain protocol with a strong focus on security. Interestingly, Tezos is an energy-efficient blockchain using an energy friendly proof-of-stake consensus.

Memecast is an upcoming NFT meme news marketplace that is being built on Tezos by an all-female team of founders. The project quietly rolled out its landing page last week in preparation for a full launch.

Tezos Co-Founder Kathleen Breitman joins Emily Chang to discuss how the Tezos protocol, a proof-of-stake network widely considered a direct competitor of Ethereum, will undergo its 11th upgrade.

Rarible.com, a leading multi-chain, community-centric marketplace for NFTs, today integrated $DOGA as a method of payment, enabling users to buy DOGAMÍ & Tezos NFTs.

This past year brought NFTs to the mainstream audience, introducing another mass wave of people across the globe to crypto.

MGG Tezos Gaming Incubator offers a path to success for innovative esports, gaming and blockchain companies. We are launching a $10M incubator and seed fund, ready to support startups looking to take their business or idea to the next level.

It’s been an exciting week! We now have a date for the next competitive gaming tournaments on Tezos and it isn’t far away. October 1st will be the start of our first ever off-season events.

This Week in Tezos Development

Featuring Bidirectional type checking, Loops over maps, New functions in LIGO's standard library, and a new Add brew formula.

Tezos-k8s is a tool to deploy Tezos Nodes and Tezos Chains in a cloud environment. Version 6.9.0 supports Octez 14.0 and Kathmandu protocol.

With incoming Layer 2 like Deku or SCORU, Marigold's Oteku would like to propose a convention to ease integration with wallet editors or any signer application.

Events

The 2nd Tezos Greece meet up has arrived! We look forward to seeing you all there to discuss all things #Tezos

When:

September 24 at 18:00.

Where:

Hyades Cafe Bar Restaurant, Athens