The Baking Sheet - Issue #135

January 27, 2023

California dreamin'

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

It's been a great week all around for the Tezos Ecosystem as all facets are firing on all cylinders. We're witnessing on-chain governance very much alive for the next Tezos upgrade, unexpected adoption from a US state, and artists continuously minting on the blockchain — Let'

California DMV puts car titles on the Tezos blockchain

The Department of Motor Vehicles has never been an agency that screams innovation. The agency is better know for bureaucracy and endless lines than technological transformation. But this may be changing after a collaboration between California's DMV and open-source blockchain Tezos and Oxhead Alpha, a crypto-focused software development firm.

Together, the three partners are building a DMV-run blockchain that will not only digitize car titles for California drivers, but also seek to streamline title transfers between owners.

Ajay Gupta, the chief digital officer at the California DMV, said that the agency hopes to finalize its “shadow ledger,” or a full replication of the state’s title database on the blockchain, within the next three months before building consumer-facing applications, including digital wallets that hold car title NFTs.

The DMV worked with Oxhead Alpha and Tezos to create a private instance of the Tezos blockchain, which would increase security compared to relying on a public blockchain. Smith said that the DMV chain is currently operational and running DMV validator nodes.

For now, the blockchain will operate in the background, but Gupta hopes to create consumer-facing applications soon. An obvious application would be allowing people to transfer car ownership between digital wallets through an NFT version of their title, with the DMV acting as a middleman to ensure that all the sale obligations are completed. Gupta said that type of functionality is on the horizon.

Another possible use case is transferring titles between states. Smith said that he’s seen a lot of appetite from municipal-level governments, with mayors such as Miami’s Francis Suarez advocating for crypto, and that generating interest from states would come next.

Smith added that blockchain serves as an ideal tool for collaboration between states because projects can incrementally add participants.

“This certainly demonstrates there is real benefit to real people,” he said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

True Privacy is here

AirGap announced Sapling on Ghostnet in November. This was to test and experiment without risk to real funds. Now Airgap moved a step further, by supporting Sapling on mainnet.

Sapling is a significant upgrade for the Tezos blockchain that aims to improve the scalability and privacy of transactions. We know the Tezos community has been eagerly awaiting the integration of Sapling into various Tezos wallets. We are proud to be among the first to offer this feature to its users. We’ve been working diligently to ensure that we provide an infrastructure that supports Sapling. With Sapling, users can now enjoy a more efficient, scalable, and private transaction experience on the Tezos blockchain.

Read more about this incredibly powerful feature at AirGap's medium site that also breaks down the the advantages of Tezos Sapling which provides true privacy.

How to perform Tezos Sapling transactions on AirGap

AirGap has written a guide on how to perform Sapling transaction. Have a look and get started now: Tezos Sapling guide

Tezos-based voting in action: “NeuillyVote”

There’s nothing that turns heads in the blockchain space quite like a good use case. Meet “NeuillyVote” — the Tezos-powered voting application currently being scaled up in a suburban district just West of Paris called Neuilly-sur-Seine (although most just call it “Neuilly”).

When NeuillyVote was first rolled out in 2021, it was used on a small scale to resolve votes on minor decisions effecting the town, like which new books should be ordered for Neuilly’s public library, for example, or which films should be shown at the local cinema. The processes and results of these successful early test-cases for the technology were scrutinized closely by officials in Neuilly before the project was scaled up for use more substantial and consequential votes.

Now, in a January 10, 2023 press release, Le Conseil Municipal des Jeunes (CMJ) de Neuilly-sur-Seine (Municipal Council of Neuilly-sur-Seine) has announced that it has successfully completed Neuilly’s official Municipal Youth Council elections using the NeuillyVotes app.

“For a week, nearly 1,500 college students elected their representatives on the voting platform.

Stored securely and transparently on the Tezos blockchain, results are verifiable by each voter while remaining confidential through the use of homomorphic encryption algorithms. secure, anonymous and easy to use, this approach to voting is a way of opening the way to the future of democratic life.”

– The municipality of Neuilly-sur-Seine

Developed by Web 3.0 E-voting SAAS platform Electis - which promises to “virtually rule out the contestation of the results post-election” — NeuillyVotes represents a very intriguing example of a blockchain-powered application with the potential to solve a very urgent real-world problem.

Blockchain technology can provide several benefits for voting systems, such as increased transparency and immutability of the voting process, as well as improved voter anonymity. Additionally, the use of blockchain tech can help to prevent voter fraud and ensure the integrity of the election results.

With the use of blockchain-based voting systems like NeuillyVotes, voters can directly cast their vote and the results can be stored on the blockchain, which can be audited by anyone at any time. This can help to increase voter confidence and trust in the electoral process.

While there is much work to be done before Electis achieves its stated vision of “a future where Electis will be a beacon of trust for all looking to vote anywhere, anytime, without the need for a central authority”, use cases like NeuillyVotes represent an important step forward in the quest to make blockchain ecosystems like that of Tezos a key problem-solving part of our daily lives.

This Week in the Tezos Ecosystem

PMU, a 100 year old institution is building a Tezos-powered game called Stables. This week they officially announced that they're building on Tezos and the reasons behind it.

Why did PMU choose Tezos?

Tezos stands out as the leading blockchain for gaming and it quickly became obvious when we had to make our choice!

• A high level of security,

• Low energy costs,

• Low transaction costs,

• A large community and partners,

• Long-term operating expectations.

This Week in Tezos Development

On April 1st, 2022, the Tezos blockchain successfully executed its most ambitious protocol upgrade to date. At block #2,244,609, the Ithaca2 protocol upgrade was activated on Tezos mainnet, moving the Tezos network away from the Emmy family of consensus algorithms to Tenderbake.

In this tutorial, we demonstrate how to create a parametric blockchain with Deku-P 1, using the Deku TypeScript-SDK. To do so, we are going to create a state machine using Typescript, execute it within Deku blockchain, and interact with it!!

Adaptive Inflation has been a hot topic for Tezos since Arthur Breitman has brought up the idea, head on over to Tezos Agora to see the latest discussion Adaptive Inflation for Tezos.

Now Streaming

Join us for another special episode from Art Basel Paris. This group of experts discuss a new cultural economy propping up thanks to technology like Tezos and Artists joining the digital art evolution.

Hosted by Valerie Whitcare of TriliTech

Now Streaming Everywhere!

🎬 Stream: YouTube