Greetings, fellow Tezos explorers. I'm thrilled to welcome you to another edition of The Baking Sheet, our weekly rendezvous where we delve into the ever-evolving landscape of the Tezos ecosystem.

Before we embark on this week's journey, let's take a moment to reflect on the recent Tez/Dev 2023 event in Paris. It was a sight to behold as enthusiasts, developers, and innovators from all corners of the globe converged in the City of Lights to celebrate and explore the Tezos ecosystem. The event was a resounding success, a testament to the vibrant and growing global community that Tezos has fostered.

Our first stop on this week's journey is Etherlink, an audacious venture that's carving out a niche in the realm of decentralized Ethereum Layer 2 solutions. Built on the bedrock of the Tezos blockchain, Etherlink is a beacon of innovation, lighting the path for businesses and developers towards a future of open, secure, and scalable applications. With its governance model rooted in the democratic ethos of Tezos Layer 1, Etherlink is a testament to the power of decentralization.

Next, we venture into the Tezos' Ghostnet, where an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible Smart Rollup has made its debut. This development is a significant milestone, opening the gates for Solidity smart contracts to run on a Tezos rollup. It's a brave new world for developers and businesses, one where the robustness of the Tezos blockchain meets the flexibility and familiarity of Ethereum's smart contracts.

Our journey takes us next to the vibrant tech landscape of India, where Tezos India has unfurled the banner for the third edition of the TezAsia Hackathon. This initiative is a clarion call to the brightest minds in the Indian blockchain space, amplifying Web3 development and broadening access to the Tezos blockchain platform across the Asia-Pacific region.

In the realm of development, we have news from the frontlines of Octez and LigoLANG. Octez v17.2 brings a host of updates and improvements, while LigoLANG v0.70.0 introduces a new sub-command for off-chain view compilation and a modules inclusion directive for CameLIGO.

Finally, we round off this week's journey with a pit stop at our next TezTalks LIVE, featuring Max Wolfe from McLaren Racing. We'll be exploring the thrilling intersection of F1 and NFTs, and how McLaren Racing is steering towards the web3 revolution.

As we wrap up this week's edition, I encourage you to delve deeper into each of these stories, to truly appreciate the strides being made in the Tezos ecosystem. Until next week, keep exploring, keep building, and keep baking.

Etherlink: Pioneering Decentralized Ethereum L2 Solutions on Tezos

Etherlink, a fully decentralized Ethereum Layer 2 (L2) solution, is making waves in the blockchain industry by creating a new era of open, secure, and scalable applications. Built on the robust Tezos blockchain, Etherlink is empowering businesses and developers to be at the forefront of decentralized innovation.

Why it matters: The future of blockchain technology lies in decentralization, and Etherlink is leading the charge. By harnessing Tezos enshrined smart rollups, Etherlink provides a decentralized, cost-efficient, and resilient generalized EVM L2 solution. This approach ensures that the control and security of the network are distributed among its users, rather than being centralized in a single authority.

Better Governance: Etherlink's rollup governance is not dictated by a select few. Instead, it's decided by the proven governance model of Tezos Layer 1. This model allows for decentralized decision-making in its truest form on a rollup designed to evolve. By inheriting this battle-tested governance from Tezos, Etherlink ensures that its network is democratic, transparent, and adaptable to changes.

Key Details:

• Etherlink is a fully decentralized Ethereum L2 solution built on the Tezos blockchain.

• It provides a decentralized, cost-efficient, and resilient generalized EVM L2 solution.

• Etherlink's rollup governance is decided by the proven governance model of Tezos Layer 1.

• Tezos' commitment to continuous performance improvement assures Etherlink's future potential, cost-effectiveness, and scalability.

What's next: Tezos has a stellar track record of continuous performance improvement. This commitment to excellence cascades into Etherlink's rollup, assuring its future potential, cost-effectiveness, and scalability. The integration of Tezos' high-performance blockchain technology allows Etherlink to handle a high volume of transactions quickly and efficiently, making it an ideal platform for businesses and developers.

The big picture: Etherlink is more than just an Ethereum L2 solution. It's a revolution in the blockchain industry. By offering decentralization, cost-efficient scaling, on-chain governance, and constant evolution, Etherlink provides a comprehensive platform for businesses and developers to build and operate decentralized applications.

Be smart: Join the Etherlink EVM rollup on Tezos and be part of the blockchain revolution. With Etherlink, you can contribute to the future of decentralized applications and be part of a community that values transparency, efficiency, and innovation.

Go deeper: For more information visit the Etherlink website.

EVM-Compatible Smart Rollup Now Available on Tezos' Ghostnet

An Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible Smart Rollup is now available on Ghostnet, Tezos' permanent testnet. This development allows users to run Solidity smart contracts on a Tezos rollup, marking a significant milestone in the Tezos ecosystem.

Why it matters: The integration of EVM-compatible Smart Rollups into Tezos allows Ethereum smart contracts to be frictionlessly deployed and executed on Tezos. This development opens up new possibilities for developers and businesses, enabling them to leverage the robustness of the Tezos blockchain while enjoying the flexibility and familiarity of Ethereum's smart contracts.

Key Details:

• The EVM-compatible Smart Rollup is a result of collaborative efforts by Trilitech, Marigold, Functori, and Nomadic Labs.

• The EVM Smart Rollup creates a separate blockchain running in Tezos’ Layer 2, producing its own blocks and processing its own transactions.

• The EVM kernel is executed by an Octez Smart Rollup node, which is kernel agnostic and not equipped to communicate with Ethereum wallets or block explorers out of the box.

• The EVM rollup is still in alpha, and it is subject to frequent upgrades as new features are introduced and existing ones are polished and hardened.

What's next: The EVM rollup is a work-in-progress, and the team is actively working on making it feature complete and bug-free. The development process can be followed directly on the Tezos GitLab repository. As future and ongoing developments mature, the running instance of the EVM rollup will be migrated using a dictator key. Once the first stable version of the EVM rollup is reached, the dictator key will be removed and replaced by an upgrade mechanism owned by Tezos Layer 1 governance.

The big picture: The integration of EVM-compatible Smart Rollups into Tezos is a significant step towards a rollup-centric future for Tezos. It opens up new possibilities for developers and businesses, enabling them to leverage the robustness of the Tezos blockchain while enjoying the flexibility and familiarity of Ethereum's smart contracts.

Collaboration: Nomadic Labs invites Ethereum/Solidity-focused developers interested in deploying their project on an EVM rollup on Tezos to reach out and discuss potential collaborations. They also encourage users to experiment with the Ghostnet deployment and share their experiences.

Go deeper: For more information, visit the Tezos-Dev Slack workspace or join the TezDev developer conference in Paris on July 21. This year’s theme is #RiseofRollups. Learn about the future of Tezos, engage with relevant engineers about the EVM roadmap – and witness a live demonstration of 1 million transactions per second!

Tezos India Launches 3rd Edition of TezAsia Hackathon

Tezos India has announced the launch of the much-anticipated TezAsia Hackathon 3.0. The third edition of Asia's most popular Tezos hackathon will take place on July 16th, 2023, marking a month-long journey of collaboration and innovation by the brightest minds in the Indian blockchain space. This transformative initiative aims to amplify Web3 development and facilitate broader access to the Tezos blockchain platform throughout the Asia-Pacific region. Tezos India aims to leverage the power of India’s demographic transition to make India the blockchain capital of the world.

Why it matters: The TezAsia hackathon acts as a superhighway of blockchain innovation where creative coders and developers from all walks of life come together to share their vision to solve real-life problems through the application of blockchain technology. During the month-long hackathon, participants will work to build the best solutions for Defi, NFTs, NFT-Fi, Web3 wallets, and Gaming and create connecting links for enabling a smooth transition from Web2 to Web3.

Key Details:

• The hackathon will be a war room that will constantly innovate for creating a Web3-enabled life for present and future generations.

• TezAsia is a carefully crafted innovation hub that creates a level playing field for all the participants through customized workshops on problem-solving, extensive training for using Tezos tools to build groundbreaking applications (Dapps), and explore the Tezos Universe to gain Web3 wisdom to enter the world of endless possibilities and opportunities offered by Web3/Blockchain.

• TezAsia hackathon has no entry barriers and is open to all but not limited to college students, developers, working professionals, coders, and blockchain enthusiasts.

• Registrations are now open, and interested participants can find detailed information and register for the hackathon through the official microsite at https://bit.ly/TezAsia-TezosIndia.

What's next: The hackathon schedule includes a kick-off event on July 16, 2023, followed by a workshop week/content & resource sharing from July 17, 2023, to July 31, 2023. The building & mentoring phase, as well as final submissions & evaluation, will take place from August 1, 2023, to August 24, 2023. The demo day will be on August 30, 2023, and the result announcement will be on September 6, 2023. Goodies and prize distribution will take place after September 6, 2023.

The big picture: Tezos India is a leading organization dedicated to building and empowering the Tezos blockchain ecosystem in India. Through education, awareness programs, and community initiatives, Tezos India strives to accelerate the adoption and development of Tezos, creating a thriving ecosystem of developers, entrepreneurs, and enthusiasts.

Go deeper: For more information, visit Tezos India or the TezAsia Hackathon 3.0 official page

This Week in the Tezos Ecosystem

Team Finance Simplifies Token Creation on Tezos: A New Era of Accessibility

In a significant move towards simplifying the process of creating token projects on Tezos, Team Finance has integrated with the platform, making it easier than ever to launch and manage tokens. This development is a game-changer for those who have previously found the process daunting due to its complexity and time-consuming nature.

Who is Team Finance?

Team Finance, a part of the TrustSwap ecosystem, is a platform that provides a comprehensive security toolkit for founders looking to create a token and raise funds from a community of investors. Traditional methods of launching a token and building trust around it are often complex and expensive. TrustSwap, and by extension Team Finance, aims to simplify this process, making it more accessible for companies to launch and scale successful projects that incorporate tokens.

Services Offered by Team Finance

Token Creation (Minting)

The first step in launching a project is to create a token. Team Finance's user interface now offers a seamless token minting service on Tezos, enabling users to create their own custom tokens in just five steps. This service is ideal for startups looking to launch a utility token or established companies interested in creating a loyalty program token. The created tokens are secure and compatible with Tezos’ smart contract infrastructure, with the option to choose between both the FA1.2 or FA2 token standards.

Lockups

Team Finance also offers a decentralized token lockup service where users can securely store their tokens in smart contracts. These contracts cannot be traded or withdrawn until a specified time period set by the sender expires. This feature builds trust for the community and investors while providing users with flexibility and control over their locked tokens.

Vesting

Token vesting is a process that gradually grants access to tokens over time for holders such as employees, advisors, investors, and venture capital firms. Team Finance's Token Vesting service allows founders to efficiently manage and automate token distribution according to their vesting plans.

Multisender

Distributing tokens to multiple addresses can be a time-consuming and error-prone process. Team Finance's Multisender service simplifies this task by enabling token issuers to send Tezos tokens to multiple addresses simultaneously, saving time and resources.

The Future of Tezos with Team Finance

The integration of Tezos by Team Finance significantly improves the tooling on Tezos, making it more convenient for developers and users to interact with the blockchain and build decentralized applications (dApps). The Team Finance toolkit simplifies the process of launching and managing a token as well as building trust with your community to the point where anyone can do it with a few clicks.

The future of Tezos looks brighter with the integration of Team Finance. It will be exciting to see what projects come to fruition via Team Finance’s toolkit. Onwards to a more accessible era of token creation on Tezos!

This Week in Tezos Development

Octez v17.2 | Nomadic Labs

The latest version of Octez, v17.2, has been released with several important updates and improvements. Here are the key points to note:

• Security Update: Octez v17.2 is a security upgrade. Bakers and node operators are strongly recommended to upgrade to this version as soon as possible.

• Operation Filters: The new release enhances operation filters in Octez, enabling bakers to discard ill-formed operations earlier in the block production process. This is an additional defensive measure that complements existing mechanisms in the Octez node.

• Improved Logging: Octez v17 includes a significant improvement in node logging output. The node now outputs less verbose and clearer logs. Only essential information is displayed, while a more detailed log is written to disk in the background.

• Performance Improvement: Version 17.1 improved the performance of RPC responses when requesting older blocks.

• Update Instructions: The update instructions are available on the official Tezos website. Users can update from sources using a series of commands, or if using Docker, they can use the v17.2 Docker images of Octez. Octez can also be installed using Opam by running opam install octez.

For more detailed information, users can refer to the full changelog and update instructions

LigoLang Updates (v0.70.0) | Marigold

LigoLANG, the popular programming language for Tezos smart contracts, has announced a new release, v0.70.0. This version comes with several notable updates:

• New Sub-Command: A new sub-command, 'compile view', has been introduced for off-chain view compilation. This feature enhances the process of compiling views that are not on the blockchain, as demonstrated in the provided GIF.

• CameLIGO Update: CameLIGO, a syntax of LigoLANG, now includes a modules inclusion directive. This addition allows for the inclusion of modules, further expanding its functionality.

For more detailed information about these updates and other changes, please refer to the official changelog.

Now Streaming

TezTalks LIVE with Max Wolfe from McLaren Racing

Join us for our next TezTalks LIVE featuring Max Wolfe from McLaren Racing, one of the leading names in Formula 1. We'll be diving deep into the exciting world of F1 and NFTs, exploring how this renowned brand is embracing the web3 revolution.

McLaren Racing has been at the forefront of innovative fan engagement, introducing captivating NFT collections that offer a unique and thrilling experience for their fanbase. This is your chance to learn more about their journey and the future of NFTs in the sports industry.

Where to Watch:

• YouTube

• Tezos Commons Twitter