The Baking Sheet - Issue #94

April 08, 2022

Never. Stop. Evolving

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

March was another jam packed month for the Tezos ecosystem which we highlighted further in our Month at a Glance series. All hands have been on deck for the recently activated Ithaca 2 upgrade.

In this week’s issue, we’re going to highlight a recent twitter thread from Arthur Breitman.

Ecosystem Insights: Tezos to the Outsider

In case you didn’t catch it, Arthur shared a really insightful twitter thread earlier in the week. This isn’t a habitual thing the bear does, so when he does - it’s worth taking note of and paying attention.

We’ll take some of the highlights and break them down with some additional input.

1/ Tezos is much bigger than you think. It's routinely the third most discussed chain on Twitter behind Bitcoin and Ethereum. It's second only to Ethereum in mentions of NFT.

This is just a matter of fact. It’s easy to get lost in the fast-paced environment that is crypto, but when one looks towards activity and social metrics - Tezos is up there at the very top.

Just check out lunarcrush, don’t take it just from us.

4/ Major brands regularly chose to build on Tezos without any outreach, business development, or partnership. They just like the chain.

I’m sure we’ve all seen the infamous FTX ads or the Coinbase super bowl QR code. A lot of projects in crypto place reliance on this type of exposure but it’s difficult to gauge what really comes out of it.

What’s unique to me however, is the approach the Tezos ecosystem has towards these brands/enterprises. It’s not so much of a “we’ll write you a check to slap the Tezos logo here”. A lot of these brands are showing their own interest like Evian and GAP just to name a few.

They simply like the network and the proof is in the pudding, indicative below.

12/ Tezos core development teams have proposed the most credible scaling roadmap out there on a short timeline. It may just be my opinion, but having made a number of really correct technical calls in this space since 2014, I think it carries some weight.

Arthur is referring to Nomadic Labs scaling roadmap which was released recently. The current focus is on optimistic rollups, an L2 scaling solution.

From Nomadic Labs announcement:

  • Transaction rollups are expected to be part of the upcoming “J” upgrade proposal. They can handle account-to-account transactions of assets, but won’t be able to run smart contracts. This allows for a simpler design and faster implementation.

  • Smart contract rollups are targeted for later this year. The chosen approach is inspired by proven designs for rollups, but tailored to Tezos. They are designed with a generic structure that is not limited to Michelson smart contracts, but can be adapted to support environments like WebAssembly or EVM, the Ethereum Virtual Machine.

It’s quite astonishing to see this level of technical progress. While other networks' scaling plans are “expected soon” and have been for some time now, many miss out on what sets Tezos apart from the bunch.

With the activation of Ithaca 2, the Tenderbake feature will introduce a whole new consensus algorithm and bring deterministic finality to the Tezos network. There are no blockchains in existence that can claim they have replaced a consensus algorithm in a seamless and democratic way.

That said, we should all be very excited about the next few quarters of 2022. This year is beginning to shape up more by the day to be fruitful not only in terms of technical progress but also in onboarding more users, artists, collectors, brands, and the likes.

This Week in the Tezos Ecosystem

To minimize the brand’s energy footprint, the evian NFTs have been minted on energy efficient and self-upgradeable Proof-of Stake blockchain Tezos which consumes two million times less energy than Ethereum based platforms.

Two weeks ago, we invited Tezos DeFi Hackathon 2022 participants to fill out an application form and carry on developing on Tezos. By the time of publication, 34 teams have submitted applications describing their projects, and we have already transferred them to the Tezos Foundation and all the hackathon partners.

The proof-of-stake blockchain has changed its consensus algorithm in order to lower block times and improve performance.

Tezos will sponsor the inaugural iSportConnect Web3 Summit, taking place on the 28th and 29th of June 2022 at Emirates Stadium in London. The event includes speakers such as J.P Morgan, Sotherby's, FIFA, Coca-Cola, Nvidia, and Nascar.

This Week in Tezos Development

In a new blogpost, Benjamin Fuentes introduces TzVote , a new voting application in LigoLANG by Marigold, and reveals its architecture!

You can review or contribute to TzVote, our code base is MIT open source: https://github.com/marigold-dev/tzvote

Version 12.3 of Octez has just been released. Breaking change : snapshots exported with Octez 12.3 cannot be imported with previous versions of Octez.

Tezos has activated the ninth upgrade to the protocol, Ithaca 2. It replaces the current consensus algorithm (Emmy*) with Tenderbake – a revolutionary upgrade that sets the stage for a new era of innovation for the Tezos protocol.

Eventbrite - Encode Club presents Tezos Hackathon: Launch Event - Wednesday, April 13, 2022 - Find event and ticket information.

Now Streaming

A discussion with Kieron Cartledge, Global Director of Sales at Baanx.

Baanx is building the future of modular, API driven, Financial Services - debit cards, digital wallets, IBANs, remittance/FX, payment gateways and more.

Now streaming on YouTube

Trending on Tezos Agora

Dear bakers and builders, Thank you for your active involvement on the successful activation of Ithaca2, our 9th protocol upgrade and the most ambitious one so far. …

I had some ideas for changing the Tezos amendment process and would be curious to hear what people think about this. These are just some thoughts that came to me as I was reflecting on the process