Month At A Glance — September 2024
A quick rundown of the latest happenings and significant milestones within the Tezos ecosystem for September 2024.
Welcome to our latest issue, Month At A Glance (September 2024), where we give a quick rundown of the latest happenings and significant milestones in the Tezos ecosystem on a monthly cadence.
Like a repeating record, September 2024 was an exciting month for Tezos, celebrating the 10-year anniversary of the Tezos position paper, governance updates, and Staketember.
Let’s break it all down.
Ecosystem Insights
10 Years of Tezos! 
If you think about it, there are few blockchain projects that can say they’ve been around since Ethereum’s conception. One of the fundamental ideas with Ethereum in the first place was this inherent limitation of Bitcoin of enabling smart contracts natively. When we look at the leaders of the space today, virtually all that pops into my mind comes from this era, such as Zooko Wilcox or Vitalik Buterin, to be precise. Then there’s Arthur Breitman, also known as L.M. Goodman.
If you listened to the Justin Bons interview Arthur was on not too long ago, he really dived deep into his background. To me, as someone who’s been in the Tezos ecosystem since 2018, it was very interesting to hear just how established Arthur was in the space before the conception of Tezos. Here are some snippets if you’d like more color; bear in mind the initial question is asked at around the 9-minute and 38-second mark.
I would say my motivation for decentralized governance in Tezos came from objections of the Bitcoin community around improvement. I first started thinking about this in 2011. I’m in London and in the hacker space, and I meet Amir Taaki, and I say well, I like Bitcoin, but I don’t really like the PoW aspect. Because it means essentially you have permanent inflation or you lack your security budget. He said, but you know Bitcoin is not an algorithm. It’s a ledger fundamentally. So long as you presume it’s a ledger, you can always change the underlying algorithm. That made me very confrontable because, fundamentally, what matters is shelling point or focal point that people have around this ledger. How you power it in some sense doesn’t really matter, so I’m thinking through this, but I’m also thinking in some sense, we agree that this is a ledger, but we also agree on the rules for changing it and how do we agree to change the algorithm. If there’s to be a change, how does that work?
So, I started thinking about this for a few years, and then it’s 2, and there’s a lot of innovation coming. I’m reading a lot about proof of stake at the time. I’m reading a lot about zero-knowledge proof for privacy, which I think is a big issue in current blockchains. I’m also reading about smart contracts, and I’m very excited because, oh, finally, a lot of the issues that I see in Bitcoin will be fixed. This is around the zero coin paper and zcash paper, I realize in the Bitcoin community there’s basically this idea oh no we’re not going to put that in Bitcoin. Like wait a second, that’s a problem, and at the end of the day, who decides what gets into Bitcoin? The general feeling becomes, well, you know, if we let anyone have a say in what gets into Bitcoin, then some people could just decide to do bad things. Which I completely buy.
So, I’m thinking of governance in terms of, in some sense, things which are good and which all agree are good. So, you know, if your blockchain is faster as opposed to slower, that’s a good thing. If your blockchain is safer as opposed to less safe, that’s a good thing. They’re not very controversial, so you’ll get a lot of bang for your buck if your governance lets you prevent bad things. So, as long as you have a governance system that will say someone is trying to take over the ledger, clearly, we don’t want that. Then, you get a lot of the benefits of governance without all the risks.
Pretty cool to see Arthur active and interested in the crypto space since as early as 2011. Even more unique, the Ethereum whitepaper wasn’t released until December 2014, a few months after the Tezos whitepaper. This showcases the level of technical acumen we place here in the Tezos ecosystem. Legitimate problems were conceived, and a solution was proposed before everyone else started to think the same way.
Nevertheless, there’s a ton to celebrate. I encourage you to read Cryptonio’s piece on 10 years of Tezos! Personally, one of my favorite moments was when I went deep down the rabbit hole in 2018. It seems so long ago, I remember reading the whitepaper amazed. So much so that I wrote a piece titled Why Tezos is the most advanced Blockchain to date.
I just about lost it when Kathleen tweeted my article. Of course, the rest is history after being here with Tezos Commons since then!
Tezos Governance Gets Even More Exciting
For the first time since the Brest proposal, a protocol upgrade proposal that was not promoted as a protocol upgrade passed the proposal stage. As we’ve learned, Nomadic Labs shared more details on the Quebec A and B proposals earlier in the month. Below is an infographic I produced, including Qena, which managed to pass the proposal phase!
In the current stage of voting, the Qena proposal has entered the exploration phase with a few days remaining. Interestingly enough, a large baker POS Dog immediately downvoted the proposal following the passing of the proposal phase. There’s a ton of elements on why some people feel the way they do about Qena or the other variants and it’s truly fascinating to see on-chain governance in action like it is today.
Overwhelmingly, consensus has shown people fall on the side of wanting to have the technical improvements of Quebec without the economic changes induced by the 2 variants in Qena. It’s an amazing time to be part of Tezos governance right now. Make sure to keep up with the discussion on X or Tezos Agora. You can also track the progress here and of course, be sure to vote!
#Staketember
You may not have noticed, but an entirely new staking mechanism has been introduced to Tezos. One of the main events was spreading awareness of the new mechanism for September. Enter Staketember — a neat way to drum up interest in the new staking mechanism on Tezos.
If you’re unsure how to stake (still), check out the video shared on the Tezos X account. Also, feel free to check out my X thread. Previously, the only option of delegating did not involve putting tez at stake, so it’s not “staking”, but delegating. It’s sometimes been loosely called staking, but that is no longer the proper terminology with the advent of actual staking. Check out the thread from our X page to learn more about the difference!
The event ran throughout the month and awarded people with Gengoya Club NFTs. Pretty neat way to give back to the community! Winners for the month included:
Sift (best meme)
Everstake (most external stake increase in 5 cycles)
As we move into October, let’s make sure to stake your tez if you haven’t yet. After all, nearly double the rewards is a pretty nice incentive if you ask me!
News From The Tezos Ecosystem: Quick Bits
ECAD Labs secures a grant from the Tezos Foundation
ECAD Labs is a software development company focused on Tezos. Their Taquito library makes interacting with the Tezos blockchain easier, enabling developers to create robust applications with less friction. Learn more about their grant here.
Tezos Foundation shares grant recap for August 2024
Notable grants include Explours from Functori, a powerful new block explorer offering in-depth insights into the Tezos network’s on-chain data. The Graph also received a grant from the Tezos Foundation for their work in integrating with Etherlink.
xalts x Tezos
Backed by Citi Ventures and Accel, xalts provides infrastructure for programmable assets. They are a plug-and-play solution that tokenizes real-world assets and builds blockchain apps on Tezos. Learn more about them and their collaboration here.
VNX launches new stablecoins on Tezos
VNX is a digital platform for tokenizing RWA licensed by the Liechtenstein Financial Market Authority (FMA). As part of their onboarding to Tezos, they generate stablecoins referencing two most popular European fiat currencies — VNX Euro (VEUR) and VNX Swiss Franc (VCHF). Both of these are now tradable on Plenty.
Robinhood Crypto now supports tez for NY residents
If you're in NY, you can now buy and sell tez on the Robinhood app. This addition marks 14 total digital assets supported for the region within the app.
Events
Tuesday TezDay w Arthur Breitman — September 3rd
TezTalks Radio w Imran Haqeem of TZ APAC — September 4th
Artz Friday w StrokeDriven — September 6th
Tuesday TezDay w BattleRise Game — September 10th
TezTalks Live w Nikolai Mitev of Sugarverse — September 12th
Artz Friday w Victoria West — September 13th
Tuesday TezDay w Beata Lipska — September 17th
Tezos Presence @ Token2049 — September 18th
TezTalks Radio w Maria Belashova of Everstake — September 19th
Artz Friday w HPLoveBux — September 20th
Tuesday TezDay Community Call — September 24th
Founder Pass: Discover Etherlink’s 1st Gaming NFT! X Space w BattleRise — September 25th
TezTalks Live w Jeremy Foo — September 25th
Artz Friday Community Call — September 27th
Subjective Art Festival — September 27–29
Community Rewards Program
The Community Rewards Program (CRP) is a Tezos Commons Foundation initiative to foster adoption and support the Tezos ecosystem. Every month, up to 5,000 tez are rewarded to those who stand out in merit and act in the interest of the Tezos ecosystem as a whole.
The nomination form has been drastically streamlined to make it easier for community members to nominate their favorite contributors to the ecosystem. Now containing only three questions, submitting a nomination takes less than 30 seconds.
Don’t have 30 seconds? Tag any Discord message or tweet with #TezosCRP, and we will collect the messages!
The categories and nomination standards have remained the same. For more information, visit the refreshed landing page here. We’ve also announced the August 2024 winners, so check out the recap here.
Stay in the Conversation, Stay in the Know
Tezos Commons hosts a variety of community-oriented events and content. To stay up to date, please visit our events page!
TezTalks Live
TezTalks Radio
X Spaces
X Shorts
Baking Sheet Newsletter
In-Depth Articles
You can also contact us on X or via email at social@tezoscommons.org.
Month At A Glance — September 2024 was originally published in Tezos Commons on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
