A Guide To Creating A Tezos Event

Events and meetups are essential for networking, especially within a global and decentralized ecosystem like Tezos, fueled by innovation and collaboration. This is why you will find a constant schedule of grassroots organized events within the Tezos Community and why networking on Tezos offers so much opportunity. If you’ve never participated in a Tezos event, doing so will help you form stronger connections, and you might even be inspired to create your own event someday.

What does it take to create a successful event on Tezos? How can you ensure a positive impact on the community? Where should you begin? In this article, we will explore general guidelines, highlight past successful events, and discuss how we can continue driving momentum for the Tezos community.

What Is A Tezos Event?

Technically, a Tezos event can be anything you want, but generally speaking, most Tezos events are centered around a hashtag. Hashtags allow the community on social media and NFT markets to easily join your event by incorporating the designated hashtag when publishing their content. Recently, Tezos Commons published an article covering an example of a hashtag-based event, “Share4Tez: Share Art To Earn Tez”.

In summary, standard practice is for the title of your event to be the hashtag used for the event. However, innovation and creativity are always encouraged. If you bring the community together under a common theme to create and share, you’ve made a successful Tezos event.

Taking An Idea And Turning It Into A Functional Plan

The most difficult part of having a good idea is watching it go to waste. The most important thing to do is act on the initial inspiration before the doubts can even set in and before you forget. So write it down. Below are some basic starting points to consider.

Why do you want to host a Tezos Event?

Ask yourself the hard questions first. Make sure your vision aligns with the overall goals of the community. Reach out to your trusted Tezos friends for advice and potential collaboration. Consider the pros and cons together, and manifest your mission statement. People love to get on board for a good cause. However, you have to express your intentions clearly. Doing so will help you seek collaborators and ensure your hard work yields the desired outcome.

Who can help organize?

The people building on Tezos never have to do so alone. There is always someone ready and willing to lend a helping hand. Reach out to the various support networks for advice and assistance. A good team and potential sponsorship(s) can go a long way. Entities like Tezos Commons are available for extra guidance. Although they are typically not needed for hashtag-based events, small grant programs are in place specifically to fund community-based initiatives. This is another reason why putting together a cohesive plan is important. It will be needed if you choose to apply for a sponsorship. For in-person meet-ups, where these grants are mostly utilized, an article by @cryptonio, Organizing A Tezos Social Meet-UP, covers more on the subject, and a typeform is available to apply here. Other organizations such as TzAPAC, Trilitech, and Tezos Foundation offer similar support.

When will the event take place?

Consider the global reach of the community and the time zones involved. Multiple-day events are typically necessary to include all time zones, and utilizing Universal time helps alleviate confusion. Leave yourself plenty of time to promote the event beforehand. Events are traditionally announced several weeks in advance.

Where will it take place?

Will there be a physical location or will this event be online only? Will it involve NFTs, and if so, which platform will be used? It’s important to analyze the different features across Tezos NFT marketplaces before deciding. OBJKT is typically where most events happen due to its broader range of features and the ability to create dedicated collections. However other options like TEIA and AKASwap are good to consider. You will also have to focus on social media to spread the word. X (Twitter) is what I’d consider standard practice; however, breaking that bubble is also encouraged. Seeing more events on alternative social sites like DNS and Farcaster, would be a welcome development.

How will you spread the word?

Make a promo poster! The odds are in your favor for finding a good graphic design artist, and for a more budget-friendly option, you can utilize AI and/or Canva Templates. Be sure to incorporate the why, who, when, and where, within the design. Once you have a poster, well…post it! It’s time to announce your event to the world. Assemble your team and organize a raid, which is an organized way to beat the social media algorithm by having a strong starting momentum with a team retweeting, quote retweeting, liking, AND commenting. Tag any/all sponsors and platforms involved as well. Be sure to give the community time to circulate the news.

Put On Your Influencer Hat

Most importantly, remember to repost any social media from others regarding your event. Having the hashtag trending is a goal to strive for. Create a dedicated social media handle as a home for all the related posts. This ensures you can post as much as you want during the event with less risk of shadow bans on your main social media account.

Work With Partners and/or Sponsors To Deliver Exciting Metrics During The Event

People enjoy seeing how these events affect the numbers. During your event, post updates on the performance of your event. How many NFTs have been minted with the event hashtag? How many sales so far? When people see these metrics, it can help create the FOMO that gets them to jump aboard.

Tezos Community Uplifts Those Who Host Successful Events

Your efforts won’t go unnoticed, even if you don’t know anyone to contact directly. Keep an eye on your comments and DM’s as you never know who may be watching and willing to help, but remember don’t trust, verify. Before interacting with unknown accounts be sure they are really who they say they are. There are also initiatives like Tezos CRP, and often event planners get nominated by the community. You never know what rewards may manifest after an event takes place. So do your best and remain true to your mission. Remember the law of attraction if you get frustrated during planning. Vent in private when necessary. We are all human, however, public complaining typically serves no one. It’s best to get the bad energy out before you post as the spokesperson of any cause. Let your best self shine through.

Remember That The Only True Failure Is In The Lack Of Trying

Creating a successful Tezos event is all about harnessing the power of community, innovation, and careful planning. From conceptualizing your idea to executing a well-structured plan, every step is crucial in ensuring a positive impact on the Tezos ecosystem. Engaging with the community, leveraging social media, and collaborating with partners and sponsors will help you amplify your event’s reach and significance. Remember, every event, big or small, contributes to the vibrant and dynamic Tezos ecosystem, fostering growth and connection within this decentralized space. Leap into your intent, embrace the challenges, and you will likely watch your Tezos event flourish. Your efforts are a valuable addition to the community. Happy event planning!

Events4Tez was originally published in Tezos Commons on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A closer look at a new login feature from StakeNow enabling users to utilize their Tezos accounts to sign in to services and decentralized applications (dApps).

We’re all probably familiar with traditional sign-in methods like Google, Facebook, etc. We click sign in, and we may get a message asking questions about collected data. Then, we’re logged in.

We should also have the same experience with blockchain services and dApps. Using the standards widely adopted by solutions such as Sign-in-With-Ethereum, SIWT enables builders to incorporate the same feature into their dApps and services. Having a one click sign in is a pretty convenient feature.

Let’s explore SIWT and how you can get started using it today.

What is SIWT?

SIWT is a library that simplifies access control for developers and users, supporting the development of Tezos-based dApps and services. SIWT allows users to authenticate by proving they own the private key corresponding to their Tezos address by signing a message, which the dApp verifies to grant access.

SIWT can also add permissions based on on-chain data, such as tez holdings or specific transaction histories. This allows dApps to control access to APIs or backend services based on on-chain Tezos data. This can expand to other things such as NFT holdings, allow-lists for an upcoming mint, and more.

Several sites have already implemented SIWT with the Discourse plugin. If you visit the Tezos Agora forum, you can sign in with your Tezos wallet.

After clicking the “Sign-in with Tezos” option, you’ll be prompted to a screen with four boxes hovering over the option to continue the process. Don’t worry about those boxes; this is a CSS glitch that will be updated in the coming days. Clicking “Sign-in with Tezos” once more will provide you with a beacon auth, choose the Tezos wallet you use.

After doing so, you’ll be redirected to your wallet of choice. In my case, I used Kukai. You’ll be prompted to sign some messages, and as you create a new account, you’ll be directed to enter your email and other details, such as a username or optional full name. Upon completing these items and clicking “sign up,” you can now sign in with Tezos on Tezos Agora!

Sign-in with Tezos is also available on Teia’s forum. You can follow the steps above to create an account and sign in with your Tezos wallet. Suppose you already have an account on Tezos Agora. In that case, you can follow the same process above, except heading to your preferences under the summary page of your profile. This option will be visible as “SIWT” under associated accounts.

Chain Agnostic Standardization and Compliance

For something like we’ve shown above, as a user, we may feel as if there’s not a lot going on here. Sign in and enter a few details for forum access, and that’s about it, right? That would be quite far from the truth.

The StakeNow team and Klas Harrysson of Kukai are behind a new TZIP (Tezos Improvement Proposal), TZIP-33. TZIPs play an essential part in virtually any component of the Tezos ecosystem that does not affect the network itself. Those things would fall under a protocol upgrade. TZIPs affect complementary parts of the Tezos ecosystem, particularly new features, specifications, or standards.

The new TZIP, currently in draft status, describes the motivation and workflow for SIWT. One of the primary pieces to showcase here is how SIWT is adapted from much of the legwork done with Sign-in with Ethereum, EIP-4361. One piece in particular, chain-agnostic standards, such as CAIP-122, were an important part of SIWT.

Roy Scheeren of StakeNow shared a few words about this with me in a chat.

This basically describes how the sign-in message should look like. What they tried to do is set a certain set of standards amongst all blockchains, enabling consistency. For message signing, about 95–98% of what Sign-in with Ethereum had researched has been taken as the standard. So we took the Tezos specific things and made a improvement proposal that is Tezos specific and adheres to all the chain agnostic standards.

What we’ve essentially done is make a proof of concept of how you can use OIDC with Sign-in with Tezos. OIDC is a standardized flow of a secure authentication and authorization. If you’ve used Google, GitHub, or Microsoft accounts all of them provide their own sign in options. Many of these providers will provide an OIDC flow, so if you have a provider you can use the exact same flow, structure, and securities that come with it.

Using Ory Hydra, the StakeNow team has selected them as their OIDC provider. This provider is being used to provide proof of concept, which you can see live on their main site. By heading to the site, click “Sign-in with ODIC” and begin using the PoC. Simply choose the Tezos wallet you use from the beacon auth window that populates. You’ll then be prompted to sign a message after connecting your Tezos wallet on the screen and within the Tezos wallet. After that, you can now “complete sign in” and finish the OIDC PoC!

If you want to implement secure message signing for your dApp/service, you can integrate SIWT today. However, as mentioned above, if you want standardized auth flow you will also need an OIDC provider. You can still use it without it. Implementing a signature following CAIP standards can be done without the requirement of OIDC. The functionality to integrate SIWT has been there for some time for client server side authentication, these standards and frameworks take it a step further than when I previously wrote about it, Introducing Sign In With Tezos (SIWT) from StakeNow.

Regarding implementing chain agnostic standards such as CAIP-122, we can see how other builders in the ecosystem have built their own solutions and could benefit from having such standards around message signing. For instance, if you sign a message on OBJKT, you may notice that the message you must sign on fx(hash) looks different. The ecosystem could benefit from aligning with these chain-agnostic standards across dApps and NFT marketplaces.

Final Thoughts

Expanding on their previous work, StakeNow has implemented standardization around SIWT with CAIP-122 and the authorship of a new TZIP, TZIP-33. You can implement secure message signing for your dApp/service today. Make sure to enable SIWT on the Tezos Agora or Teia forum, or head over to their documentation and start integrating SIWT today!

A Closer Look At Sign-in With Tezos (SIWT) was originally published in Tezos Commons on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A breakdown of OrganicGrowth and the memecoin craze!

The Tezos ecosystem has a history of unexpected innovations, where new dApps suddenly emerge, attracting users, generating excitement, and providing immense fun. Those who were around in previous years might remember such cases like MagicButton, the Taco Wars, TzColors, Mandalas, or even the best example that everyone knows, Hic Et Nunc.

Well in this article, I want to highlight one such dApp built on Etherlink, which, since its recent launch, has brought a wave of enjoyment to Tezos users and beyond. This dApp is none other than OrganicGrowth. So let’s take a look at what OrganicGrowth is, and the cool things you can do on this meme-tastic platform.

What is OrganicGrowth?

OrganicGrowth.wtf is the first dApp launched on the Etherlink mainnet, and it specializes in all aspects of meme coins. Whether you want to easily create a meme token, trade, or airdrop, OrganicGrowth offers a seamless solution with a user-friendly interface that makes the entire process enjoyable and straightforward.

Although the team behind OrganicGrowth remains anonymous, the project is open-source, with the code available for anyone with the expertise to inspect and verify its integrity. Also, by observing discussions on Telegram and Twitter we can understand that the creator of OrganicGrowth who goes by the pseudonym “General Chad”, has a long history with Tezos, indicating that they are experienced and not newcomers to the scene.

With that in mind, let’s get into the platform and explore the various features it offers and how you can utilize them! As a caveat, like always, do your own research and proceed with caution.

Connecting a Wallet

If you are new to Etherlink, the first steps to start interacting with OrganicGrowth involve connecting a wallet and bridging some tez from your Layer 1 Tezos wallet to your Etherlink wallet.

The options for wallet connection on OrganicGrowth are:

Option 1: Connect with your existing EVM wallet, such as Metamask, that is already set on the Etherlink mainnet network. This wallet will be used to sign all transactions.

Option 2: Connect with your usual Tezos wallet (e.g., Kukai, Temple, Umami) or a social account (e.g., Twitter, Gmail). A new EVM wallet will be created for you through the platform’s “thirdweb” integration. This new EVM wallet will have an address starting with “0x…”, but you will sign all transactions using your Tezos wallet or social account, depending on your choice.

Bridging Your Tez

Once connected, you’ll need to send some tez to your Etherlink address to cover transaction fees and to start interacting with the platform. Follow these steps:

Go to the “Bridge” Tab.

Connect a Tezos Wallet (If you connected with a Tezos wallet initially, you won’t need to reconnect.)

Choose the amount of tez you want to bridge and click the deposit button. Your tez should be bridged to your EVM address within a few seconds.

After bridging your tez, you’re all set to start exploring and using OrganicGrowth.

Trading Meme Tokens

Trading meme tokens on OrganicGrowth is very straightforward. On the main page, you’ll find a list of all the available tokens, which you can sort by market cap, creation date, or recent trades. Clicking on a token brings up its detailed page, featuring info, a price history chart, recent buys and sells, and the Buy/Sell buttons at the top right.

When you’re ready to buy a token, just enter the amount you want and hit the Buy button. Selling is just as simple — click the Sell button, enter how much you want to sell, and confirm. It’s straightforward and user-friendly, making meme token trading a breeze.

It’s important to mention that while meme token trading is all the rage these days, blending humor, internet culture, and the thrill of investing, their prices often soar or plummet based on social media buzz and market hype, making them exciting but also highly unpredictable investments. So just like with anything crypto-related, make sure you do your own research.

One thing I always suggest with new platforms is to play around with tiny amounts that you wouldn’t mind losing. This way, you can figure out how things work and start building some experience without risking an arm and a leg.

Creating a Meme Token

Besides trading meme tokens, OrganicGrowth makes it super easy to create your own token as well. Here’s how it works:

Go to the “Create” tab.

Upload an image.

Fill in the name and the ticker for your token.

Type a description.

Select the amount of tokens you want to buy for yourself.

Click “Submit” and watch the magic happen.

The initial supply for your token is fixed at 1 billion tokens, and as the creator, you get the advantage of being the first to buy. The cost for creating a token is 2 tez.

The great thing about creating a token through OrganicGrowth is that you don’t need to add any liquidity for it to start trading. The platform has a clever way of bootstrapping your token by creating a virtual pool where 80% of the supply starts trading with a “virtual” market cap of 4200 tez. Every purchase increases its price and the first goal is to reach a market cap of 69,000 tez. To reach that, people must buy these tokens for a total of approximately 14,000 tez.

When the token hits a market cap of 69,000 tez, the virtual pool switches to a standard Uniswap V2-like pool where the ~14,000 tez gathered from the bootstrap period along with the 20% of your token’s supply that is left, are used as the real initial liquidity. This process ensures a fair launch for all tokens, making sure even the creator has to buy in rather than hoarding the supply.

Airdrops

Last but not least, OrganicGrowth has an integrated airdrop mechanism that makes it easy to airdrop any of the tokens you own, whether you’re the creator or not, to holders of NFT collections or tokens on the Tezos layer 1. Here’s how it works:

First, go to the page of the token you want to airdrop (e.g., Etherlonk) and click the “Create Airdrop” button at the top. Remember, you need to hold that token to see the button. Once clicked, you’ll be taken to the airdrop creation page where you can fill in the details and set the parameters. You’ll need to input the smart contract address of the token whose holders will receive the airdrop and specify the number of tokens to be airdropped. After that, by clicking the “more options” button, you can choose whether each holder gets an equal allocation or if they must hold a minimum amount of the token to qualify.

Finally, by adjusting the “scale” number, you can decide if the airdrop should go to all holders or be distributed to a portion of holders with larger amounts on a first-come, first-serve basis. Once you have set all the parameters, hit the “Submit” button and your airdrop will be on its way!

While currently, you can only airdrop to holders of tokens on Tezos, it has been stated that they plan to add the option to airdrop to holders of tokens on other chains as well. This will be very helpful in attracting users from outside the Tezos ecosystem.

That’s all for today folks! While diving into meme tokens can be a wild ride with big ups and big downs, the potential for high returns keeps people coming back for more. There are many tokens that started as jokes but quickly gained massive followings thanks to their fun communities and their early investors made great returns.

Just remember, it’s essential to stay informed and be cautious, as the market can be risky, and scams do exist. But with a bit of savvy and a good sense of humor, trading meme tokens can be a fun and rewarding adventure.

Personally, I’m excited to see the meme coin scene on Etherlink and Tezos growing, with OrganicGrowth leading the way. If you’re curious to try it out, I hope this guide helps you get started. Remember to always do your own research and if you’re ever unsure about something, don’t hesitate to ask questions! There’s an active and helpful Telegram community around OrganicGrowth, so be sure to join to learn more and get your questions answered.

Unveiling OrganicGrowth: The Meme Coin Revolution on Etherlink and Tezos was originally published in Tezos Commons on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Tezos, like Thanos collecting Infinity Stones, continually integrates new features and innovations, each one amplifying its power and versatility in the blockchain universe.

Hello Tezos community! As we bask in the heat of these summer days and ride the high of Tez/Dev, we have some exhilarating news to share. Baanx and Tezos are kicking off this week’s headlines with the launch of the first non-custodial on-chain payment card. This innovative card, powered by Etherlink, a Smart Rollup blockchain on Tezos, marks a significant milestone in our journey towards a more decentralized future.

A New Era of Financial Freedom

Baanx is merging the best of traditional finance with the innovative spirit of Web3, giving users a powerful tool that’s not only functional but also secure. This isn’t just another crypto card—it’s a gateway to a more decentralized, user-controlled financial ecosystem. Imagine being able to use your crypto assets for everyday purchases, with the confidence that you hold full control over your funds.

The Power of Non-Custodial Payments

What sets this card apart from the rest? It’s all about non-custodial management. With this card, you’re not handing over control of your assets to a third party. Instead, you keep your private keys secure, dramatically reducing the risk of hacks and unauthorized access. In essence, it’s your keys, your crypto.

Key Features

Self-Custody: Say goodbye to third-party custodians. With account abstraction, you have complete control over your crypto assets.

Fast and Affordable Transactions: Etherlink, the EVM-compatible layer 2 blockchain, ensures sub-second block times and low gas fees, making real-time payments practical and cheap.

Financial Inclusion: Lower fees and fast transactions open doors for the unbanked, providing advanced financial services to anyone with a mobile phone.

User-Friendly Interface: The intuitive UI makes it easy to link wallets, set spending limits, and manage funds, even for non-technical users.

Decentralization: Tezos Smart Rollups bring high decentralization, eliminating the need for complex smart contract workarounds and centralized sequencers.

Seamless Integration and Usage

Available in both physical and virtual formats, including compatibility with Google and Apple Pay, this card is designed for versatility. Whether you're making online purchases, shopping in-store, or withdrawing cash from an ATM, the Baanx card handles it all with ease. Users can link their wallets quickly and manage their spending effortlessly.

Bridging the Gap Between Web2 and Web3

The Baanx card is more than just a payment solution; it’s a bridge between traditional finance and the decentralized future. By integrating with popular wallets like Ledger, Exodus, Trust Wallet, and 1inch, Baanx is paving the way for mass adoption of crypto payments. With plans to expand globally, Baanx aims to attract one million users within the next year, bringing the benefits of non-custodial crypto payments to a worldwide audience.

Looking Ahead

This pioneering solution addresses major pain points in the current financial system, offering a secure, accessible, and cost-effective alternative to traditional banking. It’s a bold step forward, not just for Tezos and Baanx, but for the entire crypto community.

For more insights, don't miss our TezTalks interview with Baanx, where we dive deeper into this groundbreaking initiative. You can also learn more about Baanx’s new venture from our detailed article here.

Etherlink Momentum: Rarible's Exclusive BattleRise Drop

Continuing from our exciting news about Baanx, Etherlink's momentum keeps growing with an exclusive drop on Rarible that you won't want to miss. Tomorrow, BattleRise Game’s Founders Pass will be available for mint on Rarible.

What’s Happening?

Rarible has announced an exclusive drop tomorrow featuring the highly anticipated BattleRise Founders Pass. BattleRise, a captivating free-to-play and earn game inspired by Dungeons & Dragons, offers immersive mobile gameplay with live PvP battles and tournaments. This drop is a significant milestone for Etherlink, demonstrating its growing influence and integration within the NFT and gaming communities.

Key Details

Drop Schedule:

Allow List Mint: 9:30 AM ET

Public Mint: 12:30 PM ET

Game Overview: BattleRise combines the thrill of Dungeons & Dragons with mobile gaming, creating an engaging play-to-earn experience. Players can participate in live PvP battles and tournaments, earning rewards as they progress through the game.

Learn More: For more information on BattleRise and the exclusive drop, visit Rarible.

Join the Conversation

To celebrate this exciting drop, Rarible is hosting an AMA tomorrow where you can learn everything you need to know about BattleRise and this exclusive Etherlink drop. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to engage with the community and get your questions answered.

AMA Schedule:

Time: 6:30 AM

Location: BattleRise AMA

This Week in the Tezos Ecosystem

TZ Apex Season 1: Get Ready for the Finale!

As we shift our focus this week’s headlines, let's dive into the ongoing TZ Apex Season 1 by TZ APAC. This community rewards program is designed for early adopters of new Tezos projects, offering a chance to earn experience points (EXP) and redeem them for incredible rewards.

Season 1 of TZ Apex ends on July 31

Join TZ Apex by TZ APAC, a community rewards program for early adopters of new Tezos projects. Complete quests on the DMission platform, earn EXP, and redeem them for rewards. Join Here

What's Up for Grabs?

Up to $10,000 in rewards are available as you become the first to experience the latest and most exciting projects building on Tezos.

Rewards Breakdown

Up to 3,000 tez

An artwork NFT from Indonesian artist Tommy Chandra, whose work has been showcased at Art Moments Jakarta. Tommy is known as Google’s first doodle artist and has collaborated with brands like Coca Cola, ELLE, and Nissan.

Exclusive TZ APAC Artist Collaboration T-Shirts featuring breathtaking artworks by:

Bjorn Calleja: A Filipino contemporary painter and interdisciplinary artist featured in events like Art Basel Hong Kong.

Arya Mularama: An Indonesian artist inspired by comic books, skateboard culture, and '90s pop culture. His artwork was featured in Times Square during NFT NYC, and his GOGOS collaboration sold out quickly.

Mumu the stan: A Malaysian visual artist and poet whose works have been showcased at Art Basel Miami and recognized by Tatler. Her first NFT collector? Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park fame.

Extra EXP boost for the next season of TZ Apex to win more rewards.

Season 1 Details

Season 1 Duration: June 14 - July 31, 2024

At the end of each season, participants are credited with APEX points at a 1:1 ratio with their accumulated EXP. To qualify, a minimum of 500 EXP per season is required. These APEX points can then be used to draw from the gacha and redeem various rewards.

TZ Apex offers a unique opportunity for the Tezos community to engage with new projects and earn fantastic rewards. Whether you’re a collector, artist, or general Tezos enthusiast, this program is designed to bring the community together and celebrate the spirit of Tezos.

For full details, check out the official TZ Apex page

TezTones Artletics Premier League: Season 2 Kicks Off!

From Season 1 with TZ Apex, we’re jumping forward with Season 2 from TezTones. TezTones Artletics Premier League Season 2, beginning with Draft Day on August 6th at 11am PT promises to be even more exciting with 12 teams of 4 artists, featuring a total of 24 audio artists and 24 visual artists.

What's New This Season?

New and Returning Teams: We'll see the formation of new teams as well as the return of some favorites from last season.

Live Matches: This season will feature live matches where two teams will go head-to-head during a 4-hour live stream, creating pieces of art based on a common theme.

Pre-Season Match: After the draft, teams will have one pre-season match to get accustomed to the season format.

Regular Season: The regular season will span 12 weeks, with each team playing a match every other week. In rare cases, teams may have back-to-back matches, resulting in a total of 6 matches per team.

Post-Season: The top 6 teams will move on to the post-season, consisting of 3 additional weeks of matches to determine our Season 2 champions!

Key Dates

Draft Day: August 6th, 11am PT

Season Duration: August 6th - December 21st

Final Match: December 21st

Join us for an exciting season of creativity and competition. Whether you are an artist or a fan, TezTones Season 2 is an event you won’t want to miss!

For more details and to sign up, visit TezTones Sign Up.

This Week in Tezos Development

Launch of the New Tezos Developer Portal

The newly revamped Tezos Developer Portal is live! This redesigned hub is a one-stop destination for developers looking to dive into the Tezos ecosystem. With a more intuitive interface and extensive resources, it simplifies the journey for both new and seasoned developers.

Key Features:

Tezos Developer Docs: Detailed guides and tutorials.

OpenTezos: Technical and economic concepts.

Octez Suite: Implementation guides.

Frameworks and Libraries: Tools for application development.

Languages: Support for multiple languages.

Etherlink: Documentation on this non-custodial scaling solution.

Explore the portal and start building on Tezos today at Tezos Developer Portal.

🔴 NOW STREAMING — TezTalks Radio: Johnny Dean Mann

Tune in as Johnny shares his fascinating journey into the Web3 art world and the creation of The Tickle. Discover the early days of NFTs and how Tezos has impacted the digital art community. Johnny dives deep into the evolution of The Tickle from a weekly 15-page publication to a comprehensive monthly magazine that documents the NFT art space's growth.

In this episode, you'll hear Johnny's take on:

The current state and evolution of the Tezos art scene, including the role of platforms like FXHash.

The importance of balancing recognition for established artists while supporting emerging talent.

Johnny also discusses the Tezos Foundation's role in supporting the art ecosystem and offers insights on how the community can support The Tickle magazine.

Now Streaming Everywhere:

Spotify, Apple, Amazon Music | YouTube | X

Powered by beehiiv

A nostalgic 2D shooter game with strategic aiming and movement, Chestnut brings real-time competitive gaming to Tezos.

Chestnut: A chaotic, free-for-all PvP multiplayer browser game

Using an aesthetic similar to early Super Nintendo Entertainment System (“SNES”) titles like Secret of Mana or Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, players will find themselves battling with monsters and players while earning tez (talk about that nostalgia feeling!). The most current alpha version features a shop, several tournament events, and a practice mode.

Connecting your Tezos wallet is quick and easy. Click on Connect Wallet, and a pop-up of the most common beacon wallets will display. Select your preferred wallet from the display, and your browser will load into the main game screen. From here, you can check out the currently active tournaments, open the shop to make purchases, or dive into a live practice round.

Chestnut Shop: All prices are in tez

The shop only stocks three items. To open the shop, navigate to the bottom of the page where your inventory is displayed and click the shop button. The Acorn and Super Acorn items heal HP while the SAP Potion restores your SAP bar. If you need extra help on the battlefield, purchasing items from the shop will help.

The current tournament events are in a promotional phase and are free to enter. Click join on the event you wish to participate in and confirm the zero fee cost of entry. You will automatically register for the event, and it will appear in your Subscribed Events tab. Available prize pools, player pools, and event names are by date.

The Player’s HP, SAP meter, and earned tez during the battle.

Practice mode starts by clicking the practice button in the top left. A display in the top right will show how many active monsters are in the level and how many other players are already playing the map. New players will start the practice game next to a glowing circular portal. Choosing to head into the portal will return the player to the game menu. Be warned, if you stay here for any length of time, bullets will begin raining down from the top of the screen.

Using the large field filled with obstacles, players will use their keyboard to maneuver and use special moves, which require SAP energy, to speed around. Aiming quickly with your mouse, you can fire off an arrow by tapping the left mouse button or, instead, long-press for a heavier shot. Remember, when charging up the shot, you cannot move and will be left vulnerable on the battlefield. With a limited number of HP, represented by hearts, the challenge will become outlasting and escaping the map before you run out of hearts.

Practice mode

In tournament events, players compete against each other, fighting against NPC monsters to collect and escape the battlefield without losing all their HP. Players will be dropped randomly somewhere on the map and may need to explore a bit to find their way around. Between other players and monsters, everything is out to get you. If you run out of hearts, you will drop everything you have collected in the run.

Once you have earned some tez from downing a monster or collecting the dropped rewards of an unlucky player, find the glowing circular portal to escape the map and transfer those rewards to your account. Earned rewards accumulate at the top of the main game menu. Join the tournament again to repeat the process until the end of the event.

Upcoming tournaments in Chestnut

Whether you are in for the thrill of tournaments or just looking to practice, Chestnut promises a fast-paced and exciting experience for players. Chestnut offers an engaging mix of nostalgia and modern competitive gameplay integrated and powered by Tezos. Jump in, connect your wallet, and see if you have what it takes to dominate the battlefield. For more information follow their discord and Twitter. Come play, battle, and win some prizes. I can’t wait to see you on the battlefields!

Chestnut: A Nostalgic Live-Action PVP Arena Battler Built On Tezos was originally published in Tezos Commons on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A closer look at Baanx and their plans to launch a non-custodial payment card for Tezos on Etherlink.

Crypto debit cards have been around for a while. I've personally used a Coinbase Card, and many other popular custodial options have emerged over the years. Baanx focuses on non-custodial options and has worked with industry heavyweights such as Ledger, 1inch, MetaMask, and giant payment networks like MasterCard.

They recently announced their plans to launch a non-custodial payment card utilizing Etherlink, Tezos' new Layer-2 EVM-compatible network currently in mainnet beta. In this article, let's explore Baanx more and highlight their plans for Tezos.

What is Baanx?

Baanx is a fintech platform that offers a variety of financial services for businesses to adopt in today's digital age. From Virtual IBANs, debit cards, payment gateways, digital assets, compliance solutions like KYC and AML, and more, Baanx is a one-stop shop for helping businesses navigate the murky waters of traditional fiat and digital asset technologies.

If you've been exposed to crypto for some time now, you've probably used a hardware wallet before. If not, feel free to read our piece on safe practices. Baanx received FCA approval to undertake crypto asset activities in January 2022 and they’ve been pushing for widespread adoption ever since. One of the things Baanx has worked on exclusively was becoming the provider of the Crypto Life (CL) card, which was introduced and powered by Ledger.

Ledger is the most popular hardware wallet producer, next to Trezor. The card is only available for UK and EEA residents, but there are plans to support US residents at some point. Baanx has also worked with MasterCard and 1inch to create another "1inch card" card and MetaMask.

Clearly, Baanx knows a thing or two about what they're doing if industry heavyweights and major payment networks like MasterCard work alongside them. But don't take it just from me. We had Simon Jones, Baanx's Chief Commercial Officer, on our TezTalks Live show, who shared insights on Baanx's vision and longer-term thinking.

Technology is global, it works anywhere and you can plug into the internet. The payments aren’t; the financial services are. So, we live in this world where the world is very big but it’s increasingly getting smaller. One of the vestiges of this non-reformed sector is in financial services. So, I think if you look at that from a platform perspective and anyone out there trying to build something or create a business, there’s a huge amount of friction. Looking at the companies that kind of conquered the world, Google, Apple, Meta, etc. None of these guys have ever tried to come to this arena. That’s because obviously the way in which this arena is designed is unduly complicated. So, that’s the first point.

I think the second point is this whole idea of, hey, I give my money to someone, so I have to put it somewhere. But, then I have to pay them to get it back, pay when I want to go and pay them, or someone else has to pay to receive my money. That doesn’t make any sense to me. It’s just illogical; you’ll always have some level of a fee because, at the end of the day, it’s a business. But why should somebody else get to dictate what exchange rate I get or what interest rate I get? Or what will it cost me to make a payment? That doesn’t make any sense, that should be my decision. If I want to pay a certain way I should be able to press that button. If I want to send money a certain way, I should be able to press that button. If I want to put my savings somewhere and earn a certain yield on it, I should be able to pick, you know, five providers, not one. So, that kind of closed architecture of the system is really a huge drag…

It really makes you think. Things shouldn't be this unnecessarily complicated. In the same sense, anyone can use the internet with a phone or device; there should be that frictionless environment for sending payments.

Make sure to listen to the full episode for more of Simon's insight and why Baanx believes that will be the case!

Baanx and Tezos Collaboration

We first learned about the Tezos Foundation and overall collaborative efforts with Baanx in 2020. Earlier in the year, we were treated to some news about a Series A funding round with Tezos Foundation as one of the participating investors. Per the press release, the focus is primarily on gaining support in the US and Latin American regions this year, where their flagship product, the CL card, has only UK and EEA support.

Over a week ago, we learned in another press release that Baanx is working on a Tezos-branded non-custodial crypto debit card utilizing Etherlink. Once live, transactions will make use of the Etherlink network to allow cheap and fast payments. In its current mainnet beta stage, Etherlink boasts impressive stats such as sub-second confirmation times and nearly free gas fees. This is exactly the scale you'd need to see for a major crypto debit card.

There are a few things we should also understand here, especially as far as crypto debit cards go. Baanx's Tezos card will be non-custodial. If we look at the most available crypto debit cards, they are all primarily custodial (Coinbase, Crypto.com, etc). In fact, if you remember, BlockFi, Celsius, and others all offered some of these custodial cards in the heyday. We saw what unfortunately unfolded with them.

This is an inherent risk you take with custodial solutions. While technically, you have full control over your assets within the exchange where you hold them, such as Coinbase. If something ever happened to Coinbase and other custodial companies, there would be a great chance that you would lose access to your assets.

Baanx's solution uses cold storage and non-custodial solutions like your hardware wallet. Take their CL card, for instance. Using your Ledger Live account, all you have to do is make sure your accounts are linked and choose an asset to fund the card. You make all the decisions; no intermediary on the other side ensures the transaction is okay. This is about the same level of experience we can probably expect for the Tezos card.

For some deeper insights, be sure to check out the latest TezTalks episode with Simon Jones and the X space with Siddharth Singhal, the BD lead at Trilitech!

Final Thoughts

As far as crypto debit cards go, no one in the market has the expertise with flagship products like the CL card quite like Baanx. Working alongside MasterCard, 1inch, and MetaMask, Baanx brings a wealth of experience to their work on the non-custodial payment card for Tezos. Taking place on Etherlink, it will be exciting to see Etherlink officially launch on the mainnet from its present mainnet beta stage and have a neat way to use crypto for everyday purchases.

Baanx's New Venture: A Tezos Non-Custodial Payment Card on Etherlink was originally published in Tezos Commons on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A look into the key moments of my TezDev 2024 experience.

This month, we witnessed the largest Tezos event of the year: TezDev 2024. This annual flagship conference for Tezos, brings together developers, enthusiasts, project founders, and various members of the Tezos ecosystem to discuss, showcase, and learn about the latest updates. Most importantly, it provides an opportunity to connect in a vibrant environment filled with passionate Tezos enthusiasts.

Having had the privilege to attend this event, I am eager to share some of the highlights from my experience. Let’s explore some of the most exciting moments at the conference.

Arthur’s Keynote speech

One of the most anticipated sessions of TezDev 2024 was the keynote speech by Arthur Breitman, co-founder of Tezos. Arthur’s speech provided a comprehensive overview of the newly announced Tezos X vision, detailing how it aims to tackle the current limitations of the blockchain space. He articulated how Tezos X is designed to enhance adoption by appealing to institutions, developers, and users beyond just the traditional blockchain community.

Tezos X’s key deliveries in performance, interoperability, and composability will extend the benefits of blockchain beyond just censorship-resistance, which has been the main benefit so far. With capabilities like millions of transactions per second (TPS) at very low fees, elimination of fragmentation, and sustained decentralization, Tezos X will allow industries such as finance, gaming, and arts & culture to flourish even more with features and experiences that weren’t possible until now due to blockchain limitations.

I highly recommend watching the entire speech on YouTube, as Arthur’s insights are invaluable for anyone interested in the future of blockchain technology.

Jstz (“Justice”) rollup — Presentation and demo by Beata Lipska

One of the pivotal milestones on the journey to TezosX is the recently announced Jstz (pronounced “Justice”) rollup. This innovative development enables programmers to build using JavaScript. A highlight of the event, in my view, was the incredibly fun presentation and demonstration of this rollup by Trilitech’s amazing Developer Advocate, Beata Lipska.

Beata discussed the immense power and widespread popularity of JavaScript, emphasizing how Jstz could serve as an entry point to blockchain technology for the 23+ million active JavaScript developers worldwide. She provided an update on the current progress of Jstz and conducted a live demonstration showcasing its functionality and interaction capabilities using the local sandbox, which is accessible for anyone interested in experimenting with it.

Beata concluded her presentation with a call to action, urging developers to explore the available tools and provide feedback, as it is crucial for the project’s success. If you are a JavaScript developer or know someone who is, be sure to check out the documentation and join the “Justice League” of TezosX!

Tezos X — An in-depth look by Yann Régis-Gianas

While Arthur’s keynote speech focused on the vision and implications of TezosX, we were also treated to an in-depth exploration of its design and technical aspects by Yann Régis-Gianas, the Head of Engineering at Nomadic Labs.

Yann discussed the ongoing changes, such as the new RISC-V engine that is being actively worked on by the core developers, which will serve as an alternative Proof-Generating Virtual Machine (PVM), explaining why these developments are necessary. He broke down each component of the final design, illustrating how everything fits together. Yann emphasized that this is not merely a roadmap in its early stages but one where many milestones have already been achieved, bringing us closer to realizing the vision of TezosX.

For example, key elements like Smart Rollups, the Data Availability Layer (DAL), Etherlink, and Jstz are all crucial stepping stones on this roadmap that are well past the “to-do” phase. TezosX is coming, and I couldn’t be more hyped about it.

Networking

In a physical Tezos event, I couldn’t overlook the exceptional networking opportunities. This year at TezDev, over 400 attendees gathered, including developers, artists, members from various Tezos teams, project founders, and enthusiasts, all eager to learn and connect with the community.

The venue had an excellent layout, making it easy for attendees to take breaks and mingle with fellow Tezonians who share the same passion. The event’s schedule was notably better planned compared to last year, with plenty of breaks for networking without missing key speeches and presentations.

During the lunch break and the afterparty, I personally met and connected with over 40 people I had interacted with online for a long time. These face-to-face connections provided me with a deeper understanding of the people in our community as people get to open up more when they get to know you better.

Side Events

Adding to the networking opportunities, it’s worth mentioning that besides the main TezDev event, there were several Tezos-related side events organized in the days leading up to TezDev. I personally attended two of these: Art on Tezos x Artcrush and Degen Night Market.

Art on Tezos x Artcrush, hosted by Trilitech and the Artcrush gallery, showcased artworks from 20 different Tezos artists. Attendees enjoyed drinks and engaged in discussions with fellow art enthusiasts.

Degen Night Market was more of a party event, co-hosted by Etherlink and Baanx alongside 1inch and Hexens. This event provided a fun atmosphere and an excellent opportunity to connect with people outside our “crypto bubble.”

Both events were packed and, in my opinion, served as great warm-ups for the main event.

Final Thoughts

TezDev 2024 has truly exceeded all my expectations, leaving me even more hyped up and optimistic about the future of Tezos than I already was. The energy, innovation, and collaboration I witnessed have reaffirmed my belief in the tremendous potential of Tezos. The keynote speeches, especially from Arthur Breitman and Yann Régis-Gianas, have painted a clear and exciting picture of what lies ahead with Tezos X.

I am eagerly anticipating the recorded sessions to be uploaded, and I strongly encourage everyone to watch them. The insights shared are invaluable and will undoubtedly fuel your enthusiasm for Tezos.

The passion and dedication of the community are unparalleled, and the networking opportunities alone made the event worth attending. There is something truly special about meeting fellow Tezonians in person, sharing ideas, and forging connections that can only happen in a physical setting.

If you couldn’t make it to TezDev 2024, I highly recommend trying to attend future physical Tezos events whenever that’s possible. They provide an unmatched platform to learn, connect, and grow within the ecosystem. Let’s continue to support and build this vibrant community together. See you all next year!

My TezDev 2024 Highlights. was originally published in Tezos Commons on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Special thanks to the Tezos community for creating such an epic experience at Tez/Dev. It was great connecting with and meeting with you all!

Tez/Dev 2024: highlights

Welcome Tezos Community to this week’s edition of the Baking Sheet! Let’s kick off the headlines with highlights from Tez/Dev by Thiago Earp

The week of TezDev 2024 has been Tezos at its finest. The flagship Tezos conference, coupled with a series of side events, has brought together community members, builders, and enthusiasts to learn, network, and showcase the best of Tezos and Web3.

Beyond the main event, two side events and over 1,000 billboards showcasing Tezos artists have taken Brussels by storm during the week-long celebration of Web3.

TezDev 2024 in numbers

TezDev 2024 was a success by any measure, showcasing the growth and enthusiasm within the Tezos community. Held at the prestigious Royal Library of Belgium, this year’s event saw nearly double the attendance compared to 2023 – reflecting increasing participation from the Tezos ecosystem.

The conference was a hub of activity, featuring an array of sessions, booths, and speakers that kept attendees engaged from morning till night:

11 hours of bustling activity (from 10 am to 9 pm)

11 sessions, including talks, fireside chats, and demos

14 booths showcasing ecosystem projects

18 speakers including keynote, panels, and presentations

420 attendees to the main event

270 attendees to the afterparty

Here’s a recap with some of the key highlights from the week.

Tezos X: a proposed roadmap

The grand vision for Tezos X permeated and extended to all corners of the event with a bold and fresh perspective that stirred conversations throughout the week.

On the main stage of the flagship event, Tezos co-founder Arthur Breitman opened the day by presenting a proposed roadmap to Tezos X to hundreds of community members.

Yann Regis-Gianas, head of engineering at Nomadic Labs, followed suit with a deep dive into the roadmap until now and a look at the next two years of technical development of Tezos.

Etherlink’s “Hello, world” moment

Etherlink was a star in its own right, attracting literally hundreds of Ethereum enthusiasts to its EthCC booth. The EVM-compatible L2 has made its mark among dozens of other projects vying for the attention of passers-by.

One of the highlights of the Etherlink presence was Block Reflex: a fun, competitive match-pairs memory game rooted in the Etherlink mainnet. The fun little LoFi game has drawn over 500 players (and a whopping 10k+ attempts!) to try and get their names in the leaderboard.

Etherlink also took to the EthCC stage with Nomadic Labs’ Thomas Letan, who introduced the Tezos/Etherlink scaling model and its journey toward a Stage 2 rollup in front of an Ethereum audience.

Jstz: bringing JavaScript to Tezos

The recent unveiling of the Jstz vision was complemented by a brilliant introduction and humor-laden demonstration of a prototype by Trilitech Developer Advocate Beata Lipska.

Beata took the audience through a journey on the importance of language and developer experience, culminating in a step-by-step walkthrough on building a simple link shortener application using a JavaScript rollup.

Side events

In addition to the main event, Tezos was present in two side events alongside community and ecosystem participants.

On-chain Payment Networking and Drinks

Hosted by Baanx and the Etherlink team, the soiree brought together over 200 attendees at the Warwick Hotel, just a 2-minute walk from the EthCC conference venue, on Tuesday, July 9.

The event explored the latest innovations in non-custodial on-chain payment solutions with experts from CLC/Baanx, Tezos, and Etherlink. And of course, networking – and drinks.

Art on Tezos x Artcrush | Gallery Drinks

Co-hosted by Artcrush Gallery and Trilitech on Wednesday, July 10, the Art on Tezos show brought together over 200 attendees and 20 talented Tezos artists whose works were exhibited on more than 1,000 billboards across Belgium throughout the week.

The show celebrated their upcoming drop on Objkt, and featured an evening of discussion, drinks, and art.

Artists exhibited include: Mina Tahmasb Kazemi, Luciana Guerra, MARYAM, Noortje Stortelder, Edgar Fabian Frias, Vidal Herrera, Eraserhead & Mortezaaa, Simulacro, Hrant Khachatryan, Cozmonika, Quantum Spirit, Anastasia Mihaylova, Kamand Kavand, Lau, Mat Nova, paraxeno daimonio, Henrique Cartaxo - Augurs, Buba Viedma, mim_maryam, Antoine Doré, and was curated by Sendrock and UnknownCollector.

The road ahead

Reflecting on TezDev 2024, one can’t help but feel optimistic about the journey ahead for Tezos. The week’s events showcased the community’s commitment to pushing the envelope in blockchain technology.

From the ambitious Tezos X roadmap to the buzz around Etherlink and Jstz’s innovative JavaScript rollup blueprint, the future looks incredibly bright.

The strength and energy around the Tezos ecosystem are literally and figuratively portrayed by the vibrant arts community and a solid, ever-growing network of builders.

As we move forward, let’s build on the energy and ideas generated at TezDev 2024, continuing to innovate and collaborate. The horizon is vast, and with the Tezos community’s passion and ingenuity, the possibilities are endless. The future of Tezos is not just promising; it’s here, and it’s now.

Tezos Staking Contest: Onboarding More Stakers!

Let’s keep the momentum going from an incredible week in Brussels, this week we are excited to introduce the Tezos Staking Contest — a fantastic opportunity to onboard more stakers and grow the Tezos ecosystem.

Contest Details: Starting July 21 with Cycle 759, every 5 cycles, we will calculate the percentage increase in stake for all bakeries. The bakery with the highest percentage increase will be declared the winner. This contest will run for the next 20 cycles, providing ample opportunity for bakers to shine and attract new stakers to their pools.

Key Dates:

Start Date: July 21 (Cycle 759)

First Winner Announcement: August 7 (after Cycle 764 is completed)

Prize: The first winner will receive a custom-made NFT from a member of the Tezos arts community. This unique piece of digital art will be a testament to your success and contribution to the Tezos network.

This contest not only incentivizes bakers to attract more stakers but also highlights the vibrant and supportive Tezos community. Whether you are a seasoned baker or new to the staking game, this is your chance to make a mark and showcase your bakery's growth.

Ready, set, stake!

This Week in the Tezos Ecosystem

Etherlink Mainnet Beta's First Governance-Powered Kernel Upgrade

Exciting news from the Tezos ecosystem: Etherlink's mainnet beta is set to receive its first governance-powered regular kernel upgrade! This milestone marks a significant step forward for the decentralized governance of Etherlink, a layer 2 solution built on Tezos.

We invite all Tezos bakers to participate in this groundbreaking governance mechanism. By interacting with Etherlink's governance smart contracts on Layer 1, bakers can inject, upvote, and eventually promote the new proposed kernel.

To learn more about the new kernel upgrade and how to get involved, check out the latest blog post from Etherlink here.

Etherlink's governance mechanism takes heavy inspiration from Tezos Layer 1's on-chain governance, providing a unique opportunity for Tezos bakers. Not only can bakers govern Etherlink kernel upgrades, but they also have a say in deciding who gets to operate sequencers. This approach ensures a high level of decentralization and community involvement in the development and operation of Etherlink.

For more information on how to participate in Etherlink's governance, follow these links:

How to Participate in Governance

Tezos Agora: Overview of Etherlink's Decentralized Governance

Join us in this exciting journey towards a more decentralized future for Tezos and Etherlink!

🔴 Now Streaming: Building on Tezos | Baanx

Baanx is a next-generation service provider for digital asset-friendly financial services, currently co-launching its first Etherlink product within the Tezos ecosystem.

 What's on the Agenda?

Bringing crypto payments into the mainstream

Tezos-powered payment cards in development

Significant partnerships to enhance blockchain-powered payment solutions

The collaboration between Baanx and Etherlink

Now Streaming on YouTube | X

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A closer look at one of the latest Tezos games to pop up, Heroes of Holdem.

The Tezos gaming ecosystem is growing quickly. The latest monthly report shows a "558% surge in active gamers." Within that growth, many new games, such as Dragon Ninja and Heroes of Holdem, have come out that and I've just recently had the chance to play them.

This article will highlight Heroes of Holdem and show how to start playing.

What is Heroes of Holdem?

Heroes of Holdem is a digital card game that aims to use blockchain elements to enable players to have true ownership of in-game assets. If you've ever played Texas Hold 'em (poker), Heroes of Holdem takes a spin on it by introducing things such as abilities and magical equipment in between the traditional flop, turn, and river action of Texas Hold 'em.

In each event of Heroes of Holdem, you'll compete against other players for H$RO and Gem prizes, with seasonal leaderboard competitions offering additional rewards and unique cosmetic items. Whether you're into poker, collectible card games, RPGs, or mastering economic systems, the game offers diverse gameplay options.

In the game depicted above, I made it to a final table in the 9-player NPC mode. I went on to win the match, collecting 5 H$RO tokens, the game's in-game currency that can be used to purchase more characters, emotes, equipment, and more.

Let's show how you can start playing and some of the game's mechanics.

How Do I Play?

To start playing, head over to the website. You'll need to register an account for the site by providing your e-mail address, a username for your profile, and a password, and confirm the password once more. You can skip all this if you've already registered before or provide your new username and password to access your profile after completing the above.

Next, you'll see a screen like this prompting you to choose a game mode. I recommend the tutorial first; it helps you understand what you're doing and get accustomed to the gameplay. If you've played Texas Hold 'em poker before, you'll know what to do with little explanation.

As we can see, we have access to cards, and there's a health meter in the shape of a heart next to the number "2500." That number represents our chips and health. Heroes of Holdem takes a detour from regular Texas Hold 'em not only in a player's health but also in their chip stack and the ability to use the "ability phase."

As we can see, the ability phase we're introduced to is "identity," which allows us to expose a random card from our opponent's hand. The game has two types of abilities: Activate and Triggered. After playing the ability, we'll see the opponent has exposed a King card.

We'll then be prompted to use a new "Transmit Self" ability. The tutorial will ask us to select "pass" for the flop and turn. When we reach the river, we discover we are against a better hand, pocket kings. To save us from losing health (and chips), we can gamble by using the transmute self ability for a new set of cards to beat the opponent's kings.

After playing the ability, we learn that we struck a miracle out with two pair beating the opponent's top pair of kings.

The rest of the tutorial showcases triggered abilities. They can be played outside normal game phases (flop, turn, river), where only ability phases can be played. As we can see, we were hit with a fireball. We can then use a counterspell to negate the damage done by the opponent who cast the fireball attack.

Next, we learn about equipment. These activate during certain game states or simply on chance. In this instance, we have "War Drums". Similar to the fireball attack we experienced earlier, this piece of equipment will prevent all opponents from using such abilities in a single turn while allowing us to do so if we wish.

As such is the case in poker, you're prompted to use any edge on opponents, such as position. Thus, we raised with our advantage of the equipment, and everyone folded. Next, we can see the concept of minions. Our characters can introduce minions in-game; if they win a hand, we'll gain health and chips. The health notification and the bottom left corner tell us who our minion is.

Following this, we conclude the tutorial with pocket aces and rise victorious by eliminating the final player. We're rewarded with H$RO tokens, essentially in-game currency for placing high in events. These can purchase treasure chests, new abilities, equipment, minions, and even new characters.

Leaderboards and Marketplace

After the tutorial, we're ready to explore the other functions of the game. The first of those comes in the form of leaderboards. As we can see, there are prizes for your Hero rankings, with a $ prize pool in place for top finishers.

Scheduled events and Sit and Go (SNGs) tournaments offer H$RO tokens to top finishers. As this is in a beta phase, these tournaments will likely remain inactive.

Lastly, if we go to the top right corner next to our account username, we'll see the "Marketplace" tab. From there, we can purchase gems to collect more heroes, chests, emotes, and skins. Our collection and purchase history are also visible in the same tab. Alternatively, we can purchase the items above with H$RO tokens as well.

For more details, don't hesitate to visit the team's GitBook, where a visible roadmap for further Tezos integration and Web3 in-game components is located.

Final Thoughts

As a fellow poker player, I enjoyed playing this game. A few options I've encountered make it fun and add a new twist to an enjoyable game. Having abilities in-game to aid in a highly competitive and edge-based game is really cool to me. Make sure to get out there and give it a try yourself!

Inside The Heroes of Holdem Tezos Game was originally published in Tezos Commons on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Tezos Community Rewards — June 2024

Greetings Tezos Community,

We are pleased to announce the winners of the Community Rewards Program (CRP) for June 2024!

For more details about the various categories, please refer to the rewards page on the Tezos Commons website.

The Community Rewards Program is a Tezos Commons Foundation initiative to foster adoption and support the Tezos ecosystem. Up to 5,000 tez are rewarded every month to those who stand out in merit and act in the interest of the Tezos ecosystem.

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? You can tag any discord message, Reddit post, or tweet with #TezosCRP; we will collect them!

This is the fifth iteration of the program, and we will continue to make changes based on community feedback. Just like the Tezos blockchain, we will be continually evolving this program.

Numerous factors are used when evaluating submissions, such as quality of submissions, quality of activity, number of submissions, and verifiable proof of activity done by the nominee (no single factor is determinative of a winner, as all aspects were weighed to select winners). The judges would like to note that for each category, they are looking for the respective monthly related activity, meaning submissions should reflect activities done for that current month, i.e., activities for February.

Without further delay, the winners’ results are below.

Assimilation Award

@spike_0124

@IvanaOnTheBlock

@SkullDegenClub_

Formal Verification Award

@textrapper

Helping Hand Award

@siftcroix

@TezBlocks

@JackTezos

@libertez_baker

Influencer Award

@blockbakery

@Amethyst001_

@RichAyotte

Patissier Award

@YourBakeBuddy

@BakingBenjamins

@Zir0h

@LaBoulangeTezos

TEO Award

@skllzarmy

Tez Dev Award

@IDoctorWhoI

@TezCapital

Tezos Tutor Award

@tolulopemabel

@TezosNFTMusic

Nominations Are Open For July

With June underway, we have begun accepting nominations for this month. If you know someone who deserves a reward for their contributions or have ideas about other categories that should be recognized, please fill out a nomination here, or you can tag a post (or discord message) with #TezosCRP.

As mentioned previously, we are still working on long-term improvements to this program. We know this program is far from perfect, so please bear with us while we strive to keep improving it based on community feedback. Stay tuned, stay creative, and keep nominating!

As a reminder to the reward winners, the awards are all distributed through Kukai and DirectAuth. If you need any help claiming your awards, please message us here.

Tezos Community Rewards — June 2024 was originally published in Tezos Commons on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In our last article about MetaPals, we learned how to sign up and adopt your first pet. This article will cover what goes into taking care of your pet, exploring the Sanctuary, and the current Teletubbies minting event on Tezos.

Getting to Know Your MetaPal

Once you’ve adopted your pet, you’ll immediately notice a newly found Kennel on your screen. The Kennel has a quick access panel to your pet’s Care Index, tracking their well-being by monitoring Appetite, Happiness, and Energy. You’ll also see how much Dark Matter and Essence you’ve collected, along with a blue bar showing your progress leveling up. Use the bell to call your pet back on screen if you’ve dismissed them earlier. The backpack provides quick access to your inventory, and clicking on your pet’s name will pull down a menu from the top of the screen.

Two important buttons in the menu are the daily Check-In and Missions buttons. By checking in daily, you earn streak rewards such as Dark Matter, food items, and wearable accessories for your pet. Completing daily and monthly missions rewards you with similar items. The world button offers quick access to Sanctuary Central, your Backyard, the Boutique, and the Vending Machine.

MetaPals menu drop down. Taking Care of Your Pet

Your pet’s stats to monitor are Hunger, Happiness, and Energy. Over time, these stats will decrease, and in true Tamagotchi fashion, it’s your responsibility to care for your pet.

Hunger: When your pet gets hungry, open your inventory, select a snack or food item, and drag it to your screen. Your MetaPal will automatically run up to the food and start eating. Once they finish, an indicator will show how much of their Hunger they’ve refilled.

Happiness: Happiness affects your pet’s mood; low happiness means a sad friend. While some foods and snacks can increase Happiness, the best way to improve your pet’s mood is by patting them on the head or petting their body. Move the mouse vertically up and down on their head or horizontally side to side over their body to see a blue meter build-up, indicating an improvement in mood.

Energy: Energy drains slowly over time while your pet is active on or off- screen. You can boost energy by feeding certain foods or sending your pet to bed. Right-click your pet, then click the sleeping crescent moon to make them take a nap. Remember to let them sleep regularly.

Sanctuary Central features the Boutique, Vending Machine, FAQ Building, and Cinema. Sanctuary Central: The Bustling Activity Center

Next, visit Sanctuary Central, where you’ll find the Pals Boutique for purchasing pet accessories and the Vending Machine for food and snacks. Both shops take Dark Matter as payment, which you earn from daily missions or letting your pet run around your browser. Dark Matter appears as a swirling ball of purple energy to click and collect. Use your mouse wheel to scroll up and down to access other areas of Sanctuary, like the Adoption Center, Sanctuary Station, and the Pawbucks Cafe (under construction).

Pals Boutique: Run by Mittens the Cat, this is where you can customize your pet with unique accessories like outfits and headgear. Access purchased accessories in your inventory and swap them in or out as you like.

Vending Machine: The Vending Machine provides easy access to all kinds of food and snacks for your pet. Hover over each item to see its stats. To feed your pet, simply drag the food onto your browser window and drop it; your pet will automatically start eating.

FAQ Building and Cinema: Next to the Vending Machine is the FAQ building for help with any MetaPal issues or game mechanics questions. The Cinema offers different several theaters to visit and free popcorn while you catch a show.

The Official Teletubbies MetaPals Mint home page. Sanctuary Station and the Teletubbies Event

On the far left edge of town is Sanctuary Station, your portal to the current event. Clicking on the station takes you to the Official Teletubbies MetaPals Mint Event. In collaboration with WildBrain, this event features 20,000 unique companions available for mint, each with a unique personality impacting behavior and gameplay. Mints are separated into Uncommon, Rare, Epic, and Legendary rarities, each with special perks and gameplay benefits. Each companion mint includes a set of randomized and limited edition accessories with their own rarities. Additionally, you can mint Tubby Boxes (small, medium, or large) containing unique event-only accessories. All of which are Tezos NFTs.

To access the mint, click “Adopt Companion” and you’ll be taken to the adoption page. You can switch between companions and accessories using the button on the right. For companions, choose from Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa, Po, and Noo-Noo. The Lucky Dip option provides a random companion from the roster, while The Gang option gives you one of each hand-picked companion, plus a free Small Tubby Box.

On the Accessories mint page, you can mint Tubby Boxes containing limited edition accessories. The Small Tubby Box contains one exclusive accessory, the Medium three, and the Large five. Adjust quantities of Boxes purchased after adding them to your shopping cart. Checkout options include Fiat, Tezos, or Other Crypto.

Choose between Fiat, Tezos, and Other Crypto for your mint.

The Teletubbies companion mint not only provides you with a new companion but also grants early access to exclusive Discord channels, new character reveals, an upgraded Best-Friend list for upcoming launches, airdrops, and priority access to the $PAL token pre-sale.

Conclusion

MetaPals offers a creative experience for experiencing pet ownership, combining care and companionship with fun activities and events. Whether you’re feeding, playing with, or accessorizing your MetaPal, there’s always something new to explore. Don’t miss out on the exciting Teletubbies event. It’s the perfect opportunity to add unique companions and accessories to your collection.

Stay tuned for more tips, updates, and events in the MetaPals universe. Happy caring and adventuring with your MetaPals!

Metapals: Caring for your MetaPal, Sanctuary Central, and the Teletubbies was originally published in Tezos Commons on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Tez/Dev is bringing ‘jstz’ to Tezos.

Welcome to Tez/Dev Week: A Celebration of Tezos and Its Future

Hello Tezos community! Welcome to this week's special issue of the Baking Sheet. We are thrilled to be here at Tez/Dev 2024, taking place in the historic KBR, Royal Library of Belgium, in Brussels. It's a week filled with insightful discussions, innovative presentations, and a glimpse into the future of Tezos as we move toward Tezos X.

Day One: Setting the Stage

As the event kicks off, the excitement in the air is palpable. The community has come together with over 300 attendees, 20+ projects, and an impressive lineup of 15+ speakers, all eager to share their insights and visions for the future.

Arthur Breitman, co-founder of Tezos, started the day with an inspiring keynote on “Unlocking Opportunities with Tezos X.” He walked us through the roadmap of Tezos X, a single, integrated system where each component is optimized for high performance, composability, and convenience. The vision is clear: Tezos is set to become the one stop shop for a wide range of applications, driving both performance and utility.

Tezos X: Key Deliveries

1M transactions per second (tps)

Subsecond latency

Less than 10 seconds finality

Integration with other chains and systems

Support for many major languages/VMs in one rollup

No fragmentation

Atomic operations across environments

How does that sound for the future of Tezos? For the first time, there is a clear path on how Tezos can actually build mainstream adoption of blockchain technology. No more obscure, eye in the sky plans from this space that might work one day. Tezos is building it now and has a recipe to on-board millions of users at scale.

In-Depth Panels and Discussions

Following Arthur’s keynote, the "Road to L2 Decentralization" panel featuring Arthur Breitman, Justin Drake, Benedikt Bünz, and moderated by Tarun Chitra, took the stage. The discussion explored the crucial aspects of achieving decentralization in Layer 2 solutions, providing valuable insights into the future direction of blockchain scalability.

One of the morning highlights was the Fireside Chat titled “World of Women: Empowering Communities with Etherlink.” Taisia Antonova, VP of Product at World of Women, along with Thomas Olivier, Co-founder and CTO, and Leen Al Taher, VP of Consumer Products at Rarible, shared their experiences and future plans. The conversation emphasized the role of Etherlink in accelerating art, community, and culture within the Tezos ecosystem.

Demonstrations and Future Insights

The afternoon sessions included a demo by Ivan Anastassov, COO of TrustSwap, showcasing how TrustSwap empowers token holders and businesses. This was followed by a keynote from Yann Regis-Gianas, Head of Core Engineering at Nomadic Labs, on “The Next Stage of Evolution for Tezos.” Yann provided a deep dive into the current state, upcoming developments, and engineering challenges, highlighting the incredible advancements Tezos is making.

The excitement continued with a live demo of Jstz, the upcoming JavaScript-powered rollup. Beata Lipska demonstrated how Jstz will welcome Web2 developers into the Tezos ecosystem, making it easier for them to build on Tezos.

Looking Forward to More

As we move through Tez/Dev 2024, the energy and enthusiasm are contagious. From the detailed technical discussions to the innovative demos, it's clear that Tezos is on an exciting path toward Tezos X. The event is not just a celebration of what has been achieved but a glimpse into the future of what’s possible on Tezos.

We look forward to meeting more of you in person and continuing to build the future of Tezos together. These are just quick impressions as the event is happening live, and next week, we will gather all the notes and give a full reflection on Tez/Dev. By the time this newsletter is published, I’m sure a lot you will having your morning coffee reflecting on the Tez/Dev after-party!

Until next week, stay tuned for more updates and highlights from Tez/Dev 2024 and once again, it was amazing to see long-standing Tezos community.

Cheers!

Doing Jstz to Tezos: JavaScript is Coming to the Blockchain

Expanding on our initial impressions, let's dive into an exciting development in the Tezos ecosystem that was graciously presented by Beata during Tez/Dev: the introduction of Jstz. This next step in the evolution towards Tezos X represents a breakthrough that brings JavaScript to the Tezos blockchain, opening up new possibilities for developers.

Welcome JavaScript Developers

Meet Jstz (pronounced "justice"), a Smart Rollup powered by JavaScript, and part of the Tezos X vision. A collaboration between multiple Tezos development teams, a prototype is currently being built and tested by the Developer Experience team at Trilitech.

Scaling the utility of blockchain is crucial for widespread adoption. The fastest, most cost-efficient blockchain is of little use without robust applications and tools built on top of it. To achieve this, we need more developers and must empower them to create. Jstz aims to remove the hefty barrier to entry for builders by enabling the use of JavaScript and its vast ecosystem of tools and libraries on Tezos.

Why Jstz Matters

Most blockchains support a single bespoke language, making it difficult for developers to enter the space. This high effort plus limited reach is not conducive to attracting developers. Jstz changes this by allowing developers to use JavaScript, a language familiar to nearly 23 million developers worldwide.

JavaScript is the "English" of programming languages, the closest we have to a universal language for the internet. Jstz doesn't just enable JavaScript syntax; it supports the vast ecosystem of JavaScript tools and libraries, making it possible for developers to build on Tezos using the tools they already know and love.

A JavaScript Runtime on Tezos

Jstz offers a Web2-like experience supercharged with the best perks of Web3, such as built-in identity, wallet, and payments. It won't rely on compiling or transpiling JavaScript code to a different virtual machine; instead, it will run JavaScript natively. This approach allows developers to use almost any package in the npm ecosystem seamlessly.

Some of the planned features of Jstz include:

Compliance with WinterCG: To augment interoperability with Web APIs.

Native account abstraction: Allowing for sponsored operations and smoother user experiences.

Named addresses: First-class support for DNS.

Off-chain communications: Enabling calls to external services, such as REST APIs to consume off-chain data.

These features will combine and extend the best of Web2 and Web3, providing a powerful, familiar environment for developers to build on.

Why Should You Care?

Imagine an archipelago of isolated islands, each with its own language and limited to its internal affairs. Now, imagine one island adopting the languages of others and adding English to its mix. This cosmopolitan island become a global hub, connected to everything and everyone. That's what Jstz aims to achieve for Tezos.

Jstz tears down the barriers, opening up the blockchain to a world of developers. It enables Tezos to become a global hub for new ideas and innovations, bringing the entire web to the blockchain.

We call on all JavaScript developers to come forth and experiment with Jstz. Bring your ideas, share your thoughts, and help us build the future. Head to the Jstz GitHub repository to learn more and start contributing!

This Week in the Tezos Ecosystem

Shifting from this week's headlines, Objkt announced the launch of Share4Tez, a dynamic event showcasing the power of valuing and sharing art via Objkt referral links. Whether you're a collector, artist, or a Tezos enthusiast, here's why you won't want to miss out on this event!

What, When, and Why Share4Tez

Event Details:

Dates: July 10th - July 14th

Organized by: Retro Manni and Limbo Universe

Objective: To help Tezos artists raise their self-evaluations and increase the incentive for collectors to collect and share the art they love.

To participate, artists need to list their artworks at a minimum price of 5 tez and set referral fees between 15% and 25%. They should also use the hashtag #Share4Tez when minting and posting on socials. Collectors can generate referral links by using the share button on Objkt, allowing them to earn a referral bonus if someone uses their link to purchase the artwork.

How to Use Objkt Referral Links

If you're new to using Objkt Referral links, here's how to get started:

Generate a Link: When viewing an NFT on Objkt, click the share button at the bottom left corner of the image preview.

Share After Collecting: After purchasing an artwork, a prompt will appear to share on socials, auto-generating your referral link.

It’s that simple! This feature allows anyone to support Tezos artists by sharing their work, even if they don't have tez to buy art.

Objkt Galleries: Curate and Earn

Another feature that works in harmony with the referral system is Objkt Galleries. Users can curate galleries by selecting the "Curation" option under the "Create" tab. Once you've curated your gallery, you can share it and earn referral fees when art is collected via your gallery.

To create a gallery:

Navigate to the "Create" tab and select "Curation."

Find artworks you want to add, click the three dots at the top right of the preview image, and select "Add to Curation."

Share your gallery and earn referral fees.

Potential Benefits of Share4Tez

Events like Share4Tez emphasize the importance of sharing art. By collecting and sharing art on Tezos, you increase the artists’ chances of being discovered by art lovers beyond our usual user base. Additionally, this event encourages artists to raise their prices, potentially leading to a more valuable and thriving Tezos art ecosystem.

Get Ready to Share4Tez!

As the Tezos community gears up for Share4Tez, it's evident that this event can make a real difference for the Tezos art community. Whether you're eager to discover new art, support your favorite artists, or earn some tez through sharing, Share4Tez offers a fantastic opportunity to connect with the Tezos community. Let’s join forces, spread the word, and see how this initiative can boost our cherished Tezos art scene.

🔴 Now Streaming: Building on Tezos | Nomadic Labs

On this week's episode, we're featuring Yann Regis-Gianas, Head of Engineering at Nomadic Labs. Nomadic Labs is one of the leading research and development powerhouses in the Tezos ecosystem, with over 40 engineers driving the core development and evolution of the Tezos protocol.

What's on the Agenda?

The Paris C upgrade and its unique process

The transition towards Tezos X

The importance of the Paris DAL node

Changes in Tezos Staking and liquid delegation

The impact of reduced block times on user experience

Tune in for an in-depth discussion on these critical updates and what they mean for the future of Tezos. Don’t miss Yann's insights on how these developments will shape the ecosystem and what exciting innovations are on the horizon.

Now Streaming on YouTube | X

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A Simplified Look at TezosX and Why it Matters.

You’re happily enjoying the Tezos ecosystem when suddenly, a cryptic post from Arthur Breitman appears, simply stating “TezosX.” Everyone is reposting and speculating about its meaning. A day later, after another teaser from the Tezos account, the full announcement for TezosX is released. You eagerly open the blog post and are bombarded with terms like Rollups, Data Availability Layer, Interoperability, Modular, Layer One and Layer Two, and many more that seem overwhelming and confusing.

Well, worry not, as in this article I will explain what TezosX is, why it is such a big thing, and why it matters for everyday users like you and I. As always, I will try to do it in the simplest terms possible.

What is TezosX?

The recent announcement unveiled the vision and proposed roadmap for Tezos’ evolution. Tezos X is the culmination of this journey — a significantly more advanced Tezos chain designed to be the ideal base layer for anyone looking to use blockchain for their projects without having to accept trade-offs or limitations for their envisioned product.

The end product of Tezos X will be a modular, high-performance blockchain system that integrates various specialized modules for different tasks while maintaining a seamless user experience. This system will feature a single main rollup to handle most network activity, which will be able to handle mind-blowing throughput (1 million transactions per second) and will have sub-second latency.

So, what will become of rollups like Etherlink and other DApps already deployed on the layer 1 chain? The plan is to migrate everything to this primary rollup once it’s operational.

New rollups, smart contracts, transaction history, and applications will all be consolidated into this central rollup, which will support multiple Virtual Machines (VMs) and smart contract languages, enabling seamless communication between them.

Imagine every smart contract and rollup as pieces of a puzzle, coming together to complete the final picture, known as Tezos X. Ultimately, Tezos X aims to function as a scalable, cloud-like backend for a wide array of applications.

Why it matters?

In short, when Tezos X becomes a reality (and Tezos has a history of delivering on its promises), it will address nearly all the problems in today’s blockchain space.

One notable improvement in user experience will be the ability to connect to platforms like objkt or other DApps using your preferred wallet — be it a Tezos wallet, MetaMask, or other wallets that typically don’t support Tezos. This can be done without the hassle of changing networks or encountering any other negative user experiences. All of this will be achieved while enhancing speed and capacity, without sacrificing security or decentralization, which are common trade-offs in most similar cases today.

Tezos X’s enhanced composability, interoperability, and developer tooling will significantly simplify the process for developers to deploy their envisioned DApps. They won’t need to learn new programming languages or worry about choosing “the right chain”.

Recently, we witnessed the rapid integration and deployment of DApps on Etherlink (Tezos’ EVM-compatible layer 2), thanks to the widespread familiarity and popularity of EVM tools in the crypto space. Now, imagine expanding this ecosystem to include more Virtual Machines (VMs) and a greater variety of programming languages and tools that are even more popular among developers globally.

This expansion will enable developers from various technological backgrounds to easily deploy smart contracts and interact with the Tezos X chain. Most importantly, all these components will be interoperable, allowing seamless interaction and communication among them. As a result, we will see a surge in the implementation of new use cases and the deployment of numerous DApps, ultimately benefiting us, the users, by providing more innovative solutions and applications to meet our needs.

In the words of Dr. Strange, “We are in the Endgame now…” as all the pieces of the puzzle come together with Tezos X. While this announcement might seem ambitious and grand, it’s important to remember that it’s rooted in the strong track record of Tezos’ consistent delivery.

The vision laid out for Tezos X is more than just a roadmap; it’s a promise of a scalable, secure, decentralized, and highly efficient blockchain ecosystem that is open to everyone. With Tezos’ history of reliably delivering innovation, I am confident that this vision will soon be our reality. So, buckle up and stay tuned — exciting times are ahead for all of us in the Tezos community.

Demystifying TezosX: A New Era for Blockchain was originally published in Tezos Commons on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A Tezos NFT Event Showcasing the Power of Valuing and Sharing Art VIA Objkt Referral Links

We often talk about supporting the projects and artists we love, so it’s essential that those who take extra initiative receive the recognition and rally cries they deserve. The Tezos community continues to heed this call, creating exciting and inclusive events for Tezos users like Digital Art Mile, Tezcon, BaliArtSpace, and many more. Another prime example of this is the upcoming Share4Tez event. Whether you are a collector, artist, or general Tezos enthusiast, let’s dive into why you won’t want to miss this!

What, When, and Why Share4Tez

Starting on July 10th and running through July 14th, Share4Tez is an event conceived and organized by Retro Manni and Limbo Universe. This event aims to help Tezos artists raise their self-evaluations while increasing the incentive for collectors to collect and, more importantly, share the art they love.

To achieve these goals some requirements have been put in place. For one, the event’s minimum listing price is 5 tez. Another guideline is that artists set the referral fees between 15% and 25% when minting. The final requirement is to include the hashtag #Share4Tez within the mint template and when posting on socials. When navigating Objkt as a collector, searching the #Share4Tez hashtag will also help you find the art that is part of the event.

Both artists and collectors are encouraged to use the share button, which generates a link to the artwork with a referral code assigned to you. If anyone uses that link to collect, you can automatically receive that 15–25% referral bonus set by the artist. The idea of sharing other artists’ work with this link to earn tez on referral fees is why the event has been named, Share4Tez.

More About the Objkt Referral Link Feature

For anyone new to using the Objkt Referral links, the easiest way to take part is to generate a link when viewing an NFT on Objkt. The share button is at the bottom left corner of the image preview, as shown below.

Another option comes more naturally as you collect art you love. When you successfully finish collecting an artwork, the following prompt will appear. Sharing on socials from this prompt will auto-generate your referral link.

It’s That Simple!

This is a perfect opportunity to support the artists of the Tezos Community regardless if you have tez to buy art. If you have a social media account or spend time in Discord and Telegram channels, you can help while potentially earning some tez from referral fees.

A Useful Tool To Explore During Share4Tez Is: Objkt GALLERIES

Another powerful feature offered at Objkt that works in harmony with the referral system is the ability for users to curate galleries. Curating galleries on Objkt is easy, fun, and potentially lucrative. When navigating to the “Create” tab, select the “Curation” option to the right of “Collection,” and the following template will appear. You can also click here to navigate directly.

Once you have created your gallery, the process becomes much easier and the fun begins. You have just created your theme and now it’s time to “window shop” all the amazing art on Tezos. When you find an artwork you want to add to your curation, click the three dots at the top right of the preview image and select “add to curation”.

Once you have finished your Objkt Gallery, you have curated a perfect experience for Share4Tez. Now you can share it and…earn some tez! When art gets collected via your gallery, you earn a referral fee, just like with the referral links. When you utilize this method, you also get a beautiful UI that displays the gallery's performance metrics. You can see an example of these metrics and experience the impact of a well-curated gallery by visiting Fake Whales curation here.

Potential Beneficial Outcomes of Events Like Share4Tez

Many artists will tell you that sharing is just as significant as collecting. Sales are challenging enough even with a captive audience; however, the added difficulty of being favored by social media algorithms makes visibility a constant uphill battle. By collecting and sharing art on Tezos, you exponentially increase the artists’ chances of being discovered by active art lovers outside our regular user base. With the Objkt referral link feature, everyone involved wins.

Additionally, many artists on Tezos have voiced concerns about raising their prices, fearing they would not make sales. Share4Tez aims to encourage them otherwise. It’s important to acknowledge that 1 tez can be a lot to someone in one part of the world and very little to others. However, part of the opportunity of the Tezos blockchain is our ability to meet on a level playing field and grow together.

What if the average listing price for a Tezos artist was 5 tez instead of less than 1? Would it cause the standstill in sales many artists fear? Or could it possibly be a catalyst for the entire ecosystem, pushing towards its technology and user IP’s real value? Share4Tez should be an interesting experiment that yields results to these questions.

Go Share 4 Some Tez!

As the Tezos community prepares for Share4Tez, it’s clear this event can make a real difference for the Tezos Art Community. By sharing and using the innovative features of the Objkt development team, we can create a more supportive and vibrant community.

Whether you’re eager to discover new art, support your favorite artists, or earn some tez through sharing, Share4Tez is a fantastic chance to connect with the Tezos community. Let’s join forces, spread the word, and see how this initiative can boost our cherished Tezos art scene. Don’t miss out on this exciting opportunity — mark your calendars and get ready to Share4Tez!

Share4Tez: Share Art To Earn Tez was originally published in Tezos Commons on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Mark your calendars! TezDev 2024 will take place on July 11th, 2024, in the vibrant city of Brussels, Belgium.

It's that time of the year again! After an amazing event last year in Paris, TezDev 2024 is coming to the Royal Library of Belgium in Brussels, Belgium, on July 11th. There were many awesome discussions and demos from last year such as the 1M transaction per second (TPS) demo, the future of rollups, and more.

This year's event celebrates Tezos' achievements and offers a glimpse into the future with the recently unveiled Tezos X vision. With a fantastic lineup and panel set, this event will be one not to miss if you're nearby or feeling the spark of travel.

Let's understand why you should be excited and what to expect for this year's TezDev experience.

Amazing Speaker Lineup

One of the main differences between this year's event and last year's is how diverse the speaker lineup is. If you've followed most developments around Tezos, you'll know that scaling enhancements have been a prime focus.

Since last year's event, we've seen continuous improvement in Smart Rollups, a focal component of the recently shipped Etherlink mainnet beta. Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and Data Availability (DAL) solutions on Tezos were also a big focus. All these developments have resulted in the perfect atmosphere for industry experts and leaders to weigh in on important issues around scaling and decentralization in Tezos and the broader Web3 space.

Check out the speaker lineup at Tez/Dev 2024:

Arthur Breitman — Co-founder, Tezos

Justin Drake — Researcher, Ethereum Foundation

Tarun Chitra — Co-founder and CEO, Gauntlet

Benedikt Büenz — Chief Scientist and Co-founder, Espresso Systems

Yann Regis-Gianas — Head of Core Engineering, Nomadic Labs

Beata Lipska — Developer Relations Engineer, Trilitech

Nicolas Streschinsky — Head of DeFi, Trilitech

Bernd Oostrum — Co-founder, Plend

Dmitriy Kovalevskiy — Co-founder, Hanji Protocol

Iakov Levin — Co-founder, Rivo.xyz

Christoph Niemann — Specialist Solution Architect for Web3, AWS

Alex Liu — Director of Operations, Tezos Commons

Taisia Antonova — VP of Product, World of Women

Thomas Olivier — Co-founder and CTO, World of Women

Leen Al Taher — VP of Consumer Products, Rarible

Ivan Anastassov — COO, TrustSwap

As you can see, the list of speakers is longer this year, and some notable figures, like Justin Drake and Benedikt Büenz, are on it. If you aren't familiar with Justin Drake, he's a researcher for the Ethereum Foundation who has been quite vocal about Ethereum's long-term positioning. Although he’s from the Ethereum Foundation, his knowledge and expertise will provide a plethora of thoughtful discussions. This goes to show more about the character of leadership within the Tezos ecosystem, inviting a different perspective which will invoke some collegial debate, and should indeed be enjoyable and educational.

On the other hand, Espresso Systems has become a key player in the rollup space. Typically, if a rollup wants to interact with an application on another, it will have to go through the main Ethereum chain or use a bridge. Naturally, both these processes result in slow and hard work for developers because of time delays and fees. Each of these rollups are driven by a "sequencer," essentially a centralized party that performs all the computation for a rollup on a server. Espresso fills this gap by creating a marketplace for these different sequencers to cooperate with each other, resulting in a much faster developer and end-user experience. As a key player in this space, I also find it interesting to hear Benedikt Büenz's commentary!

What Else Can We Expect?

The TezDev event has a day-long itinerary and after-party for registered guests. For the full breakdown of the daily agenda and any other information, visit TezDev 2024. It's worth noting that the following times are in GMT+2.

Networking: Doors Open at 09:30–10:00

Opening Introduction: Welcome to TezDev 2024 Alex Liu, Director of Operations, Tezos Commons at 10:00–10:10

Keynote: Unlocking Opportunities with Tezos X, Arthur Breitman, Co-founder, Tezos at 10:10–11:00

Coffee Break #1: 11:00–11:15

Panel: The Road to L2 Decentralization + Q&A with Arthur Breitman, Co-founder, Tezos; Justin Drake, Researcher, Ethereum Foundation; Benedikt Büenz, Chief Scientist, Espresso Systems; Moderator — Tarun Chitra, Co-founder and CEO, Gauntlet at 11:15–12:15

Lunch Break + Networking: 12:15–13:15

Fireside Talk: World of Women: Empowering Communities with Etherlinkwith Taisia Antonova, VP of Product, World of Women; Thomas Olivier, Co-founder and CTO, World of Women; Leen Al Taher, VP of Consumer Products, Rarible; Moderator — Beata Lipska, DevRel Engineer, Trilitech at 13:15–13:45

Demo: TrustSwap with Ivan Anastassov, COO, TrustSwap at 13:45–14:00

Keynote: The Next Stage of Evolution for Tezos with Yann Regis-Gianas, Head of Core Engineering, Nomadic Labs at 14:00–14:45

Coffee Break #2: 14:45–15:00

Demo: Opening Tezos to the world of JavaScript! with Beata Lipska, DevRel Engineer, Trilitech at 15:00–15:30

Demo: Tezos on AWS with Christoph Niemann, Sr. Consultant, Blockchain, AWS WWSO Web3 Team at 15:30–16:00

Panel: DeFi Catalyst Accelerator: The Ultimate Support Platform for Etherlink Projects with Moderator — Nico Streschinsky, Head of DeFi, Trilitech; Dmitry Kovalevskiy, Co-founder, Hanji; Bernd Oostrum, Co-founder, Plend; Iakov, Founder, Rivo at 16:00–16:45

Closing Thanks: Alex Liu, Director of Operations, Tezos Commons at 16:45–17:00

TezDev After Party: 17:00–21:00

Our very own Alex Liu of Tezos Commons will give the opening speech and introduction to TezDev 2024 along with closing out the eventful day. Arthur Breitman will discuss Tezos X and likely share some new alpha around it. In case you missed it, Tezos X is the new vision for the Tezos ecosystem. It isn't just about making Tezos faster but also addressing some of the most fundamental issues in the blockchain space, such as usefulness and usability.

If you've been excited to learn more about Tezos X following the recent announcement, you won't want to miss Arthur's commentary. Of course, all the other discussions happening, such as the panel with Justin and Benedikt, World of Women, Trustswap, and more, will be worth hanging around to learn more!

How To Register

To register for the event, you'll be pleased to find out that tickets are free and available until June 11th. Head over to the event registration page and get as many tickets as you need for yourself or a friend or two.

As far as location goes, the TezDev 2024 event will be taking place at the tail end of EthCC and conveniently located right next to it. The location is as follows: Royal Library of Belgium, Mont des Arts 28, 1000 Bruxelles, Belgium. The entrance is not the library's main entrance, but it's around the corner at the following address — Bd de l'Empereur 2, 1000 Bruxelles, Belgium.

Additionally, there will be several Tezos related side events happening during EthCC.

Building On-Chain Payment Happy Hour with Baanx x Tezos x Etherlink — July 9th

Art on Tezos x Artcrush | Gallery Drinks — July 10th

Degen Night Market — July 10th

TezDev 2024 After Party — July 11th

We can’t wait to see all those that are attending and celebrating another successful TezDev event!

What To Expect At TezDev 2024 was originally published in Tezos Commons on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

6 years of Tezos and 6 days away from Tez/Dev.

6 Days to Tez/Dev 2024: Last Call for Tickets!

Greetings, Tezos Community!

This week marks an extremely important milestone for Tezos as we celebrate its 6th birthday! Over the past six years, Tezos has evolved tremendously, continually pushing the boundaries of what's possible in the blockchain space. We're on the road to Tezos X, a vision that ensures our blockchain remains forever adaptable and scalable within an open, modular environment.

As we approach the exciting Tez/Dev event, now just six days away, it's time to finalize your plans and secure your tickets. Here's everything you need to know:

Event Details

Date: Thursday, July 11, 2024Location: KBR, Royal Library of Belgium, Brussels, BEStart Time: 10:00 AM

Join us in Brussels this July for a day filled with engaging sessions on the latest innovations in Tezos, discussions on decentralization, and support for JavaScript, among other topics. The day will conclude with an after-party, providing a perfect opportunity for networking with industry leaders and fellow Tezos enthusiasts. Get your free tickets below!

Key Stats:

15+ Speakers

10+ Sessions

300+ Attendees

20+ Projects

Speaker Line-up

Check out our esteemed speakers at Tez/Dev 2024:

Arthur Breitman - Co-founder, Tezos

Justin Drake - Researcher, Ethereum Foundation

Tarun Chitra - Co-founder and CEO, Gauntlet

Benedikt Büenz - Chief Scientist and Co-founder, Espresso Systems

Yann Regis-Gianas - Head of Core Engineering, Nomadic Labs

Beata Lipska - Developer Relations Engineer, Trilitech

Nicolas Streschinsky - Head of DeFi, Trilitech

Bernd Oostrum - Co-founder, Plend

Dmitriy Kovalevskiy - Co-founder, Hanji Protocol

Iakov Levin - Co-founder, Rivo.xyz

Christoph Niemann - Specialist Solution Architect for Web3, AWS

Alex Liu - Director of Operations, Tezos Commons

Taisia Antonova - VP of Product, World of Women

Thomas Olivier - Co-founder and CTO, World of Women

Leen Al Taher - VP of Consumer Products, Rarible

Ivan Anastassov - COO, TrustSwap

Tez/Dev Agenda

09:30 - 10:00Networking: Doors Open

10:00 - 10:10Opening Introduction: Welcome to TezDev 2024Alex Liu, Director of Operations, Tezos Commons

10:10 - 11:00Keynote: Unlocking Opportunities with Tezos XArthur Breitman, Co-founder, Tezos

11:00 - 11:15Coffee Break

11:15 - 12:15Panel: The Road to L2 Decentralization + Q&AArthur Breitman, Co-founder, Tezos; Justin Drake, Researcher, Ethereum Foundation; Benedikt Büenz, Chief Scientist, Espresso Systems; Moderator - Tarun Chitra, Co-founder and CEO, Gauntlet

12:15 - 13:15Lunch Break + Networking

13:15 - 13:45Fireside Talk: World of Women: Empowering Communities with EtherlinkTaisia Antonova, VP of Product, World of Women; Thomas Olivier, Co-founder and CTO, World of Women; Leen Al Taher, VP of Consumer Products, Rarible; Moderator - Beata Lipska, DevRel Engineer, Trilitech

13:45 - 14:00Demo: TrustSwapIvan Anastassov, COO, TrustSwap

14:00 - 14:45Keynote: The Next Stage of Evolution for TezosYann Regis-Gianas, Head of Core Engineering, Nomadic Labs

14:45 - 15:00Coffee Break

15:00 - 15:30Demo: Opening Tezos to the world of JavaScript!Beata Lipska, DevRel Engineer, Trilitech

15:30 - 16:00Demo: Tezos on AWSChristoph Niemann, Sr. Consultant, Blockchain, AWS WWSO Web3 Team

16:00 - 16:45Panel: DeFi Catalyst Accelerator: The Ultimate Support Platform for Etherlink ProjectsModerator - Nico Streschinsky, Head of DeFi, Trilitech; Dmitry Kovalevskiy, Co-founder, Hanji; Bernd Oostrum, Co-founder, Plend; Iakov, Founder, Rivo

16:45 - 17:00Closing ThanksAlex Liu, Director of Operations, Tezos Commons

17:00 - 21:00TezDev After PartyRegister for TezDev to have priority access to the after party

Venue

KBR, Royal Library of BelgiumThe entrance is located around the corner at the following address: Bd de l'Empereur 2, 1000 Bruxelles, Belgium, rather than being the main entrance of the library.

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to connect with the Tezos community, learn from the experts, and celebrate the achievements and future of Tezos!

For more information and to register, click here.

Celebrating 6 Years of Tezos: The Forever Blockchain

Today, we celebrate an incredible milestone: the 6th birthday of Tezos on mainnet! 🎉 Over the past six years, Tezos has proven itself to be the forever blockchain, continually evolving through its unique self-amending protocol and the collective efforts of its vibrant community. Let's take a moment to reflect on what makes Tezos special and why it stands out as the blockchain of the future.

A Journey of Continuous Evolution

Since its inception, Tezos has been designed to adapt and grow without the need for hard forks. This vision has been realized through 16 seamless protocol upgrades, each one bringing new features, improvements, and optimizations. These upgrades have allowed Tezos to remain at the forefront of blockchain technology, consistently enhancing its capabilities and ensuring it meets the ever-changing needs of its users and developers.

Here's a look back at each upgrade and what it brought to the table.

 Athens (May 2019): Reduced the minimum staking requirement from 10,000 to 8,000 tez and increased the gas limit to allow more transactions in a block.

 Babylon (October 2019): Improved the Emmy+ consensus algorithm and introduced new Michelson features and accounts rehaul to aid smart contract developers.

Carthage (March 2020): Increased the gas limit and enhanced network efficiency and performance.

Delphi (November 2020): Improved the Michelson interpreter's performance, adjusted the gas model, and reduced storage costs by 75%.

Edo (February 2021): Enabled privacy-preserving smart contracts with Sapling support and introduced tickets for efficient asset transfers.

Florence (May 2021): Maximized operation size and improved gas consumption for better performance.

 Granada (August 2021): Reduced block time to 30 seconds, introduced Liquidity Baking, and significantly reduced gas consumption for smart contracts.

Hangzhou (December 2021): Introduced timelock encryption, views for smart contracts, and lowered gas costs with an in-memory blockchain context.

Ithaca (April 2022): Introduced Tenderbake, overhauling the Tezos consensus algorithm and showcasing the blockchain's resilience.

Jakarta (June 2022): Introduced Transaction Optimistic Rollups, marking the first Layer 2 solution on Tezos.

Kathmandu (September 2022): Increased throughput and integrated Verifiable Delay Functions (VDF) for enhanced security.

Lima (December 2022): Enabled higher L1 throughput and introduced consensus keys for enhanced security in signing blocks and operations.

Mumbai (March 2023): Enshrined Smart Rollups as a powerful scaling solution, reduced block time to 15 seconds, and overhauled the tickets mechanism.

Oxford (February 2024): Refined the PoS mechanism with proportional slashing penalties for double baking, introduced auto-staking, and expanded Smart Rollup use cases.

Paris (June 2024): Reduced block times to 10 seconds, introduced the Data-Availability Layer, and implemented Adaptive Issuance with a major overhaul of the Proof-of-Stake and staking model.

In the past six years, Tezos has reached several impressive milestones:

16 Upgrades: Each upgrade has introduced significant advancements, from enhanced scalability to new governance features.

~6M+ Blocks: The blockchain has been reliably producing blocks, securing transactions, and maintaining network integrity.

230M+ Transactions: Tezos has processed a vast number of transactions, demonstrating its efficiency and reliability.

#TezosX Revealed: The announcement of Tezos X marks a bold vision for the future, focusing on performance, composability, and interoperability.

The Road to Tezos X

As we look ahead, Tezos X represents the next major evolution of our blockchain. This initiative aims to create a modular, scalable, and highly interoperable system that will serve as a robust foundation for a wide range of applications. Tezos X envisions a future where the blockchain can handle massive transaction volumes, support multiple programming environments, and seamlessly integrate with other blockchains and traditional systems.

Key developments on this road include:

Smart Rollups: Massively scaling the network by offloading transaction execution to dedicated layers while maintaining security through Tezos' decentralized Layer 1.

Data Availability Layer: Ensuring efficient data transmission and availability for rollup users, enhancing the network's overall performance.

Canonical Rollup: Aiming for a single rollup to handle most network activity, preserving composability and minimizing latency.

Support for Mainstream Languages: Opening up Tezos to developers familiar with popular programming languages like JavaScript, Python, and Java, making it easier to build on the blockchain.

Tezos stands out as the forever blockchain because of its commitment to continuous improvement, decentralization, and innovation. Its self-amending protocol ensures that Tezos can evolve without disrupting the network, providing a stable and secure platform for developers and users alike. The community's collaborative spirit and dedication to pushing the boundaries of what's possible make Tezos a unique and powerful force in the blockchain space.

As we celebrate six years of achievements, we also look forward to the exciting developments ahead. The journey of Tezos has just begun, and with Tezos X on the horizon, we are poised to reach new heights. Here's to the next chapter of innovation, growth, and success.

Happy Birthday, Tezos!

This Week in the Tezos Ecosystem

Tezos Foundation and Museum of the Moving Image Partnership is Live!

Shifting from our birthday celebrations, let's dive into the latest happening in the Tezos ecosystem. Over the weekend, the exciting partnership between the Tezos Foundation and the Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI) officially launched!

Visitors to the museum can now explore b a r b i e ~ w o r l d ~ b r e a k d o w n by the talented artist Sabato, also known as @sabatobox. This captivating installation is part of the ongoing efforts to elevate digital art and provide unique experiences for museum-goers.

But that's not all! Until July 25, you can collect a fragment of Sabato's work online. Don't miss out on this opportunity to own a piece of digital art that bridges the physical and virtual worlds. Discover more here.’

In addition to Sabato's work, museum visitors can also acquire a free open edition of Echo: Core by Auriea, a fragment of her digital sculpture Echo. This piece is part of a major survey of Auriea's work at the Museum of the Moving Image, showcasing the integration of digital art within traditional art spaces.

This partnership highlights Tezos' commitment to supporting and promoting digital art, providing artists with platforms to showcase their work. It also offers visitors a chance to experience art and technology firsthand.

Stay tuned for more updates and visit the Museum of the Moving Image to immerse yourself in these unique digital art experiences!

Tezos Foundation Bi-Annual Report Now Live

Next up, we have news from the Tezos Foundation. The latest biannual report is now live, providing a comprehensive overview of the foundation's activities and funding initiatives over the past six months.

The Tezos Foundation has approved funds for 43 new initiatives, totaling USD 9.81 million. These funds have been allocated across various sectors, highlighting the diverse and impactful work being done within the Tezos ecosystem. Here’s a breakdown of the funding categories:

Arts and Culture: Supporting projects that merge art with blockchain technology.

Gaming: Enhancing the gaming experience with blockchain integration.

DeFi: Developing decentralized finance solutions to broaden financial inclusion.

Core and Infrastructure: Strengthening the underlying infrastructure of Tezos to ensure robustness and scalability.

Business Development: Promoting the adoption of Tezos in various industries to drive economic growth.

The Tezos Foundation's mission is to deploy resources strategically to support the long-term future of Tezos, driving global social, political, and economic innovation. This report is a testament to the foundation's commitment to fostering growth and innovation within the Tezos community.

We encourage everyone to read the full biannual report to get an in-depth understanding of how these initiatives are shaping the future of Tezos. Read the full report here.

This Week in Tezos Development

Security Kernel Upgrade for Etherlink

A significant milestone has been achieved with the successful deployment of a new Etherlink kernel on Etherlink Beta via the Security Kernel Upgrade governance contract. This update ensures that Etherlink continues to operate normally, with all assets remaining safe and secure.

The upgrade addresses a critical vulnerability uncovered during an audit conducted by the security engineers at SpearbitDAO. This collaboration underscores our commitment to engaging with multiple external teams to ensure the highest safety and quality standards for Etherlink before its official launch.

Key Points:

Normal Operation: Etherlink continues to function as expected, with all assets secured.

Critical Vulnerability Addressed: The new kernel upgrade addresses a critical security issue identified during the audit.

Collaborative Effort: Multiple external teams, including SpearbitDAO, were involved to ensure top-notch security.

Governance Mechanism: This upgrade was made possible through Etherlink's unique governance mechanism, which is open to any willing Tezos baker.

Special thanks to Everstake Pool and all bakers who participated in the governance process, enabling a swift response to the issue.

For Tezos bakers interested in getting involved in Etherlink's decentralized governance, find out more here.

🔴 Now Streaming: Aleksandra Art

Join us on this week's episode of TezTalks as we sit down with the incredible Aleksandra Artamonovskaja, the new head of arts at TriliTech.In this enlightening interview, Aleksandra shares her journey to her new role with Trilitech and the enthusiastic response from the community. We dive into her priorities and focus areas as she leads Trilitech's arts division, exploring the evolution of the blockchain art landscape and what it means to define value in the creative crypto space.Discover how artists are not only learning but also helping to shape new dynamics between artists, curators, and collectors. Aleksandra also gives us a sneak peek into exciting upcoming collaborations.

Now Streaming on all platforms!

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What is the new Tezos Staker role? How can I become a staker and should I become one in the first place? Well, keep reading to find out!

In the latest and one of the most significant upgrades of the Tezos protocol, known as ParisB, a new staking role has been introduced. This new role has left many people puzzled about what it is, how it functions, and how it differs from the previous staking mechanism.

In this article, I will break down everything you need to know about the new staker role in simple terms and guide you through the process of becoming a staker yourself. Trust me, it’s not as complicated as it might seem. But to fully grasp this new staking role, we first need to understand how Tezos staking worked up until now. Ready? Let’s dive in!

Staking options before adaptive issuance.

As many of you know, until recently, Tezos offered two main options for staking: Baking and Delegating.

As a baker (validator), you need to run the appropriate software and maintain a staking balance of at least 6,000 tez. When baking, your role involves creating and verifying blocks. To ensure the security of the network, you are required to lock your tez as security bonds for a specific period. This measure helps secure the chain, as any fraudulent attempts (i.e. double baking a block) result in penalties, where the offender loses a portion of their security bonds (a process known as slashing). However, it’s important to note that if you run the software as suggested and avoid any fraudulent activities, the risk of slashing is virtually close to zero. For each block you create or verify, you receive rewards directly from the protocol.

As a delegator, you can delegate your tez baking rights to another baker, increasing their staking balance and helping them secure more blocks, which translates to more rewards. From these additional rewards earned through your baking rights, the baker retains a small portion as a fee and sends the rest to you. When you delegate, your tez remain in your wallet and are always liquid (no locking), ensuring zero risk for you. However, this also means you do not directly contribute to the chain’s security.

The new “Staker” role — Best of both worlds.

So until the recent ParisB upgrade and the activation of adaptive issuance, Tezos had two staking options: being a baker or a delegator. Now, a third role has been introduced, known as “Staker,” which combines traits of both bakers and delegators.

As a Staker, you choose to stake your coins with another baker. Your tez remain in your wallet but are locked, and if you decide to unstake them, you will need to wait 4 cycles (approximately ~11 days) for them to become liquid again. When staking, your tez actively participates in the chain’s security just like a baker, which also means that there is a tiny risk of slashing if your baker misbehaves (more on slashing in the next section).

Despite this minimal risk, staking offers double the rewards compared to delegating. These rewards are sent directly to stakers from the protocol, eliminating the need to rely on the baker to distribute them. You can also stake just a portion of your wallet while the rest of your tez remain delegated and liquid. For instance, if you have 100 tez in your wallet, you can choose to stake 60 tez while the remaining 40 tez will be delegated and stay liquid.

Think of the staker role as a way to enjoy the benefits of baking without the hassle of maintaining hardware or running software. Essentially, you are co-baking with another baker using their setup, all while retaining full ownership of your funds.

The boogeyman: Slashing

Before we dive into the details of how to start staking, there’s an important point to address: slashing. Many tez holders are hesitant to try the new staker role due to concerns about the risk of slashing. Let’s take a look at some facts about slashing.

Since the start of the Tezos mainnet, over 5.9 million blocks have been created, and slashing has occurred in only 0.003% of them (Slashing cases sources: 1, 2, 3). Slashing doesn’t happen if your baker’s internet or power goes down. To have their deposit slashed, a baker must commit “double signing,” such as running two setups and attempting to bake or attest the same block from both instances.

To paraphrase one of the core developers in one of our conversations on the matter: “It is hard to double bake unless you really want to or have some custom setup and you mess up.” Without getting too technical, slashing is a very rare event. If a baker uses the baking software as recommended (as most do), the risk is virtually zero.

With all that out of the way, and now that we’ve established how minimal the risk of slashing is, let’s explore how to get started with this new staking role.

How can I start staking?

Finding the right Baker.

The first step is to choose a baker with whom to stake. Not all bakers accept external staking from other users, so it’s crucial to find one that does. You can start by checking if the baker you’re currently delegated to accepts stakers. To find suitable bakers, you can visit xtzchad.xyz, a community-built tool that provides a comprehensive list of bakers who have enabled external staking. This tool also shows how much free space each baker has (ensure they have enough capacity for the amount you want to stake) and their associated fees. Just as with delegating, my advice would be to choose a baker who is active in the community and easy to contact (telegram, X, email, etc.) and ask questions when and if needed.

Delegate -> Stake -> Earn.

Once we have chosen the baker we want to stake with, it’s time to proceed with staking. While some Tezos wallets have a built-in staking button, in this guide, I will show you how to do it using universal options that work with any Tezos wallet.

We have two primary options:

gov.tez.capital— Created by TezCapital

stake.tezos.com — Created by Trilitech

Both options follow a similar process, so to keep this guide concise, I will demonstrate using gov.tez.capital. However, feel free to use either option based on your preference. Let’s dive into the steps.

Step 1 — Connect your wallet to gov.tez.capital.

The process is quite straightforward. If you are using wallets like Kukai, Temple, Trust Wallet, etc., simply click on the “Beacon” option. If you are using a Ledger device*, click on the “Ledger” icon and connect your device.

Step 2- (re)Delegate to the baker of your choice.

Before we can stake our tez with a baker we first need to delegate to him. If you are already delegated to the baker you are going to stake with, you can skip this step. If not, click on the “Change Delegate” button, paste the baker's address, click delegate, and confirm the transaction with your wallet.

Step 3 — Stake and Earn!

We are almost done! Now that we’ve delegated to the baker of our choice, it’s time to stake. Click on the “Stake” button, choose the amount of tez you want to stake (you can stake just a portion of your wallet, leaving the rest delegated and liquid), and confirm the transaction with your wallet. That’s it! Your tez are now staked, and you will start earning more rewards for as long as you keep them staked.

Remember, when you decide to unstake, your tez will remain locked for 4 cycles (approximately 11 days) before you can finalize the unstaking process and they become liquid again. You can do both actions using the “Unstake” and “Finalize Unstake” buttons respectively.

And that wraps it up! Starting staking is incredibly straightforward, and with benefits like doubled rewards compared to delegation and increased network security, staking becomes an obvious choice — especially if you’re holding Tezos for the long haul, like me.

I’ve covered as much as possible about the new Staker role while trying to keep it concise. If you have more points to discuss, feel free to drop them in the comments below. For additional queries, join the Tezos Telegram or Discord communities where you can get real-time answers. Happy staking!

Stake and (L)earn: A Beginner’s Guide to the New Tezos Staker Role. was originally published in Tezos Commons on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Month At A Glance — June 2024

A quick rundown of the latest happenings and significant milestones within the Tezos ecosystem for June 2024.

Welcome to our latest issue, Month At A Glance, 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, June 2024 was an exciting month for Tezos, with new product releases and new development roadmaps introduced to the Tezos ecosystem. Highlights revolved around Tezos X, adaptive issuance going live, and more.

Let's break it all down.

Ecosystem Insights

What The Heck Is Tezos X?

The Tezos X vision has just been released. If you’re, like many others, unsure what exactly this is, I’ll do my best to dispel your confusion.

One of the most significant development points in the blockchain space is centered around architecture. Presently, two generally accepted beliefs about the architecture make the most sense for scaling. Those two architectures are the following:

Monolithic

Modular

We can think of Layer 1, such as Solana, as a monolithic architecture. With this structure, proponents of it as a scaling solution generally express having one single chain with a very high load capability as the end-all solution. That load capability is determined by transactions per second and the chain’s latency. In other words, a super fast chain with low fees and low latency is how to scale for billions of users on-chain.

The modular design takes this approach and splits it. Some examples that use this framework are Celestia or EigenLayerDA, most notably. Modular design offloads consensus, transaction processing, or data availability (DA) to several independent, specialized layers. This approach allows developers to optimize each area more efficiently and can lead to fragmentation from several rollups. Thus, regaining composability remains an issue worth tackling. This helps regain composability; developers can optimize each area separately instead of a whole system.

First, we’ve seen some effects of monolithic architecture with decentralized protocols like Ethereum. While being fully composable, functions such as consensus, transaction processing, and DA happen on Ethereum. Through usage and demand, it has completely overloaded, causing the spawn of the ecosystem of L2s we see today. This is due to Ethereum nodes, which must verify transactions, make data available, and maintain an entire block history. We can look at this approach to scaling as horizontal scaling.

Surely, there is an easier and more efficient way to scale to the masses?

That’s where Tezos X comes in with vertical scaling.

Source

Tezos X is taking the approach of these two architectures and making a hybrid “Modu-lithic” model. One way to accomplish this is through features such as DA sampling. As we described earlier, modular chains have specialized layers for core functions. One is DA, which refers to all necessary data needed to validate transactions and ensure they are available and accessible to blockchain users. The Data Availability Layer (DAL) will play an important role here.

DA sampling allows nodes to verify that all necessary data for a block is available without downloading the entire block. This ensures that even if a node only sees a small portion of the data, it can confidently verify its completeness. As a result, more transactions can be processed in parallel across different blocks without overloading the network. This reduces bottlenecks and scales the network’s load capacity, making it possible to support more transactions and users without sacrificing speed or security.

We’ve already seen some efforts towards interoperability, which is another component of Tezos X. Etherlink, which has recently launched its mainnet beta, has integrated Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) support for Tezos, providing tools for Solidity smart contract deployments. Additional efforts are being made, such as:

Michelson rollup

Support for mainstream languages (such as JavaScript, Python, Java, C#)

Improved developer experience

Further down the development pipeline are things such as the canonical rollup, RISC-V, and vertical scaling efforts to further increase the composability of the Tezos network. As mentioned earlier, Ethereum is pursuing a path of horizontal scalability. Taking some modular components but stacking them across several rollups (L2s). The main vision behind Tezos X is to incorporate vertical scaling, one rollup that will incorporate and use all the developments under one roof.

These developments would include things such as:

Full composability

Highly interoperable

Multiple execution environments

Atomic transactions

Of course, there are some more details around the technical components that will make this possible, so if you’d like to dig really deep, see the Tezos blog that discusses what exactly those are.

As a whole, Tezos X is bringing greater composability, scalability, and interoperability to the Tezos network. I think the main thing to understand here is how Tezos has already been pursuing this modular nature with the introduction of Smart Rollups, DAL, and more. Tezos X is taking that one step forward by pursuing vertical scalability.

I can’t wait to see the future of Tezos unfold!

Adaptive Issuance Is Here

Adaptive issuance is finally here after the activation of the Paris B upgrade and subsequent Paris C update. Adaptive issuance presents some neat economic changes to Tezos. It's designed to automatically adjust the rate of new tez issued based on the total amount of tez staked. This ensures that only the necessary amount of tez is emitted to secure the network, minimizing inefficiencies and reducing dilution.

Source

The mechanism adjusts rewards based on a target staking ratio, increasing rewards to encourage more staking when the ratio is low and decreasing rewards when the ratio is high. Per Nomadic Labs guidelines:

The Adaptive Issuance rate will initially stay between 4.5% and 5.5%. The span gradually increases over the next 6 months, eventually allowing the rate to fluctuate between 0.25% and 10%.

Alongside adaptive issuance, a new staking mechanism has been introduced. Now, there are two ways to secure the Tezos network apart from the previous, baking. Let's showcase how you can get started staking today.

How Can I Stake?

Head over to the staking DApp from Trilitech to begin initiating this process.

Connect Wallet: Connect your Tezos wallet.

Delegate: Delegate your tez and choose a baker that can support additional stake with a fee and policy that you deem acceptable. To check this, you can visit tzkt.io to see capacity and status. You'll need to grab their address and paste it into the tab.

Stake: After completing the above, your delegation status should appear active. Proceed to click "Stake." You'll be prompted to agree to some terms of use. Following this, enter the amount you wish to stake and click "Stake."

Removing Stake: If you wish to remove stake, click "Unstake" and enter the amount you want to to unstake. After doing so, you must wait four cycles for the balance to finalize on the blockchain. For reference, a cycle on Tezos lasts ~2.5 days. So, you'll need to wait about ~11 days for balances to update fully.

It's that easy to stake! For additional information on staking and the new mechanism, read How To Stake on Tezos.

News From The Tezos Ecosystem: Quick Bits

Tezos Ecosystem DAO now features tez-based voting

The Tezos Ecosystem DAO has introduced a new tez-based voting system, allowing community members to directly influence project proposals by voting with their tez. The weight of each vote is proportional to the amount of tez held, and key holders will execute proposals that achieve a supermajority.

World of Women joins Tezos ecosystem

World of Women (WoW) has joined the Tezos ecosystem to enhance women's impact in Web3 by leveraging Tezos. This partnership aims to address the gender gap in participation, leadership, and funding in the digital economy, inspiring millions with a vision of increased gender parity in Web3.

Messari shares the state of Tezos Q1 2024 report

Among the report's highlights, gaming was an outlier, with active gaming addresses up 500%. Be sure to read the full report for more metrics.

Baking Bad demonstrates Unity Tezos SDK in a new shooter game

Baking Bad's new shooter game shows how Tezos simplifies handling authentication, player inventory management, and other features for large-scale games. Read Using the Tezos Unity SDK for Large-Scale Game Development for more information.

Tezos Foundation x Google Cloud

The Tezos Foundation leveraged Google Cloud to boost the security and resilience of Tezos by setting up global archive nodes in under 2 hours and building a snapshot service in just three days. Read more in the case study.

The Museum of The Moving Image collaborates with the Tezos Foundation

The Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI) is collaborating with the Tezos Foundation on a yearlong initiative to exhibit artists who integrate emerging technologies in their work. This partnership will allow visitors to engage with and collect fragments of digital art, extending the museum's reach and fostering creative expression.

Events

TezCon in Seattle — June 1st

Tuesday TezDay Community Call — June 4th

Tezos Town Hall #1 X Space — June 4th

TezTalks Live #89: Magic

Artz Friday w/ Malicious Sheep — June 7th

Digital Art Mile @Basel — June 10–16th

Tuesday TezDay w/ DNS Team — June 11th

Artz Friday w/ Ryan Tanaka — June 14th

TezTalks Live #90: Diane Drubay

Tuesday TezDay Community Call — June 18th

Artz Friday w/ Bill Knight — June 21st

TezTalks Live #91: Kukai Wallet

Tuesday TezDay w/ Sutan — June 25th

TezTalks Radio #81: Agoria

Artz Friday Community Call — June 28th

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 May 2024 winners, so check out the recap here.

About Tezos Commons Foundation

Tezos Commons is a non-profit organization that emphasizes building communities on Tezos and supporting the Tezos ecosystem and its members. By organizing several community-focused events, hosting infrastructure, and funding small projects, Tezos Commons has actively contributed to building communities on Tezos.

Learn more about Tezos Commons. Are you interested in becoming a Tezos SuperFan and hosting events? Click here and begin your journey.

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

The Blockchain Evolved Show

Baking Sheet Newsletter

In-Depth Articles

You can also contact us on X or via email at social@tezoscommons.org.

Month At A Glance — June 2024 was originally published in Tezos Commons on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

All Roads Leads to X

Blockchain Evolved: the Road to Tezos X

Welcome to this week's issue of the Baking Sheet, Tezos community! This week marks an extremely important milestone for Tezos, as we unveil the roadmap for the future of our blockchain. Tezos was always intended to be a forever blockchain, one that evolves continuously in an open, modular environment.

As we navigate through these exciting developments, we celebrate Tezos' ability to adapt and grow, ensuring it remains the catalyst of blockchain technology for generations to come. Let's dive into what the future holds with the vision of Tezos X crafted by Nomadic Labs, Trilitech, and Functori as they share a unified vision of Tezos.

Tezos was conceived to be future-proof, upgradeable from the start and by design - and to do so according to the will of its community.

Staying true to this ethos and acknowledging some of the fundamental issues facing the blockchain space today, we propose a vision of the future where Tezos becomes a one-stop shop for a wide range of applications. A single, integrated system where each component is optimized to work seamlessly with the rest, with high performance, composability, and convenience.

Getting there is more than just making things faster, though; it’s about enabling innovators and driving activity. It’s about scaling both performance and utility, all the while preserving the properties that make a blockchain worth having. That’s what Tezos X sets out to achieve.

In truth, we’re already well on our way to Tezos X; we’ve been at it for a while. Many pieces of the system are already here: they’re part of the incremental evolution of Tezos. Our community has brought us here, and it’s our community that’ll keep driving us forward.

Let’s take a look at how we got where we are, and what the future of Tezos could look like.

The original design: layer 1 handles everything

Tezos started out as a monolithic blockchain, where every node replicates all activity. One layer, one execution environment.

However, scaling a monolithic blockchain means that requirements for computing power and internet bandwidth for all node operators increase as activity on the network increases. This is not sustainable and can result in centralization, as only those with enough resources to run high-end hardware remain able to secure the network.

In order to scale and maintain decentralization, Tezos has evolved from a monolithic to a modular design, where interconnected groups of nodes take on different roles - all the while maintaining an integrated experience for builders and users.

This approach keeps activities requiring a high degree of decentralization, like consensus and governance, on layer 1. Everything else is offloaded to modules optimized for their specific task, designed from the ground up to work together as one well-oiled machine. This approach allows massive improvements in performance while fully inheriting security and censorship-resistance from the L1.

This proposed modular-but-integrated, “modu-lithic” approach enables a huge boost in performance, composability, and interoperability and, when put together, means Tezos can get the best of both monolithic and modular blockchain design.

Boosting performance: high scalability, low latency

Performance is arguably the first big, hairy problem that needs to be solved to take Tezos to new heights. Much like broadband transformed the web by making online video a reality, Web3 needs to transcend its dial-up days to unlock its true potential.

From early 2022, several Tezos protocol developer teams set out on a joint mission to massively scale the Tezos network. The objective: is to ensure that a lot more people can do a lot more on the network at the same time.

Central to this strategy are Smart Rollups, a scaling technology where an optimized and dedicated second layer executes transactions, while consensus and settlement remain guaranteed by the L1.

By July 2023, developers were able to showcase a network throughput of 1 million transactions per second in a public demonstration. This feat was achieved by combining the horizontal scaling enabled by Smart Rollups (1,000 rollup nodes running in parallel) with Data Availability Committees (an efficient mechanism for publishing rollup data outside the constraints of L1 blockspace).

More recently, a dedicated Data-Availability Layer has been enabled on the Tezos mainnet. An evolution from DACs, the DAL ensures that the network can handle the large amount of data transmitted by rollup users in a fully decentralized way.

The combo Smart Rollups-plus-DAL is powerful, and in terms of performance alone, takes Tezos close to its broadband moment.

However, scaling the system horizontally with scores of rollups running in parallel introduces a new problem: a fragmented ecosystem where applications can’t talk to each other as seamlessly as they do in the L1. The composability of applications that run and interact smoothly is severely degraded as latency and friction are introduced.

Key developments

Smart Rollups (✅ Q1 2023): Smart Rollups massively scale the Tezos network by allowing the resource-intensive processing of transactions (execution) to take place on multiple, powerful dedicated layers, while integrity and security are still guaranteed by Tezos’ decentralized layer 1. The flexible design of Smart Rollups allows for the deployment of tailor-made blockchain solutions that don’t compromise on security and scalability.

Faster blocks (🔁 Ongoing): Pipelining and other optimizations have allowed block time to be reduced from 60 seconds to 10 seconds. The lower the block time, the smoother and faster applications run, and the sooner transactions can be considered final.

Data-Availability Layer (🔁 Ongoing): Smart Rollups require a large amount of data to be transmitted over the network and kept publicly available – more than Tezos’ layer 1 can support without compromising on decentralization. The Data-Availability Layer is an independent network for rollup data where data publication is guaranteed by the Tezos layer 1.

Composability: one rollup to rule them all

Composability is about making everything work together. It’s about allowing applications to interact with (and build upon) one another to arrive at a sum that’s greater than its parts.

As the DeFi “money Legos’’ analogy goes, composability is what allows a bunch of individual bricks to become a castle.

This isn’t a problem for monolithic blockchains, but a fractured, multi-rollup design that relies on horizontal scaling alone will have composability issues — no matter how many extra rollups it unrolls.

Bricks that are kept in different boxes can’t be easily assembled into castles. So, how to solve that?

How about vertical scaling?

Given the focus many L2 builders place on the horizontal scaling aspect, it’s easy to overlook just how useful rollups are for vertical scaling, too. Tezos X builds on this underappreciated property.

As the heavy lifting moves to another layer, the Tezos L1 becomes the underlying decentralized and censorship-resistant backbone for Smart Rollups. But importantly, Smart Rollups are also free to scale vertically with raw processing power.

There’s no longer a tradeoff between hardware requirements and decentralization within the system. With that, performance is only limited by the specs of one (or a few) ludicrously overpowered computer(s).

At this point, why even bother having hosts of parallel networks? In theory, one rollup is all that’s needed to meet the requirements of all but the most extreme use cases. Better yet, with all activity happening in a single rollup, we can achieve complete composability.

That’s what Tezos X envisions: the creation of a single canonical rollup able to handle - and massively expand - all activity on the Tezos network.

But scaling performance isn’t enough, and reclaiming composability (while keeping decentralization and censorship resistance) is really just par for the course — after all, monolithic Tezos was composable to begin with.

The last piece of the puzzle is bringing in more developers and experimentation to scale the utility of Tezos. For that to happen, we need a better developer experience, with more flexibility to allow builders to pick and choose their tools and programming languages. We need to make Tezos more interoperable.

Key developments

Canonical Rollup (⏳Exp. 2026). The Tezos ecosystem converges on a single rollup for most activity. The canonical rollup supports multiple execution environments with atomic transactions across smart contracts written in different programming languages.

New runtime (⏳Exp. 2025): RISC-V is being explored as a runtime, in addition to the current WASM engine for rollups. WASM is designed for the execution of web applications in a browser, while RISC-V offers an architecture that is highly efficient, more scalable, and closer to that of a hardware processor.

Further scaling (⏳Exp. 2025). Ultra-high throughput in Smart Rollups with parallel execution of transactions will take Tezos’ scalability to the next level. The target for this work is one million transactions per second in a single rollup.

Interoperability: making Tezos plug’n’play

Interoperability means breaking down barriers and offering more freedom to developers. It’s about opening up Tezos to new programming environments, connecting with other blockchains, and integrating with non-blockchain systems.

Most blockchains today require developers to learn new, dedicated programming languages, which often aren’t used outside their own ecosystems. This makes it hard for developers to deploy and maintain cross-chain applications, and even harder to connect with the off-chain world.

Even with the widespread adoption of Ethereum’s EVM and its main language, Solidity, most blockchains are still closed to mainstream programming languages.

A huge chunk of all machine learning is done in Python; web development mostly relies on JavaScript; finance is dominated by the likes of Java and C#. There’s a massive pool of talented developers that can be tapped into.

With an increasing amount of code being written by AI, the competitive advantage of mainstream languages will only grow. LLM algorithms feed on existing quality data, and there’s just no competition with the troves of training data for the likes of JavaScript and Python.

Building on top of advances in interoperability, the canonical rollup will support multiple execution environments. Devs will be able to deploy smart contracts using their preferred language. A smart contract written in Solidity calls a smart contract written in Python, and passes the result to a third contract written in JavaScript — all within the same transaction, and within the same rollup.

This interoperability will open up Tezos to millions of new potential builders, a huge suite of existing tools - and maybe even to your friendly neighborhood AI model, too.

Key developments

Etherlink (🔁 Ongoing): An EVM-compatible Smart Rollup built by Tezos protocol developers. Etherlink enables the deployment of Solidity smart contracts with frictionless integration with EVM ecosystem tools. The protocol-level trustless bridge between Smart Rollups and layer 1 enables asset transfers without relying on third parties.

Michelson rollup (⏳Exp. 2025): A proposed rollup supporting the same smart contract languages as Tezos layer 1. This rollup will allow existing applications on Tezos to be easily deployed on layer 2, benefiting from the high scalability and low latency enabled by Smart Rollups. The Michelson rollup can run in parallel with Etherlink, enabling a trustless bridge between those two runtimes.

Support for mainstream languages (⏳Exp. 2025). Turnkey Smart Rollup solutions will come with built-in support for deploying smart contracts in top mainstream programming languages. No need to learn a blockchain-specific programming language to start building. The first planned additions are JavaScript and TypeScript, with Python and Java being explored as next additions.

Improved developer experience (🔁 Ongoing): Tooling, tooling, tooling. Tezos developer teams have prioritized delivering more and better SDKs, APIs, and other tools for building on Tezos. The guiding principle is that integrating the Tezos blockchain into any type of application should be as easy as importing a software library.

Welcome to Tezos X

This vision for Tezos X represents a significant evolution from the original Tezos design.

Free from the burden of also having to process every transaction and computation, the L1 would become significantly faster, with even lower latency. The lighter load also means bakers would still be able to secure the network with low-spec hardware, ensuring decentralization.

A huge chunk of network activity would then be free to move to an overpowered canonical rollup, while the layer 1 focuses on being a lightweight consensus/settlement layer.

At this stage, Tezos will have moved from a monolithic blockchain, where every blockchain node replicates everything, to a fully modular design with an integrated experience, where different groups of nodes seamlessly interact and handle their own specialized tasks with high efficiency.

The processing power enabled by this shift means that, at this point, Tezos would be more than a blockchain.

It’ll be a reliable, usable, and scalable cloud-like backend for a wide range of applications.

Key developments

A new role for layer 1 (⏳ Exp. 2026): Proposed migration of accounts, applications and transaction history to the canonical rollup. Going forward, layer 1 would only handle the decentralization-sensitive tasks of consensus and settlement. Freeing up layer 1 resources means everything can run faster without requiring powerful hardware to secure the network.

Minimized latency (⏳ Exp. 2026+): As layer 1 becomes more lightweight, block time can be further reduced while keeping layer 1 decentralized. The first target for this phase is to get to a 5-second block time. As the protocol is further optimized and the capacity of hardware generally improves, even lower block times will become possible.

Decentralized sequencer (⏳ Exp. 2024): The possibility of a decentralized sequencer for the canonical rollup is being explored. A sequencer would allow for much lower latency inside the rollup – much less than a second. It could also offer fair ordering of transactions or transaction encryption, which serves to prevent someone from manipulating the order of transactions in a given block to their benefit, known as Maximal Extractable Value (MEV).

Footnotes

Horizontal scaling: scaling up a system to meet increased usage by increasing the number of nodes that process transactions without necessarily scaling each node’s capacity.

Vertical scaling: scaling up a system to meet increased usage by increasing the raw power of the existing nodes, such as increasing their processing power and internet bandwidth.

Tez/Dev 2024: Unveiling the Exciting Line-up and Agenda!

Following the buzz of Tezos X, we're thrilled to reveal the speaker lineup, agenda, and exciting stats for Tez/Dev 2024. This flagship annual conference is set to be a remarkable event for all community members, builders, partners, and Web3 enthusiasts.

Event Details

Date: Thursday, July 11, 2024Location: KBR, Royal Library of Belgium, Brussels, BEStart Time: 10:00 AM

Join us in Brussels this July for a day filled with engaging sessions on the latest innovations in Tezos, discussions on decentralization, and support for JavaScript, among other topics. The day will conclude with an after-party, providing a perfect opportunity for networking with industry leaders and fellow Tezos enthusiasts. Get your free tickets below!

Key Stats:

15+ Speakers

10+ Sessions

300+ Attendees

20+ Projects

Speaker Line-up

Check out our esteemed speakers at Tez/Dev 2024:

Arthur Breitman - Co-founder, Tezos

Justin Drake - Researcher, Ethereum Foundation

Tarun Chitra - Co-founder and CEO, Gauntlet

Benedikt Büenz - Chief Scientist and Co-founder, Espresso Systems

Yann Regis-Gianas - Head of Core Engineering, Nomadic Labs

Beata Lipska - Developer Relations Engineer, Trilitech

Nicolas Streschinsky - Head of DeFi, Trilitech

Bernd Oostrum - Co-founder, Plend

Dmitriy Kovalevskiy - Co-founder, Hanji Protocol

Iakov Levin - Co-founder, Rivo.xyz

Christoph Niemann - Specialist Solution Architect for Web3, AWS

Alex Liu - Director of Operations, Tezos Commons

Taisia Antonova - VP of Product, World of Women

Thomas Olivier - Co-founder and CTO, World of Women

Leen Al Taher - VP of Consumer Products, Rarible

Ivan Anastassov - COO, TrustSwap

Tez/Dev Agenda

09:30 - 10:00Networking: Doors Open

10:00 - 10:10Opening Introduction: Welcome to TezDev 2024Alex Liu, Director of Operations, Tezos Commons

10:10 - 11:00Keynote: Unlocking Opportunities with Tezos XArthur Breitman, Co-founder, Tezos

11:00 - 11:15Coffee Break

11:15 - 12:15Panel: The Road to L2 Decentralization + Q&AArthur Breitman, Co-founder, Tezos; Justin Drake, Researcher, Ethereum Foundation; Benedikt Büenz, Chief Scientist, Espresso Systems; Moderator - Tarun Chitra, Co-founder and CEO, Gauntlet

12:15 - 13:15Lunch Break + Networking

13:15 - 13:45Fireside Talk: World of Women: Empowering Communities with EtherlinkTaisia Antonova, VP of Product, World of Women; Thomas Olivier, Co-founder and CTO, World of Women; Leen Al Taher, VP of Consumer Products, Rarible; Moderator - Beata Lipska, DevRel Engineer, Trilitech

13:45 - 14:00Demo: TrustSwapIvan Anastassov, COO, TrustSwap

14:00 - 14:45Keynote: The Next Stage of Evolution for TezosYann Regis-Gianas, Head of Core Engineering, Nomadic Labs

14:45 - 15:00Coffee Break

15:00 - 15:30Demo: Opening Tezos to the world of JavaScript!Beata Lipska, DevRel Engineer, Trilitech

15:30 - 16:00Demo: Tezos on AWSChristoph Niemann, Sr. Consultant, Blockchain, AWS WWSO Web3 Team

16:00 - 16:45Panel: DeFi Catalyst Accelerator: The Ultimate Support Platform for Etherlink ProjectsModerator - Nico Streschinsky, Head of DeFi, Trilitech; Dmitry Kovalevskiy, Co-founder, Hanji; Bernd Oostrum, Co-founder, Plend; Iakov, Founder, Rivo

16:45 - 17:00Closing ThanksAlex Liu, Director of Operations, Tezos Commons

17:00 - 21:00TezDev After PartyRegister for TezDev to have priority access to the after party

Venue

KBR, Royal Library of BelgiumThe entrance is located around the corner at the following address: Bd de l'Empereur 2, 1000 Bruxelles, Belgium, rather than being the main entrance of the library.

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to connect with the Tezos community, learn from the experts, and celebrate the achievements and future of Tezos!

For more information and to register, click here.

This Week in the Tezos Ecosystem

Shifting from this week's headlines, let's dive into what's happening in the Tezos Ecosystem.

We're excited to share a new partnership between the Tezos Foundation and the Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI) in New York City. This collaboration will provide a unique platform for digital artists to showcase their work within the museum.

Starting on June 28, this yearlong opportunity will allow artists from the Tezos community to exhibit their creations at MoMI. Visitors will have the chance to take home a fragment of the artwork minted on Tezos, blending traditional museum experiences with the innovative world of digital art.

The partnership begins with "b a r b i e ~ w o r l d ~ b r e a k d o w n" (2024) by the first commissioned artist, Sabato PNG, displayed on MoMI’s Schlosser Media Wall. Learn more about this installation here.

Museum visitors can also explore the work of renowned artist Auriea Harvey and stop by the MoMI x Tezos station in the lobby to collect "Echo: Core," a fragment of her sculpture "Echo." Discover more about this interactive experience here.

This collaboration reflects Tezos' commitment to supporting digital artists and integrating with the traditional art world. It shows how the Tezos ecosystem continues to provide new opportunities for artists to reach wider audiences.

For more details about this partnership, check out the latest interview with Regina Harsanyi and Alja Paris by Jebb L. for The Art Newspaper here.

This Week in Tezos Development

Paris C Successfully Activated with Community Effort

Last week, we discussed the importance of the Paris C upgrade. This week on June 25, 2024, at 07:30:15 UTC, the Tezos blockchain successfully activated the ParisC user-activated upgrade (UAU) on mainnet at block #5,898,241. This milestone marks a critical step forward in ensuring the robustness and functionality of the Tezos network.

The ParisC upgrade addresses a liveness bug in Tezos’ Smart Rollups, which was discovered shortly after the activation of the Paris protocol. This bug temporarily affected users’ ability to withdraw funds from Etherlink to Tezos’ layer 1. With ParisC now active, users can resume seamless interactions with Etherlink, restoring full functionality and reliability to the network.

Achieving this upgrade was no small feat. It required a community-wide effort, with over 90% of bakers updating to Octez v20.1. This level of participation is a testament to the strength and dedication of the Tezos community. Developers, bakers, node operators, and countless others worked together to ensure the smooth deployment of ParisC.

We want to extend our heartfelt thanks to everyone involved in this successful upgrade. Your commitment and collaboration are what make Tezos a continually evolving and resilient blockchain. Let's continue to build the future of Tezos together, starting with Tezos X.

For more details on the ParisC announcement, you can read the full announcement by Nomadic Labs here.

🔴 Now Streaming: Building on Tezos | Kukai Wallet

Join us this week as we dive into the world of builders within the Tezos ecosystem, featuring an in-depth look at Kukai Wallet.

Kukai Mobile Lead Simon McLoughlin discusses the beta release of the Kukai mobile app and shares his journey of working in the Tezos ecosystem as a developer.

🖥 Stream: YouTube | X

Powered by beehiiv

The Significance of the Tezos Community Rewards Program

Something every single one of us has in common is that we like our efforts to be validated. In every human pursuit, we’ve grown to expect some sort of reward for a job well done. However, in a digital sea of talent and ambition, the feeling of being undervalued or even invisible is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid, especially for jobs that aren’t considered essential. Ironically, these non-essential jobs often are the ones that have withstood the test of time, such as the arts. It can also be argued that innovation falls within this paradoxical category, where the creation’s value rarely seems to equate to the impact said creation has on the world. Wouldn’t it be nice to see institutions rewarding those daring enough to innovate and create? What if you could have a direct say in who and what gets supported?

A Quick Refresher on CRP

There are initiatives dedicated to supporting and acknowledging those who go above and beyond, at least within the Tezos community, and one such initiative is the Community Rewards Program (CRP). The Tezos CRP was first introduced in October 2020 and has been occurring monthly ever since. With the help of community feedback, it has evolved along the way, but its purpose and functionality have remained the same. An excellent article about the program was written in 2022 by Cryptonio, and can be found here.

In summary, the program is funded by the Tezos Foundation, managed and operated by Tezos Commons. Every month, up to 5000 tez is dedicated to the reward pool. Any Tezos user can nominate who they think deserves recognition and support. It takes less than a minute to fill out the form, or alternatively, you can also use the hashtag #TezosCRP under tweets or in the Tezos Discord channel of who you think is worthy of a nomination.

So Why Do We Need CRP? Who benefits from this?

In the words of a respected artist in the Tezos community, PapaBearded, “I love the way it helps enable those grinding in the space to keep doing what they do! Every bit of institutional support that makes its way to artists and creators is a boon to the entire ecosystem if you ask me.”

This sentiment resonates across the Tezosphere. I can personally attest to the positive impact of CRP. In my early days of exploring Tezos, earning several nominations for my efforts was what bootstrapped my multi-year journey as an artist minting on Tezos. It also enabled me to explore DeFi, and gaming.

From a faucet-funded Kukai wallet and rewards from CRP, I have now minted over 500 artworks, collected over 2000 NFTs from other artists, and significantly improved my real life. CRP enabled me to spend my time networking, volunteering, experimenting with my artistry, and learning everything I can about Tezos.

Some More Quotes from CRP Nominees

AI Photo of a happy and supported creator. From a Tezos Dev: “Winning the Tezos Commons Community Rewards Program (CRP) awards has been incredibly impactful. Being recognized for my efforts in assimilation and development affirmed the importance of my work and encouraged me to push my boundaries. The rewards have helped me financially support my projects, allowing for more innovation and community engagement. The CRP embodies the spirit of Tezos, fostering a collaborative and supportive environment. It’s been a privilege to be part of such a forward-thinking initiative, and I’m excited to see how it continues to shape our community.” - Skllzrmy From A Tezos Artist: “Winning the TC CRP award has been a huge surprise for me. Being recognized for my 2.5 years of effort in the Tezos ecosystem warms my heart, motivates me, and makes me want to contribute with even more enthusiasm. Since my first NFT, I’ve believed in Tezos’s potential to shape the future ‘Art Community’ worldwide. The way artists bond and collaborate within Tezos ecosystem creates an important culture with great potential for both the arts and artists. It is a huge honor and an even greater pleasure to be a member of this wonderful community and to contribute as much as possible. A huge thanks to everyone who nominated me.” - Paraxeno aka Plektani-Art From TezTones Co-Founder: “Winning the CRP was a surprise that snuck up on me during the beginning of the TezTones Season. It was a time where I was begrudgingly accepting my role of leadership in the project and it was very reaffirming and heartwarming to get the acknowledgment. - Hashbrown

Hopefully, these testimonies from active Tezos Community members help elaborate on why Tezos CRP is such a fantastic and useful program. There is no guarantee of the initiative’s longevity, but the more we as a community utilize it and share how it adds value to our lives, the greater our chances to keep it around long-term.

There are also other initiatives for Tezos Community to utilize when in need of support, such as TZ APAC. With their platform, Fortify Labs, several community builders have already received funding and support. Learn more about this amazing development with the article, Fortifying The Future” by Stu Elmes.

Nominations for CRP are up to the Community. Use It So We Don’t Lose It.

The Tezos Community Rewards Program (CRP) stands as a testament to the power of recognition and support within a decentralized community. By acknowledging and rewarding the efforts of its members, CRP not only boosts individual morale but also fosters a culture of collaboration and innovation. This program has proven to be an invaluable resource for artists, developers, and innovators, providing them with the financial and moral support needed to push the boundaries of what’s possible on the Tezos blockchain. As the community continues to grow and evolve, programs like CRP undoubtedly play a crucial role in shaping the future, ensuring that those who contribute to the ecosystem are celebrated and empowered to keep innovating.

Why #Tezos CRP? was originally published in Tezos Commons on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.