Month At A Glance — October 2024
A quick rundown of the latest happenings and significant milestones within the Tezos ecosystem for October 2024.
Welcome to our latest issue, Month At A Glance (October 2024), where we give a quick rundown of the latest happenings and significant milestones in the Tezos ecosystem on a monthly cadence.
Like a repeating record, October 2024 was an exciting month for Tezos, from the Kukai iOS release, Tezos governance in action, and some neat voting applications using Tezos, such as Electis.
Let’s break it all down.
Ecosystem Insights
Kukai iOS 
One of the most exciting developments during the month was the long-awaited Kukai release for iPhone users. The iOS version was released on October 2, 2024.
In my opinion, it offers probably one of the most user-friendly experiences among all Tezos wallets. If you’re a new user, Kukai offers a social login feature allowing Google, Facebook, Twitter (X), Reddit, Email, and Apple IDs to create and store a wallet. There’s no need to remember passwords or worry about storing them somewhere. Your social login is the password.
We’ve covered it pretty in-depth in a previous publication. I also shared some insight in a piece on it, but one of the other neat features is Bluetooth Ledger support. This was shared on October 31st by lead mobile developer Simon McLoughlin. Now it’s worth noting this feature is not live yet, it’s merely undergoing testing on the Beta version in TestFlight!
I haven’t seen any mobile wallets I use to support this, so it goes to show how the Kukai team is really staying up-to-date with all the latest features. But if you’re looking for a great iOS Tezos wallet, it’s an amazing option (especially for beginners). Give the beta version a go here if you’d like to test the Bluetooth Ledger support, or download the production version here.
Tezos Governance
I think the past few months have been some of the most interesting times in terms of governance since the Brest protocol back in mid-2019. One of the standalone pieces of that proposal was that a non-core development team proposed it (OCamlPro). Since there was no competition, it was promoted up until the Exploration phase. It was also the first Tezos proposal rejected during the Exploration phase.
We saw virtually the same thing happen with the old Qena proposal. In the last governance cycle, Qena won against Quebec A and B. However, it, too, could not make it quite through the Exploration phase. A non-core Tezos development team also proposed Qena, TezCapital. It was quite an event to witness; the necessary votes to push it through were strangely downvoted by PoS Dog, a large baker. We covered this more in last month’s issue.
Since then, we’ve been met with a new set of proposals from Nomadic Labs, initially shared on October 12th. In the spirit of adhering to those newer proposals, the initial Qena proposal has been renamed Qena 42. Likewise with the previous Qena proposal, Qena42 sets itself apart by not including the new maximum issuance curve and moving the target from 50% to 42%.
As proposed by TezCapital, it is currently in the exploration period of the governance process. At the time of writing, there are only eight more days left, so be sure to get out there and vote!
Electis Voting Solution Rolls Out to 60,000 Schools in France
Electis is a voting platform that provides a secure, transparent, and verifiable voting experience. To learn more about the intricacies of their platform, they have a detailed whitepaper accessible here. Nomadic Labs has collaborated alongside Electis in developing a solution for parents of students across more than 60,000 educational establishments in France. Naturally, students need a representative for them, and as a use case in 2023, we saw Electis work with Occitanie High School. What resulted from this was a vote that took place on the Tezos blockchain, per the press release.
That’s not entirely all, though. Electis has been around in the Tezos ecosystem for a while and is not new to the scene by any means! In February 2020, we learned about Electis and their plans to use Tezos in “a worldwide university voting experiment.” When they spoke about their rationale, it made a lot of sense. Trust is hard to acquire, let alone trust in new technologies like blockchain, which are changing how people participate in voting.
They’ve shown much work here since then toward that, not only with the press release, but also throughout the years with NeuillyVote, to name another example. When it comes to choosing Tezos, apart from other solutions, there are some key benefits. Let’s explore a few of those:
Decentralization: Tezos is a decentralized network governed by network participants (bakers). Data is replicated across all nodes, making it difficult to compromise something like the integrity of election data. Centralized databases, on the other hand, have single points of failure, such as outages or breaches.
Scalability: Tezos is on a path to being highly scalable. With the Tezos X roadmap, Tezos is leading the charge towards scalability with rollup solutions such as Etherlink, which is already live in beta, and others in the works, such as Jstz. When considering scale, having potentially millions of voters is important to support.
On-chain governance: One of Tezos’ unique features is its on-chain governance mechanism. Having been battle-tested 16 upgrades, the 17th protocol upgrade (Quebec/Qena) is currently undergoing voting. This kind of adaptability and means of adopting new technologies is crucial, especially when we consider incorporating new security standards or regulatory requirements, which all change frequently.
When we consider using blockchain in ways that make sense, this is one of those. I wrote about philately recently, another neat and somewhat niche use case. As a whole, I think recent years have not done well to strengthen trust in voting. Much more questioning is going on around processes, which should paint a motivation for exploring trustless avenues, like the work Electis is doing on Tezos!
News From The Tezos Ecosystem: Quick Bits
ECAD Labs secures a grant from the Tezos Foundation
Signatory is a remote signing solution for the Tezos blockchain that securely manages private keys and authorizes specific operations, like block signing and endorsements. Learn more about Tezos Foundation’s grant announcement for Signatory here.
Nomadic Labs announces collaboration with Cube3
Nomadic Labs has partnered with Cube3, an accelerator, to support 14 startups over a year, including Motto and Boonty. This partnership offers the startups over 100 hours of personalized guidance and access to Tezos technology expertise to foster growth and international reach. Learn more in the press release.
Quantix Capital x Tezos
Quantix Capital makes a $1 million investment in Tezos through TZ APAC. Jake Seltzer, Managing Director at Quantix, noted, “Our investment goes beyond financial backing; it’s a commitment to empowering the creators who are reshaping the future of games and interactive experiences.” Learn more about the news in the press release.
XTZ deposits and withdrawals are now supported on AscendEX
Read AscendEX’s official announcement to learn more about the listing of Tezos (XTZ), Etherlink support, and Arbitrum chains.
Etherlink’s second proposal upgrade, Bifrost, is released!
Nomadic Labs, Trilitech, and Functori have introduced Bifröst, a new upgrade proposal for the Etherlink Mainnet, featuring FA 2.1 token support and improved performance. Learn all about it in their announcement post.
Events
Tuesday TezDay with Sift — October 1st
TezTalks Radio with Stan Kozyakov of Renora — October 1st
Tezos Town Hall — October 3rd
Artz Friday with Artsforthevoid — October 4th
Tuesday TezDay Community Call — October 8th
Artz Friday with Paldipaldi — October 11th
Tuesday TezDay with Efe Kucek — October 15th
TezTalks Live with Baking Benjamins — October 17th
Artz Friday with Poyo — October 18th
Tuesday TezDay Community Call — October 22nd
TezTalks Radio with Om Malviya of Superlend — October 24th
Artz Friday Community Call — October 25th
Tuesday TezDay with Chris Pinnock — October 29th
TezTalks Live with Lecks — October 30th
Stay in the Conversation, Stay in the Know
Tezos Commons hosts a variety of community-oriented events and content. From podcasts, X-spaces, and long-form content, there’s something for everyone.
TezTalks Live
TezTalks Radio
X Spaces
X Shorts
Baking Sheet Newsletter
In-Depth Articles
You can also contact us on X or via email at social@tezoscommons.org.
Month At A Glance — October 2024 was originally published in Tezos Commons on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
