Tezos: The 2-year Anniversary Of The Tezos Blockchain, July Community Update, Tezos Added To The Hubble Web 3 Explorer, Introducing zkChannels On Tezos, Q&A Sessions With Bolt Labs’ Ayo Akinyele And Baking Bad’s Vladimir Zarechnev
Biweekly update 22nd June — 6th July
Hello, and welcome to a traditional Tezos update by Paradigm! A lot of events and milestones happened within the Tezos ecosystem since our previous report. First and foremost, it’s been two years since Tezos launched its Mainnet! Our post-event congratulations to all the fantastic teams and the community! These two years were full of hard work, worthy contributions, and support from a significant number of people all over the world. The past two weeks were a part of a marvelous Tezos journey — so let’s have a short overview of news and events from The Foundation, teams, grantees, operational entities, and the tremendous Tezos community! TezosGigaNode team introduced IPFS Gateway, an easy way to access content from the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS). Currently, it is possible to be provided with access to daily Tezos snapshots (full and rolling) via IPFS and web. The Stove Lab announced Donutzery, a fee-less token tipping service. Another tipping service was born during the Coinlist Hackathon. Now TzTip’s providers are “Discord” and “Telegram, but this architecture can easily be expanded to support other platforms, such as Slack, Facebook Messenger, and even websites like Twitter. BUIDL Labs shared the launch of Cryptoverse Wars — an interactive code school to build DApps on Tezos using SmartPy.io. Another interesting thing happened — Emmy+ analysis underwent a certain update. After a discussion with Michael Neuder from the University of Colorado Boulder, who noticed a discrepancy between his analysis of Emmy+ and the one made by the Nomadic Labs, they identified a bug in the script used to generate the data for the plot in the “Forks starting now” section. They have, therefore, updated the plot. For more specific info, please, check the report below.
Claude Barde shared another excellent article on building a Tezos dapp using Taquito and the Beacon SDK. By the way, the latest version of the Beacon Extension by AirGap is now available in the Chrome web store.
Apart from all of the above, the Bolt Labs team is working to bring zkChannels support to Tezos. The techniques are chain-agnostic, and they are extending the protocol to enable privacy-preserving state channels on Tezos. Moreover, Archetype, a high-level Domain-Specific Language to write smart contracts for the Tezos blockchain, was released to allow for the formulation of the business logic with concise and specific abstract concepts and more. In our last update, we’ve mentioned EmailTezos, a non-custodial cryptocurrency wallet that allows anyone with an email address to interact directly with the Tezos blockchain. Recently, they’ve shared an overview of the security layers behind the project.
A community update, highlighting the major June news and event plans for July, was posted. All in-person meetups are still suspended, however, you will have an incredible chance to enjoy their online-alternatives. Among them is AMA session with Juraj Selep of SimpleStaking, TezTalks Live, and Radio editions — don’t forget to check them out!
What’s more, the Tezos Foundation had a couple of astonishing interview-sessions with Tezos-important people. For example, they caught up with Blockwatch founder and TzStats creator, Alexander Eichhorn, to discuss the latest release, his journey with Tezos, and what he’s excited for in the next 1,000,000 blocks. The Foundation team also sat down with Bolt Labs CEO & Co-Founder Ayo Akinyele to discuss his firm’s announcement that they are working to bring zkChannels support to Tezos to enable privacy-preserving state channels.
The dynamics of subscribers’ growth and community engagement in various Tezos social networks are positive. That’s all for today — see You in two weeks with new cool milestones reached!
Alert!
Development
For detailed GitLab developer activity click here.
- TezosGigaNode IPFS Gateway, an easy way to access content from the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS)
The team is providing access to daily Tezos snapshots (full and rolling) via IPFS and web. For links and more details visit https://giganode.io/#features.
It was also stated in the TezosGigaNode recent weekly report, that they served:
1)10 800 000+ requests (1.5 mil per day on average);
2)5 200+ unique connections;
3)134 GiB in traffic volumes;
4)with 119.97 ms response time on average
- Experimental DNT Token
- Money with wings You don’t have to pay any fees
- Wrapped present Tips & donations to profiles associated with a Tezos address
Cryptoverse Wars guides you to write basic smart contracts by onboarding you to the Cryptoverse — a parallel universe such as those portrayed in Ready Player One and The Matrix!
Read more info on the Twitter thread.
- Analysis of Emmy+ — 04/6/2020 update
After a discussion with Michael Neuder (University of Colorado Boulder), who noticed a discrepancy between his analysis of Emmy+ and the one made by Nomadic Labs, they identified a bug in the script used to generate the data for the plot in the “Forks starting now” section. They have therefore updated the plot. The number of confirmations has changed from 6, 12, 44 to 7, 16, 67 for attacker stake fractions of 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, respectively. The discrepancy was due to taking into account the rate of the shortest adversarial forks that are faster than the honest chain; instead, they should have taken into account the rate of any fork faster than the honest chain. In addition, they have provided a more precise explanation of the last plot from the “Forks started in the past” section.
Did you know that you can search tezos contracts, operations, and big map keys by just a few letters? No? Check it out via the link above!
- Build a Tezos dapp using Taquito and the Beacon SDK by Claude Barde
Use two of the hottest techs in Tezos development to build a dapp. For this tutorial, he chose vanilla JavaScript to write the dapp as it will give you all the information you need to use Taquito with the Beacon wallet and adapt the code to whichever framework you prefer. The dapp built and represented in the article is extremely simple, it connects to a demo smart contract deployed on Carthagenet (testnet) to test different features, the dapp has a button to connect your wallet, a simple interface with information from the blockchain and the smart contract and it gives you two options to save data into the smart contract. In order to continue reading, you must have at least a basic knowledge of HTML/CSS/JS and of how the Tezos blockchain works.
Connect your Tezos mobile, hardware, or local wallet to interact with Beacon SDK compatible dApps like camlCase’s Dexter. More on the website.
Bolt Labs team is working to bring zkChannels support to Tezos. The techniques are chain-agnostic and they are extending the protocol to enable privacy-preserving state channels on Tezos. There are a few unique features the protocol offers that are worth highlighting.
In order to preserve privacy, zkChannel data is kept asymmetrically. The customer keeps and updates all relevant channel information and proves, every time a payment is made, that the channel state is consistent with that payment. This ensures the merchant learns nothing beyond the payment amount, so customer privacy is maintained. A consequence of this is that a customer and merchant have completely different views of the channel’s state. Specifically, in zkChannels, only the customer knows the current distribution of funds; the merchant knows the total channel balance, but cannot link any received payments to the channel. Nonetheless, zkChannels can be safely closed down at any time by either party. They are also interested in building a cross-chain bridge via zkChannels for connecting Zcash or Bitcoin to Tezos, and provides censorship-resistance to decentralized finance (DeFi) applications.
Archetype is a high-level Domain-Specific Language (DSL) to write smart contracts for the Tezos blockchain. As a high-level specific language, Archetype enables the formulation of the business logic with concise and specific abstract concepts; it is thus easy to read and to figure out what it does. Archetype also enables the formulation of what the contract is supposed to do (ie. its specification) with logical formula. The first virtue is to document the contract’s code with unambiguous formal statements, and the second virtue is to enable its formal verification (with why3 by transcription to whyml).
- TezEdge Node — A deep dive into the mempool, part 1 by SImpleStaking
The purpose of the mempool, short for memory pool, is to temporarily store and manage the movement of new operations before they are validated and baked into blocks.Without a mempool, it would be impossible to control the vast amount of operations that are being constantly made on the Tezos blockchain.
Read an extensive article by Juraj Selep to learn more!
The user uses his own mobile/desktop/browser wallet and only he controls his private key. In the past, the problem with this approach was that there was no user friendly way of connecting tip bots with wallets to give them instructions. They solve this problem by using “Beacon”. It allows developers to establish a connection between the server and the wallet. Once the connection is established, the bot can send requests to the wallet and the user simply needs to confirm them. They showcase the “tipping” functionality here, but it is not limited to simple spend transactions. The “tipping bot” can send any type of request, such as delegation requests or contract calls. This opens the door to many applications, such as a collectible trading bots or interactive games on the blockchain. Those bots could give live updates, status reports and offer intuitive ways of interacting with the smart contract, which then result in a single transaction that is sent to the users wallet. The 2 providers are “Discord” and “Telegram. This architecture can easily be expanded to support other platforms, such as Slack, Facebook Messenger, but even websites such as Twitter.
Learn more via the website.
EmailTezos is an email-based non-custodial cryptocurrency wallet that brings together the best of two worlds — Internet (Email) & Blockchain (Tezos). EmailTezos allows anyone with an email address to interact directly with the Tezos blockchain. At the same time, users remain in control of their keys and funds. EmailTezos launched a month ago and the Tezos community digs the simplicity and user-friendliness of EmailTezos. In the past few weeks, the team significantly re-engineered the security model behind EmailTezos based on inputs from the Tezos community. Here is an overview.
News and Social Encounters
- The 2-year anniversary of the Tezos blockchain!
On the 30th of June, a huge milestone was passed — Tezos Mainnet turned 2!
Take a look at the video-discussions with Tezos thought leaders on the day of the 2-year anniversary!
Key Highlights from June
- A kind of ‘Magic’: One nerd’s quest to shake up video games and create a $1 billion market
- Beacon Extension & SDK Release — Beacon allows you to seamlessly connect your Tezos wallet with an application.
- Meanwhile at Nomadic Labs #8
- A Tezos Wallet Working Group Introduction
- Introducing Tplus
- Tezos-Based DAO Goes Live With Launch of STKR Token
- Tezos added to the Hubble Web 3 Explorer
- In addition to key highlights above, there has been a ton of more developments, announcements, and software releases. Subscribe to the Tezos Announcements channel on Telegram and Twitter that is updated daily with the latest
This was a monumental moment for the Tezos community, as the 1,000,000th block was baked and added to the Tezos blockchain. To celebrate this milestone, Blockwatch launched the 2nd version of the TzStats block explorer. The Tezos Foundation caught up with Blockwatch founder and TzStats creator, Alexander Eichhorn, to discuss the latest release, his journey with Tezos, and what he’s excited for in the next 1,000,000 blocks. Check out the Q&A via the link above!
Baking Bad is a team of developers with an extensive background in cryptographic protocols, algorithmic trading, financial software, and data mining. Baking Bad is one of the most active Tezos development teams, so Tezos Foundation team was thrilled to sit down this week with Co-Founder Vladimir Zarechnev to discuss how Baking Bad got started, what the team is working on, and what he looks forward to seeing built on Tezos.
It was another milestone for the Tezos ecosystem, as we all, the Tezos community, celebrated the 2-year anniversary of the Tezos blockchain. For this week’s update, Check out the Q&A and learn more.
For Part 1, they cover digital wallets that support Tezos, read in:
The interest of Indian developers has grown significantly in Tezos.
Upcoming events
Visit Tezos Foundation Events page to learn more. TQ Tezos has announced that TQuorum Paris will be rescheduled, follow TQ Tezos on Twitter for future updates.
- July 11th, 2020 — TezTalks Radio #5 — Polychain Capital with Rob Witoff
- July 15th, 2020 — TezTalks Live #7 — Nelly Chatue-Diop on Tezos West Africa
- July 18th, 2020 — Tezos Commons x SimpleStaking AMA with Juraj Selep
- July 22nd, 2020 — TezTalks Radio #6 — Tezsure and Tezos India with Bernd Oostrum
- July 30th, 2020 — TezTalks Live #8 — AirGap x Beacon
Partnerships, integrations and team members
Hubble allows bakers and other Tezos community members to explore and interact with the Tezos blockchain. Hubble redefines what a block explorer should be by enhancing the accessibility of blockchain data instead of simply presenting it, and sending out real-time alerts for network events. Bakers can use Hubble to monitor their performance, view governance stages and voting records, and obtain valuable insights into their delegator bases. Tezos community members can use Hubble to track baker uptime, voting history, and events. The goal of Tezos Hubble is to watch the chain for you and let you know when you may want to take action.
Tezos Hubble Explorer provides:
[Baker Analytics]
- Historical number of rolls
- Historical number of bakes and endorses
- Historical missed bakes and missed endorses
- Historical stolen bakes and stolen endorses
- Historical double bakes and double endorsements
- Filter network events
[Events and Alerts]
- Setup Events (Missed bakes, Missed endorsements, Stolen bakes, Double Bakes, Double Endorsements)
- Connect a Telegram account to receive realtime alerts
- Event history
[Governance]
- Tracking by stage
- Tracking by baker
- Live tallying
Social media metrics
Tezos community continues to grow. There is a constant increase in the number of subscribers of Tezos social media channels.
There is also Tezos Riot chat and YouTube channel.
The graph above shows the dynamics of changes in the number of Tezos Facebook likes, Reddit subscribers, and Twitter followers. The information is taken from Coingecko.com.
The Tezos Foundation is committed to supporting organizations that contribute to the growth of the Tezos community and ecosystem. They are especially interested in supporting regional organizations and university-based groups focused on Tezos and the larger blockchain ecosystem.
Check out some of the community organizations that compose the Tezos ecosystem:
- Tezos Ukraine: Website, Twitter
- Tezos Commons Foundation: Website, Twitter
- Tezos Korea: Website, Twitter
- Tezos Montreal: Website, Twitter
- Tezos OCaml Michelson Institute: Website, Twitter
- Tezos Detroit: Twitter
- MyTezosBaker: Website, Twitter
- Tezos Luxembourg: Website, Twitter
- Tezos Turkey: Twitter, Telegram
- Tezos Geneva: Twitter, Meetup
- Tezos Rio: Website, Twitter
Learn about key operational entities
- Nomadic Labs: Website, Twitter
- Tocqueville Group (“TQ”): Website, Twitter, Wiki
- Tezos Japan Foundation: Website, Twitter
- Tezos Korea Foundation: Website, Twitter
- Tezos Southeast Asia Association: Website, Twitter
Bake your Tezzies with us — tezocracy.com
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