Hello to all Tezos fans and crypto enthusiasts! Welcome to our regular biweekly report that gives an overview of news and updates across the Tezos ecosystem. As always, Tezos teams, grantees, Foundation, and operational entities continue to move forward on their own roadmaps towards the bright future of Tezos. During the past two weeks, the progress was seen not only on the development side but also on the Tezos social&media life. TQ Tezos shared an article on implementing FA2, an update on the FA2 specification, and SmartPy implementation release. FA2 broadens the potential for tokenization on Tezos significantly, supporting a wide range of token types (e.g., fungible, non-fungible, non-transferrable, etc.) and use cases. In practice, it aims to support novel implementation patterns alongside familiar patterns like single-asset fungible tokens (i.e., ERC-20) or NFTs. Metastate team described the specific implementation of Stateful Baking Accounts, gave details of what the latter would enable and how it would achieve it. Next, the Cryptonomic team updated Galleon with added Sign & Verify feature, which makes it possible to confirm message signatures using the public keys posted on the Tezos chain. This consequently enables secure communication and allows for ownership validation of keys. Apart from the dev updates above, a critical reliability upgrade for all Tezos nodes was released. It fixes a bug in the bindings of an external C library that can cause nodes to crash with a segmentation fault. Tezsure team launched Version 2.0 of the Tezster CLI, with docker integration for Tezos Alphanet nodes, cross-platform compatibility, auto-baking processes, and a lot more.
Furthermore, initial discussions and designing of a Tezos Naming Service were introduced with a purpose to translate a meaningful and user-friendly alias to a Tezos address and potentially vice versa. What’s more, SmartPy team has been working closely with the Cryptonomic and Chainlink teams to make Chainlink the go-to oracle solution for developers connecting their Tezos smart contracts to real-world data and systems. Integrating natively with Chainlink allows Tezos developers to utilize decentralized oracle networks to securely and reliably access off-chain resources and use them in their on-chain applications.
In the same manner, let’s look closer at the Tezos social media highlights and community efforts. Recently, the Tezos Foundation spoke with Taurus Managing Partner Lamine Brahimi, who answered questions on what they are working on, what needs to be done to bolster institutional adoption of blockchain protocols, and the future of the Tezos Foundation — Taurus Group collaboration. Also, Tezos Commons posted a May Community Update, featuring important news from the past month, a brand new TezTalks series that focuses on the stories and people behind Tezos, and gave a sneak peek on the upcoming community events. Check the report below for more! Besides, Tezos is now available for staking on Bitfinex. The number of subscribers in social networks and active participants in chats is prone to grow. Join the Tezos community and always stay informed with Paradigm!
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Development
For detailed GitLab developer activity click here.
- Everstake, Bake’n’Rolls, and Tezos Ukraine launched public node infrastructure with its own name, website, and branding — TezosGigaNode! The team has carefully configured and built the Tezos GigaNode solution which is capable of processing up to 1 Gigabit of traffic simultaneously. Moreover, they worked on security and reliability, so that users who connect could have peace in mind while interacting with the blockchain. For node list and other information please visit: https://tezos.giganode.io
- Implementing FA2 — An update on the FA2 specification and SmartPy implementation release.
As outlined in March, FA2 (TZIP-12) is a multi-asset interface for tokens and multi-token contracts on Tezos. FA2 broadens the potential for tokenization on Tezos significantly, supporting a wide range of token types (e.g. fungible, non-fungible, non-transferrable, etc.) and use cases. In practice, it aims to support novel implementation patterns alongside well-known patterns like single-asset fungible tokens (i.e. ERC-20) or NFTs. FA2 has been designed to facilitate multiple implementation patterns around permissioning. As noted while introducing FA2, they’ve identified and outlined three implementation patterns: the monolith, the wrapper, and the transfer hook. These patterns are described and compared below.
A comparison of the on-chain wrappers, source code wrappers, and transfer hooks:
In one of the previous articles, the limitations of the current state of baker keys and its effect on the network were explained. Additionally, as possible ways to address the current limitations, they described enhancing baking accounts and two of its possible design paths that were under exploration: feature design path A) or Baking Accounts, and feature design path B) or Programmable Staking.
After the analysis and taking the community feedback that Metastate team received across multiple channels into consideration, they has focused the research and engineering efforts in pursuing feature design path A) or Baking Accounts henceforth referred to as Stateful Baking Accounts. In this article they described the specific implementation of Stateful Baking Accounts, which has been further refined from the feature design path A) that was briefly described in the previous article. Moreover, this article details what Stateful Baking Accounts would enable and how it would achieve it.
- Galleon One — Late last year a long-term strategy for developing Galleon and adding new functionality in a coherent and fast pace was created. The end of the beginning of that process is now out as Galleon Preview 1.1.0b. This release has explicit support for the USDtz, tzBTC and StakerDAO tokens. Implicitly, any TZIP7/FA1.2 token that’s deployed on the chain can be added. As Galleon is based on ConseilJS, upcoming releases will expand functionality to include TZIP12/FA2 token support as well.
- A critical reliability update for all Tezos nodes was released
It fixes a bug in the bindings of an external C library. This bug can cause nodes to crash with a segmentation fault. It is strongly encouraged to update a node as soon as possible. The version 7.0 which contains the fix was launched. This node can now be used with any network, including Mainnet (the default network), test networks such as Carthagenet & new test networks that will come in the future. For more information including update instructions please visit the official documentation page: via the link. More information regarding the new multi-network node can be found here. The fix has also been pushed to the mainnet branch. If you are not ready to update to the 7.0 release, you can update as usual with git pull && make.
- The commit hash of the 7.0 release is 4053147fe577e9a04a5a09634a5645b2e26343e0
- The commit hash of the new mainnet branch is f0607f4b1f8c0f2a0a48adb4bc76378406203714
Amendments to the Tezos protocol brought about by the on-chain governance are activated immediately after their promotion. This poses a problem for bakers and third-party applications built on top of Tezos whose functionality might be broken by an amendment. Preemptive developments of required modifications on the application-level can only mitigate the risks to a limited extent and might turn out to be wasted if the amendment is not promoted. The Babylon amendment that only reached quorum last-minute demonstrated the distress caused by unprepared activations. It is proposed to amend the amendment process by adding a fifth period that allows for bakers and third-party applications to adapt: the Adoption Period.
- A beginner’s guide to Tezos TZIP-7 proposal — understanding how fungible tokens work on the Tezos blockchain. This article will guide through fungible tokens on the Tezos blockchain by building a smart contract to create them, store them and transfer them using Ligo programming language (and its ReasonLigo flavor) so you can have a better understanding of what they are and how they are set to revolutionize the Tezos blockchain.
- Upgrading the Tezster CLI to Version 2.0 — With new features to support developers in the ever-growing Tezos ecosystem.
What’s new?
- Docker integration for Tezos Alphanet nodes.
- Cross-platform compatibility.
- Auto baking processes.
- Complex smart contracts deployment and invocation support.
- An easy approach to create wallets and activate accounts.
- Better logging of user actions for traceability.
- Introducing new commands for easy interaction with smart contracts, accounts and nodes.
- Tezster GUI integration for visual interaction with local nodes.
- Bundle-react compatibility.
- The TezEdge Debugger — view all messages from the P2P and RPC layers (for both Ocaml and Rust-based nodes).
Through the TezEdge Debugger’s UI, users can view:
- Who sent the P2P message(s) to your node
- The content of the message(s)
- The time when they were made
- RPCs made in connection with your node (both requests and responses)
All of this information is recorded in the storage, allowing users to examine all of the aforementioned details whenever they want to. The TezEdge Debugger is node-agnostic, meaning that it will run on any kind of Tezos node, whether it is the native OCaml version, the Rust-based TezEdge node or other alternatives.
As this is an early version, certain features, including full-text search and pagination, have yet to be developed.
- Now in Chinese
- Charts and statistics
- Top accounts — a list of top-200 accounts by the amount of stake. This list provides a better overview of Tezos whales
Table of contents:
1. Juvix: Compiling Juvix to Michelson
1.1. Intuition on Stack Based Languages
1.2. Optimizations to Consider
1.3. Limitations of our Current Compiler Pipeline
In January, Gabriel Alfour proposed possible naming and identity systems and talked about how they could become parts of the Tezos ecosystem in the future. Building a system where participants are in charge of creating their aliases presents a straightforward solution. If it is the best solution is a bit less clear, but more on that later. People are already used to creating names for their e-mail boxes, Instagram accounts, or their web pages. The topic of this discussion is providing them with this familiar approach inside the Tezos ecosystem.
In the introduction, they referred to the DNS, which is a system most of us are probably very familiar with. There are however other ways it is possible to envision structuring names in the system. They explore some possible options and examples of projects using them.
Social Encounters
Tezos Foundation caught up with the Taurus team, which recently raised $10M in series A funding. They spoke with Managing Partner Lamine Brahimi, who answered questions on what Taurus is working on, what needs to be done to bolster institutional adoption of blockchain protocols, and the future of the Tezos Foundation — Taurus Group collaboration. The Tezos Foundation first entered into strategic cooperation with the Taurus Group in Q4 of 2019 to grow the Tezos ecosystem and provide secure access to the Tezos blockchain to potential issuers of security tokens. The collaboration has steadily progressed since then, with Taurus announcing in February that it had successfully integrated the Tezos protocol into its digital asset infrastructure.
A brand new TezTalks series that focuses on the stories and people behind Tezos. First is ‘TezTalks Live’ which is a live-streamed virtual meetup with participation from the audience and ‘TezTalks Radio’, a video podcast that dives in the why behind the latest news.
Subscribe to the YouTube channel for future events and podcast episodes.
{Key Highlights from April}
- Vertalo, tZERO Are Bringing $300M in Real Estate to the Tezos Blockchain
- Chain Reaction: Arthur Breitman — A Deep Dive With One Of The Industry’s Great Minds
- Branching Out: Announcing Tezos Support in Truffle
- Wrapped Bitcoin Aims to Kick-Start DeFi on Tezos Blockchain
- tZERO’s Digital Securities Protocol Now Supports Tezos Blockchain
- Meanwhile at Nomadic Labs #7
- Bringing Secure Chainlink Oracles to Tezos
- Public Tezos GraphQL API Endpoint Available on TezosLive.io
- Enabling Virtual Proof of Validation for Autonomous Driving — on Tezos — For quite some time within the Tezos community, they’ve been aware of a very ambitious and innovative effort focused on providing virtual proof of validation of autonomous driving functions — on Tezos. The subject is a complex one and to shed more light into the work being done within the ENVITED ecosystem, Carlo van Driesten of BMW Group was kind enough to help extrapolate just exactly what is being worked on.
- Future of Blockchain 2: Tezos Winners. For those who aren’t already aware, Future of Blockchain is a long-form competition for those at the Universities of Cambridge, Oxford, London, Berlin and others to build a blockchain project over 3 months.
{The Winners}
1st Prize: Chain of Insight — A zero-knowledge encryption oracle and dApp. — 8000 Tez.
2nd Prize: dAirbnb — A Professor from Stirling University, a Senior Lecturer at University of Strathclyde and PhD from the University Ibn Tofail in Morocco who have built a decentralised property marketplace. — 4000 Tez.
3rd Prizes — 2000 Tez each:
- DeepVerse- A team of 3 Cambridge PhDs who have built a platform to train AI models collaboratively.
- Q-Vote — A quadratic voting platform from a team of KCL students.
- Tezos Care — IOT device that sends your GPS location to your entourage in an emergency.
- TZ-Factor — Decentralised factoring for supply chains
- The Baking Sheet — Issue #20 — News and Insights from across the Tezos Ecosystem.
- Electis shared an update on the first test vote on Tezos! They successfully ran the test election on Ecclesia the first self-tallying blockchain-based voting app. Anurag Koyyada from King’s College London is the new chairperson for the #Universitiesforevoting network,
Upcoming events
Visit Tezos Foundation Events page to learn more.
According to the recent Tezos Community Update, Tezos Commons is canceling community events except for third-party and remote sponsorship for March because of COVID-19. TQ Tezos has announced that TQuorum Paris will be rescheduled, follow TQ Tezos on Twitter for future updates.
- 12th May 2020 — Tezos Commons x Nomadic Labs AMA, Reddit Tezos
- 13th May 2020 — Tezos Commons x Binance Nigeria AMA, Telegram Binance Nigeria
- 13th — 17th May 2020 — Webinar : An introduction to Tezos. In this webinar, they will present a sequence of short videos providing a bird’s-eye view of the Tezos ecosystem and the features that make it unique.
- 20th May 2020 — TezTalks Radio #2 — Ecosystem updates featuring Brian Li and William McKenzie, Youtube Tezos Commons
- 21st May 2020 — Tezos Commons x Binance Cameroon AMA, Telegram Binance Cameroon
- 25th May 2020 — Tezos + Coinlist Hackathon
- 28th May 2020 — TezTalks Live #4 — Jonas Lamis on StakerDAO, Youtube Tezos Commons
- 29th May 2020 — TezTalks Radio #3 — Sergey Nazarov, CEO of Chainlink, Youtube Tezos Commons
Finance
- Tezos is now available for Staking on Bitfinex.
- Earn 0.25% Cashback with on Select Tokens Purchases and Earn XTZ Staking Rewards.
Partnerships and team members
- TAURUS raises 8-digit financing round from strategic investors — Taurus Group SA (Taurus), the Swiss leader in digital asset infrastructure for banks, asset managers and stock exchanges, announced today it has secured a CHF 8-digit series A funding round. The financing round is composed of existing investors as well as new strategic institutional, and private investors that include Arab Bank Switzerland (lead investor), stock listed real-estate group Investis Group, Lombard Odier, and Swiss Blockchain foundation Tezos Foundation.
- Bringing Chainlink Oracles to the Tezos Ecosystem
Oracles are a key component of a thriving blockchain ecosystem. As such, SmartPy team has been working closely with the Cryptonomic and Chainlink teams to make Chainlink the go-to oracle solution for developers connecting their Tezos smart contracts to real-world data and systems. Integrating natively with Chainlink allows Tezos developers to utilize decentralized oracle networks to securely and reliably access off-chain resources and use them in their on-chain applications. Oracles allow developers to build smart contracts that incorporate off-chain data, take advantage of external API services, trigger settlements on existing payment networks, and more. Combining secure, institutional-grade smart contracts on Tezos with Chainlink’s tamper-proof inputs and outputs enable the development of highly secure, data-enabled applications that are fully integrated with real-world data/systems.
You can also read about it on Coindesk in the article “Tezos Becomes Latest Blockchain to Tap Chainlink for Oracle Services”.
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 which 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
Recent Paradigm Fund updates on tezos:
- Biweekly update 29th March — 10th April: Announcing Tokenized Bitcoin tzBTC, The TezEdge P2P Explorer and Chain Reaction Podcast with Kathleen Breitman
- Biweekly update 15th March — 29th March: The Second Biannual Update, Vertalo to Tokenize 22 Securities Worth $200M on Tezos Blockchain, Update On Civil Litigation Involving The Tezos Foundation
- Biweekly update 27th February — 15th March: Welcome To The Carthage, The Foundation Governance Structure And Future Nominees, Equisafe Launched STO Platform And Tokenized The First Asset On Tezos, Introducing FA2, March Community Update
- 15th February — 27th February: A New TzStats API Upgrade, TAPS — Automatic Payment System, Ryan Lackey On The Tokyo FinTech Podcast, LIGO, SCaml & SmartPy Progress, The Baking Sheet By Tezos Commons
Bake your Tezzies with us — tezocracy.com
