Welcome to our traditional biweekly report on Tezos! Get ready to catch up with all the news and events that were up in the Tezos ecosystem over the past two weeks! Today, we have a lot to share, so let’s have a quick overview of the recent updates from the Tezos Foundation, teams, grantees, and operational entities.
To begin with, Tezos smart contract activity has shown an extremely vivid growth recently. Only 256 smart contracts were deployed on the mainnet from June 2018 to July 2020, but in August 2020 alone, 357 smart contracts were deployed! Contract Calls on the Tezos mainnet also reached new highs with 20,699 calls made in August alone, which is more than all other months combined. The total calls on the mainnet now stand at 36,530, with 4,741 made so far this month.
Another crucial update — Tezos teams injected Delphi, the latest proposed upgrade, following Athens, Babylon, and Carthage. Delphi is currently in the Exploration Vote period. It is intended to improve the performance of the Michelson interpreter and gas model and is meant to serve as an interim improvement while another proposal will follow later in the year. Later proposal is expected to include support for features on the Dalphanet test network, including Sapling, baking accounts, and more. According to the announcement, the Delphi proposal intends to “enable novel applications on Tezos that target areas like DeFi, collectibles, and gaming” by improving gas constraints so individuals can more easily develop more complex smart contracts. The proposal also aims to reduce storage costs and improve the safety of Michelson, in addition to providing several other minor bug fixes. By the way, Baking Bad announced that their TzKT Tezos Explorer now supports Delphinet.
Apart from the mentioned above, Tezos is one of the first Layer-1 chains that Biconomy will support enabling meta transactions. It will cut deployment time for developers building new apps and ease the user experience for newcomers interacting on a Tezos based application.
Many Tezos educational materials were published, including a tutorial showing how to implement an oracle call in a contract written in Ligo and how to receive the data back from the oracle. What’s more, Baking Bad, in collaboration with Claude Barde, released the first part of their Tezos Labs project, an interactive learning course for Michelson, the native Tezos contract language. camlCase released version 1 of a series of tutorials to help Tezos developers learn how to use the Tezos RPC to integrate Tezos into their applications.
Tezos Commons published their community update for September, released TezTalks Radio episode 8 featuring Vishakh Null of Cryptonomic and episode 9 with a discussion on STO Developments, Kiln for macOS, DID on Tezos, and the Delphi proposal.
ECAD Labs released a summer 2020 update to share what their team has been working on. SimpleStaking team added a Tezos dissector to their Wireshark network traffic analysis tool. Tezsure released the latest version of Tezster-GUI with new features and minor bug fixes.
Furthermore, Tarides published a blog post on the latest design decisions and performance improvements made to irmin-pack, the Irmin storage backend used by tezos. For more tezos teams’ updates, check the report below!
All in all, the community tends to grow in social networks and multiple Tezos chats! Stay tuned, and see you in two weeks!
Development
For detailed GitLab developer activity click here.
Delphi is intended to improve the performance of the Michelson interpreter and gas model. The announcement followed an August 19th Tezos Town Hall where members of the community asked whether an interim protocol proposal could be injected to introduce gas improvements to help smart contract developers in the Tezos ecosystem.Delphi is the latest proposed upgrade to Tezos, following Athens, Babylon, and Carthage, and is currently in the Exploration Vote period. As with the previous protocol proposals, the Tezos Foundation has voted to abstain and allow the community to decide the future of the Tezos protocol. The Delphi proposal is meant to serve as an interim improvement while another proposal will follow later in the year, which is expected to include support for features on the Dalphanet test network including Sapling, baking accounts, and more.
According to the announcement, the Delphi proposal intends to “enable novel applications on Tezos that target areas like DeFi (‘Decentralized Finance’), collectibles, and gaming” by improving gas constraints so individuals can more easily develop more complex smart contracts. The proposal also aims to reduce storage costs and improve the safety of Michelson, in addition to providing a number of other minor bug fixes.
An early alpha version of their browser app is now available at https://carthagenet.tezos.domains/. The app lets you register and manage domains, see domains of other users, and more. Users are welcome to test it out and register domains with their Carthagenet accounts. Please note, that they will not migrate any data to other testnets or the mainnet. This is for testing purposes only.
Oracles are a game-changer as they allow smart contracts to have access to live data. They add a layer of security to the contracts as they allow developers to depend less on data provided by the users and more on a reliable source of information. This tutorial will show you how to implement an oracle call in a contract written in Ligo and how to receive the data back from the oracle. They use the Coinbase Pro normalizer contract as a source of data and the CameLigo syntax of LigoLang. This piece covers 2 entrypoints of this contract that I used to create the Hodlers Lifesaver dapp. The dapp allows users to lock their tez in and will only let them withdraw their funds if the current exchange rate between XTZ and USD is higher than at the time they locked their tez.
Last month, more smart contracts have been deployed on Tezos than in the entire existence of Tezos mainnet. This resulted in a 907% growth of smart contract-related transactions.
For August, the total amount of new smart contract deployments on mainnet was more than the total of contracts that have been deployed in the entire period since the launch of mainnet. So in one month, more smartcontracts went live on mainnet, than in the past two years combined.
- From June 2018 — July 2020: 256 smartcontracts have been deployed on mainnet
- In August 2020 alone: 357!
Above is a step-by-step tutorial, with screenshots, to guide you through installing Kiln on MacOS Catalina. If you have questions or would like to join the conversation, please feel free to comment on the post via the link or join the tezos-baking slack by emailing joinslack@tezos-kiln.org. For an introduction to baking and staking on Tezos, it is suggested to take a look at the following articles and resources:
- It’s a baker’s life for me — being a Tezos validator
- Proof-of-stake in Tezos
- How to Install Kiln and Bake on Ubuntu
The first part of Tezos Labs project, that is dedicated to Michelson language! This interactive learning course was created in collaboration with incredible Claude Barde for anyone willing to dive deeper into smart contract development.
camlCase is releasing version 1 of a series of tutorials, to help Tezos blockchain developers learn how to use the Tezos RPC, to integrate the Tezos blockchain into their applications.
Ecosystem Updates
- Baking Bad published an article on off-chain events and Tezos tokens indexing.
- ECAD Labs released a summer 2020 update to share what their team has been working on.
- SimpleStaking added a Tezos dissector to their Wireshark network traffic analysis tool.
- Tarides published a blog post introducing irmin-pack, an Irmin storage backend for Tezos.
- Tezos Commons released episode 8 of TezTalks Radio featuring Vishakh Null of Cryptonomic.
- Tezsure released the latest version of Tezster-GUI with new features and minor bug fixes.
- TQ Tezos hosted their latest TQuorum event which covered “Staking and Baking on Tezos with Kiln.”
- TzStats released v2.0.5 of their blockchain analytics explorer with improved lists, new charts, and more available operation data to explore.
- Baking Bad announced that their TzKT Tezos Explorer now supports Delphinet.
- Spruce published an update on their latest development activity.
- Tarides published a blog post on the latest design decisions and performance improvements made to irmin-pack, the Irmin storage backend used by tezos.
- TQ Tezos hosted the latest TQuorum featuring the team from Papers/AirGap, who discussed the ecoo digital vouchers experiment.
News and Social Encounters
- Protocol-level transaction fees? by Arthur Breitman, Tezos co-founder
This article is a collection of thoughts around fee markets in general and mechanism to fold in transaction fees in a protocol, such as the one outlined in EIP 1559. While EIP 1559 is an Ethereum-specific proposal, the fee market in Tezos, Bitcoin, and Ethereum are essentially similar, making the ideas in this proposal broadly applicable to all three. Learn more via the link above!
In the ninth episode of TezTalks Radio, hosts Brian Li and William McKenzie discuss STO developments surrounding Aspen Coin, Kiln for macOS, decentralized ID on Tezos, and the Delphi proposal.
This week, the Tezos Foundation caught up with Tezos Ukraine Co-Founder Mihai Tsybuliak to discuss his work on Tezos Giga Node, his team’s role in the Tezos community, and other projects they’re working on.
Q: What three things are you most excited to see built on Tezos?
A: I believe that blockchain is well-suited to disrupt finance, and am excited to witness the start of this transition with the CBDC development our ecosystem has in place. Tokenized securities, real estate, stocks, and other assets on the Tezos blockchain are on the way, it’s just a matter of time, which is a major real world use case I am very excited about. I also believe that freedom and privacy are core human rights and I am very much looking forward to the privacy-oriented zk-SNARKs Sapling Tezos protocol amendment. Overall, I am excited to see the Tezos ecosystem picking the right development priorities to set up the protocol for long-term success.
Catch up with all the recent news of the past month in a recap by Tezos Commons.
Key Highlights from August:
- Tezos Delphi v007 RC1 Review
- Brazil’s Largest Crypto Hedge Fund To Launch New Digital Asset Exchange Using The Tezos Blockchain
- ENVITED Ecosystem: A Q&A with BMW Group Systems Architect Carlo van Driesten
- tZERO ATS Begins Trading the St. Regis Aspen Digital Security
- Tezos improves DeFi infrastructure with Harbinger price oracles
- Announcing Decentralized Identity on Tezos
- Announcing TzStats v2.0.5
- Tezos Litigation is over
- Summer 2020 Update from ECAD Labs
Upcoming events
TezTalks Live is the virtual meetup series that is streamed in real time with the actors of Tezos ecosystem. TezTalks Radio is a video podcast that finds the “why” behind the latest Tezos news and discover the stories behind the people of Tezos. See more on the website.
- 16th September 2020 — This Is Your Identity on Tezos with TQuorum
- 17th September 2020 — TezTalks Live #11 — Harbinger with Luke Youngblood and Taylor Keefer
- 21st September 2020 — TezTalks Radio #10 — Carlo Van Driesten from ENVITED Group
- 29st September 2020 — TezTalks Live #12 — Andrew Paulicek on Domains
Finance
Also see amazing Tezos Explorer by Baking Bad team — TzKT.
Biconomy is dedicated to simplifying the web 3 experiences by providing a plug and play transaction highway that helps in delivering secure, reliable and cheaper transactions.
They started off with Ethereum and EVM compatible chains such as Matic and xDai. Tezos will be one of the first Layer 1 chains they will be supporting with the relayer infrastructure which enables meta transactions. They are pumped to be building this infrastructure on Tezos as it will cut deployment time for developers building new apps and ease the user experience for new users interacting on a Tezos based application.
WazirX, an India cryptocurrency exchange owned by Binance has announced the launch of staking services for Tezos on its platform. WazirX, which is one of the most reliable digital exchanges in India with over 20 million users, has become the second crypto exchange in the country to provide support for in-app staking. Per the announcement, WazirX users interested in the service are required to make a minimum deposit of 3 XTZ.
Other
FAQs from Tezos Foundation
Wasn’t there supposed to be a new grant application platform launched on August 31st?
Due to ongoing testing of the new grants platform, we are delaying its launch until slightly later in Q3 2020, and it will initially only be open to existing grantees. We look forward to sharing the new grants application platform and process soon, and aim to have it live for all applicants at the beginning of Q4 2020. If you have any questions regarding the new grants application platform and process, please feel free to contact grants@tezos.com.
Is the foundation considering grant making for general defi primitives built on Tezos? For instance, after Dai was created on Ethereum, other developers began creating building blocks that have expanded the defi ecosystem. This increased transactions on the network and created more value on chain for users of Ethereum by increasing the ways in which people could store their value on chain, and put their assets to work.
As communicated in previous grant RFPs and cohort announcements , the Foundation welcomes funding proposals regarding key on-chain DeFi public goods and has funded projects such as DEXter and Quipuswap in the past. Additionally, we are open to funding additional research and development to improve the core protocol to enable composable applications to be built safely and efficiently.
Can the Tezos Foundation and the individuals working there hop onto Reddit and maybe Twitter to speak with the community about what they’re working on? They’re a part of the community and they should join us in these conversations.
We have received a number of questions regarding this topic from the community, and believe it’s important to address. We will have a more substantive update later in the month, but we do recognize that more informal and frequent communication is important, and are working to address this concern.
Is anyone working on an iOS or Android app that sends notifications to bakers for missed endorsements and bakes? For example, we enter our baker address and the app sends a push notification when issues arise?
The TezosNotiferBot does exactly this. It is a Telegram bot that allows users to enter one or multiple addresses and track them. Users can enter the address of a baker and it will alert them of missed endorsements and bakes. It can also alert users of other things like transactions, new delegations, and votings.
Tezos needs better promotional resources available, some kind of an advocacy toolkit that could allow the community to help drive awareness for Tezos. Is that something the Foundation could provide for the community?
We believe that the creation of promotional resources are best left up to the local entities that the Tezos Foundation has funded for the purpose of general marketing and business development. Tezos Commons and TQ Tezos are prime examples. That being said, we believe having an advocacy toolkit for Tezos would be beneficial, and have passed the idea along to teams in the ecosystem who are best prepared to create such a toolkit.
Is it possible to fund someone that could build a step by step tutorial online or YouTube where it’s easy to follow for beginners to fully understand what goes into building dapps on Tezos?
We support a diverse mixture of introductory courses, developer training, and other resources to bolster the Tezos developer community. If you’re interested in Dapp development, the BUIDL Labs team created Cryptoverse Wars, an interactive code school to build Dapps on Tezos using SmartPy. The OCTO Technology team has created a similar resource for the LIGO language, Tezos Academy. We are also supporting two new training resources. Tezos Kitchen by the Stove Labs team, a comprehensive and up-to-date curriculum of content for developers to learn how Tezos can be utilized for a variety of use-cases, and Michelson Labs, an interactive Tezos developer training program from Baking Bad.
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
Bake your Tezzies with us — tezocracy.com
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