Month at a Glance — January 2023
A breakdown of the latest happenings and significant milestones taking place within the Tezos ecosystem for the month of January 2023.
Originally published at Tezos Commons News
1,400 words, 7 minute read
Welcome to our latest issue of Month at a Glance where we breakdown most of the latest happenings and significant milestones taking place within the Tezos ecosystem on a monthly cadence.
Like a repeating vinyl record, January 2023 was a big month in terms of continued network usage, integrations, and further adoption. It’s only a matter of time before these achievements unlock the next mass adoption by the masses.
Let’s break it all down.
Ecosystem Insights #
Protocol Mumbai, the 13th Tezos upgrade has been announced and injected for token holder voting. There’s a whole lot going on with this upgrade and it’s worth highlighting some of the key features.
Protocol Mumbai will introduce the following features:
- Smart Rollups activation
- ZK Rollups
- Pipelining activation
- Tickets improvements
- Other
The work on pipelining is worth highlighting in particular. With this upgrade, the final installment of efforts towards pipelining are happening. Essentially, this will allow block times to get reduced in half from 30 seconds to 15. Get ready for some speedy block times!
Nomadic Labs detailed these features in length on their blog post.
To summarize, in Kathmandu we first focused on applying this new validation discipline to manager operations — e.g. transactions and smart contract calls, which are the ones which consume the most resources. In Lima, we extended our scope to all operations supported by the Tezos economic protocol, and to how blocks are handled when nodes receive them. And now in Mumbai, pipelining is brought to the baker, so the block payload (smart contracts, etc.) is not executed before the proposed block is propagated — the block must only go through a lightweight validity check (see our previous discussions on pipelining for more details).
This will be the second time Tezos reduces its block time via its on-chain governance. The first being witnessed in protocol Granada with the activation of Emmy*.
For a detailed breakdown on other features such as smart rollups and zk rollups, be sure to check out our post on Mumbai.
Not to be left out of the spotlight, Messari released their “State of Tezos Q4 2022” report. The report was quite detailed breaking down a lot of key developments, growth, and adoption that the network experienced throughout the year and final quarter.
Most notably, Tezos network usage continued to rise YoY despite market sentiment, TVL hit all-time highs in Q4 2022, and NFT sales more than doubled.
Source: Messari
This chart is particularly important and shows several things. First of all, despite market sentiment across the board, Tezos is seeing lots of usage in the form of smart contract calls and transactions. A lot of this in Q4 can certainly be contributed to the success of the Manchester United NFT drop and collaboration.
However, it’s an important metric that shows the network is being used during a time where interest has significantly dwindled in the crypto space, and most important of all, that usage is continually growing. Which after all, that’s the whole point for everything right?
The last thing worth touching on is corporate baking. For the past month or so, there’s been a noticeable increase in corporate bakers coming to Tezos and setting up shop. In case you’re unfamiliar with the term, corporate baking refers to the act of corporations or enterprises coming to the Tezos network and starting a bakery.
I’ve mentioned this before in previous content, but I think this is an often overshadowed development. It’s quite simple and powerful that major corporations are taking part in the validation of the network as it shows their trust and support for Tezos.
Corporate baking requires a level of time and financial commitment to do so. With that commitment, not only are they essentially putting their money where their mouth is, they’re also getting invaluable direct experience with the network itself.
That firsthand experience is the important part and how it can translate down the road. Just last month, we saw 2 new corporate bakers (Ledger Leopard and Telindus). Let’s see if the trend continues this month and look forward to how these entities plant their seeds into the Tezos ecosystem.
News from the Tezos World #
Corey Soreff joins the Tezos Foundation TAC
- Corey Soreff, executive director of Tezos Commons has replaced Luis Gonzalez on the Tezos Foundation Technical Advisory Committee.
TezTalks gets a facelift!
- TezTalks has new marketing and branding assets, featuring a new and exciting spin on the most watched ecosystem-wide live stream and podcast series.
Ledger Leopard joins the Tezos ecosystem as a corporate baker
- PR: “For nearly 6 years, Ledger Leopard has been assisting companies from various sectors (medical, logistics, banking, etc.), as well as developers, in the implementation of Web3 projects ranging from the creation of decentralized and customized applications to the addition of tokens. The company recently developed a unique project for the Ministry of Waterways and Public Works in the Netherlands: a “Digital Soil Passport” based on Tezos’ blockchain technology. The aim is to use this “digital passport” to store movements on Dutch land on the blockchain, a first.”
Stables is coming soon to Tezos!
- A new web3 fantasy horse racing game will be launching on Tezos, learn more about it here. Powered by PMU, they are an almost 100 year old institution and the 3rd largest horse betting operator in the world.
Tezos Technical documentation just got a facelift
- Heading over to the Tezos gitlab, users are now met with improved usability and structure.
Ledger Live has implemented OBJKT support
- The most popular digital asset management platform has integrated support for Tezos NFTs via OBJKT. With this integration, users can now easily and securely view your Tezos NFT collection directly through Ledger Live.
Protocol Mumbai has been announced!
- The latest Tezos upgrade has been announced, focusing on the activation of smart rollups, zk rollups, and much more.
Telindus becomes a corporate baker on Tezos
- PR: “In particular, Telindus plans to implement the “Choose Your Baker” solution developed by Coexya, an independent and multi-specialist leader in the digital industry that operates as an integrator, software publisher and consulting firm”.
Messari releases “State of Tezos Q4 2022” report
- Messari highlights some key yearly achievements including 4 forkless upgrades, a 115% in annual NFT sales (denominated in tez), all-time high TVL, increased network usage and much more in their report.
Altme and TezID partner for digital identity applications on Tezos
- PR: "This partnership improves #UX for Tezos users by allowing them to easily share specific identity information while maintaining #privacy through SSI’s “Selective Disclosure” and “Zero Knowledge Proof” (#ZKP) features".
The California DMV and Oxhead Alpha have began collaborating
- Tezos development team Oxhead Alpha and the California DMV are collaborating to put car titles on the Tezos blockchain.
Events #
- The Blockchain Evolved Show — Janaury 9
- Fxhash x Cure3 — Janaury 13-16
- Tuesday TezDay — January 10
- TezTalks Live #55: Brian David Marshall, Interpop
- BinanceUS AMA with Tezos Commons — January 12
- TezTalks Live #56: Andrei Taranu, dOrg
- The Blockchain Evolved Show — January 15
- Reddit Community Call w/ Satoshi’s Closet — January 23
- The Blockchain Evolved Show — January 23
- Tuesday TezDay — January 24
- Creating and Collecting Art on Tezos/Objkt — Ledger Live
- The Blockchain Evolved Show w/ Arthur Breitman — January 26
- Tezos New Hampshire meetup — January 27
- Tezos Greece meetup — January 28
- Reddit Community Call w/ Nicolas Ochem — January 30
- Tuesday TezDay — January 31
Stay in the Conversation, Stay in the Know #
Tezos Commons hosts a variety of community-oriented events and content. You can keep up to date below!
- TezTalks Live
- TezTalks Radio
- Reddit Community Call
- Twitter Spaces
- The Blockchain Evolved Show
- Baking Sheet Newsletter
- Tezos Bulletin
- In-Depth Articles
- Tezos Community
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