GENERAL

Month at a Glance | Jan 2024

A breakdown of the latest happenings and significant milestones taking place within the Tezos ecosystem for January 2024.

By William McKenzie

TEZOS COMMONS

1,600 words, 8 minute read

reflections

Welcome to our latest issue of Month at a Glance, where we give a quick breakdown of the latest happenings and significant milestones taking place within the Tezos ecosystem on a monthly cadence.

We started the new year with a bang. January 2024 was another big month, especially for development and adoption, with new developments introduced to the Tezos ecosystem, such as the Oxford 2 upgrade reaching the adoption phase, WAC Lab Season 3 cohorts, Fortify Labs from TZ APAC, Etherlink updates, and much more.

Let’s break it all down.

Ecosystem Insights #

WAC Lab Season 3 Has Begun! #

For those who aren’t familiar, WAC Lab and Diane Drubay have been doing yeoman’s work to introduce and attract museums and NGOs to blockchain technology. In a recent publication, I highlighted Diane’s journey and how Season 3 aims to differentiate from previous seasons of the fellowship program.

This year’s fellowship will be much different than the past ones we’ve done. It will be much more focused on enabling museums to develop their critical thinking skills and have their own opinion on what’s happening. For season 2, we had 12 weeks of training which provided a lot of technical knowledge but we learned that museum professionals don’t necessarily have to understand everything so deeply. They just need to understand the big principles and the different use cases, how the infrastructure is working, and working with tech integrators.

Fast forward to the present day, Diane is kicking at full steam ahead with the announcement of several institutions within the WAC Lab fellowship program. Most notably, the selection includes the Van Gogh Museum and Palais de Tokyo.

Organized by We Are Museums, with the generous support of the Tezos Foundation, and in partnership with LAL ART, WAC Lab proudly unveils the selection of cultural institutions that will soon shape the future of web3:

Cleveland Public Library (United States), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (United States), Design Museum Brussels (Belgium), Die Neue Sammlung, Pinakothek der Moderne (Germany), Domaine national de Chambord (France), FUNDACIÓN UXÍO NOVONEYRA (Spain), Grand Egyptian Museum (Egypt), House of Arts Veszprém (Hungary), Hungarian National Museum (Hungary), IKSV — Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (Turkey), Museum Ulm (Germany), Muzeul National de Arta Timisoara (Romania), Palais de Tokyo (France), Parque Explora Corporation — Interactive Science Museum (Colombia), Sigg Art Foundation (Belgium), Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (Greece), Swiss National Museum (Switzerland), The Kyiv National Art Gallery (Ukraine), Van Gogh Museum (The Netherlands), and XR HUB Bavaria (Germany). — PR

Oxford 2 Is Now in the Adoption Phase #

Oxford 2 is the latest Tezos protocol upgrade that is going to be implemented. The new upgrade introduces some new features for the Tezos network and also disables some previous features that were introduced in the previous Oxford 1 upgrade.

Some of the new features are as follows:

As a whole, these features collectively represent a forward-looking approach, aiming to strengthen the Tezos blockchain’s functionality and appeal to a broader range of users and developers. I’ve made several information graphics that I would encourage you to check out in the following Twitter (X) thread located here if you’d like to learn more about the upgrade in an easy-to-digest manner.

Tezos Ecosystem DAO Updates #

In August 2023, Tezos Commons secured a grant from the Tezos Foundation to further support the DAO’s initiatives. The grant, exclusively intended for the Tezos Ecosystem DAO, was deposited into the DAO treasury, bolstering its potential for ecosystem grants.

In September 2023, we announced that Tezos Commons, alongside the other 4 multi-sig holders, would start reviewing the first batch of proposals for the DAO. Since then, the voting for the first batch of proposals has concluded. Two projects that submitted proposals were given funding.

The second batch of proposals for the next round of voting has been decided on in November 2023. There were 5 proposals under consideration, with one proposal getting approved.

In January 2024, one proposal was introduced by “TheTezosCommunity” and the proposal was approved which marks the end of the third round of proposals.

Within this period, it’s also been announced that “later this quarter, the Ecosystem DAO will enable Tez-based voting on polls to allow verifiable Tez holders to more directly provide input on proposals.” Just like the Tezos blockchain, the Ecosystem DAO is continually evolving.

The Tezos Ecosystem DAO is actively inviting participation from the Tezos community, including artists, developers, builders, gamers, and more, to propose ideas for funding. Those with innovative concepts, projects, or suggestions deserving of funding are encouraged to share their proposals on Tezos Agora. If you have an idea for something to help grow the Tezos ecosystem, make sure to apply for funding!

News From The Tezos Ecosystem: Quick Bits #

OBJKT.com releases some new features

Community Curation & Fee sharing features are now live, making curators first-class citizens in the Web3 creator economy, allowing them to earn up to 25% of a sale’s value in commissions. Additionally, OBJKT has released a new feature called “Galleries”.

TezFin has been released!

Learn more about the release of the borrowing and lending protocol in their announcement here.

Taquito 19.0.0-beta-RC.0 has been released!

Learn more about the new release and read the release notes here.

Tezos is a sponsor of NFT Paris 2024

NFT Paris will take place on February 23–24, 2024. Learn more about the event and announcement here.

Octez v19.0 has been released!

The new version introduces improvements in Smart Rollups infrastructure and includes the protocol upgrade for the Oxford 2 proposal and its associated executables. Read more about the release here.

Introducing AGORIA {Le Code d’Orsay}

Agoria presents two works at the Musée d’Orsay that are developed on the Tezos blockchain. Read more for the full announcement here.

X World Games announces partnership with TZ APAC

Learn more about the news in the official announcement here.

DipDup v7.3 has been released!

This release brings better support for Etherlink, Tezos smart rollups, and a bunch of minor improvements. See the full release notes here.

Messari State of Tezos Q4 report has been released

Report: “In Q4 2023, the total crypto market cap experienced a sharp increase, largely driven by anticipation surrounding spot BTC ETFs. XTZ’s circulating market cap increased 42% QoQ to $914 million, mirroring the overall crypto market’s growth of 54%. This Q4 growth brought XTZ’s YoY change to 38%. XTZ’s market cap ranks in the mid-70s among all crypto projects.”

Glenfiddich to utilize Tezos for NFTs

Glenfiddich, the Single Malt Scotch Whisky House, invited the artist collective “Obvious” to create works inspired by its history and processes. The result is a collection of 300 works created through AI image generation and generative art, minted on Tezos and available on fx_hash.

Events #

Community Rewards Program #

The Community Rewards Program (CRP) is a Tezos Commons Foundation initiative aimed at fostering adoption and supporting the Tezos ecosystem. Every month up to 5,000 tez are rewarded to those that stand out in merit and act in the interest of the Tezos ecosystem as a whole.

In an endeavor to make it easier for community members to nominate their favorite contributors to the ecosystem, the nomination form has been drastically streamlined. Now containing only three questions, it takes less than 30 seconds to submit a nomination.

Don’t have 30 seconds? You can tag any discord message or tweet with #TezosCRP; we will collect them as well!

The categories and nomination standards have remained the same. For more information, head over to the refreshed landing page here. We’ve also announced December 2023 winners, so be sure to check out the recap on that here.

About Tezos Commons Foundation #

Tezos Commons is a non-profit organization with an emphasis on building communities on Tezos and supporting the Tezos ecosystem and its members. Through organizing several community-focused events, hosting infrastructure, and funding small projects, Tezos Commons has been actively contributing towards building communities on Tezos.

Learn more about Tezos Commons. Interested in becoming a Tezos SuperFan and hosting events? Click here and begin your journey.

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 and visit our events page!

You can also contact or reach out to us on X or via email at social@tezoscommons.org.