Month At A Glance — June 2024

A quick rundown of the latest happenings and significant milestones within the Tezos ecosystem for June 2024.

Welcome to our latest issue, Month At A Glance, where we give a quick rundown of the latest happenings and significant milestones in the Tezos ecosystem on a monthly cadence.

Like a repeating record, June 2024 was an exciting month for Tezos, with new product releases and new development roadmaps introduced to the Tezos ecosystem. Highlights revolved around Tezos X, adaptive issuance going live, and more.

Let's break it all down.

Ecosystem Insights

What The Heck Is Tezos X?

The Tezos X vision has just been released. If you’re, like many others, unsure what exactly this is, I’ll do my best to dispel your confusion.

One of the most significant development points in the blockchain space is centered around architecture. Presently, two generally accepted beliefs about the architecture make the most sense for scaling. Those two architectures are the following:

  • Monolithic

  • Modular

We can think of Layer 1, such as Solana, as a monolithic architecture. With this structure, proponents of it as a scaling solution generally express having one single chain with a very high load capability as the end-all solution. That load capability is determined by transactions per second and the chain’s latency. In other words, a super fast chain with low fees and low latency is how to scale for billions of users on-chain.

The modular design takes this approach and splits it. Some examples that use this framework are Celestia or EigenLayerDA, most notably. Modular design offloads consensus, transaction processing, or data availability (DA) to several independent, specialized layers. This approach allows developers to optimize each area more efficiently and can lead to fragmentation from several rollups. Thus, regaining composability remains an issue worth tackling. This helps regain composability; developers can optimize each area separately instead of a whole system.

First, we’ve seen some effects of monolithic architecture with decentralized protocols like Ethereum. While being fully composable, functions such as consensus, transaction processing, and DA happen on Ethereum. Through usage and demand, it has completely overloaded, causing the spawn of the ecosystem of L2s we see today. This is due to Ethereum nodes, which must verify transactions, make data available, and maintain an entire block history. We can look at this approach to scaling as horizontal scaling.

Surely, there is an easier and more efficient way to scale to the masses?

That’s where Tezos X comes in with vertical scaling.

Source

Tezos X is taking the approach of these two architectures and making a hybrid “Modu-lithic” model. One way to accomplish this is through features such as DA sampling. As we described earlier, modular chains have specialized layers for core functions. One is DA, which refers to all necessary data needed to validate transactions and ensure they are available and accessible to blockchain users. The Data Availability Layer (DAL) will play an important role here.

DA sampling allows nodes to verify that all necessary data for a block is available without downloading the entire block. This ensures that even if a node only sees a small portion of the data, it can confidently verify its completeness. As a result, more transactions can be processed in parallel across different blocks without overloading the network. This reduces bottlenecks and scales the network’s load capacity, making it possible to support more transactions and users without sacrificing speed or security.

We’ve already seen some efforts towards interoperability, which is another component of Tezos X. Etherlink, which has recently launched its mainnet beta, has integrated Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) support for Tezos, providing tools for Solidity smart contract deployments. Additional efforts are being made, such as:

  • Michelson rollup

  • Support for mainstream languages (such as JavaScript, Python, Java, C#)

  • Improved developer experience

Further down the development pipeline are things such as the canonical rollup, RISC-V, and vertical scaling efforts to further increase the composability of the Tezos network. As mentioned earlier, Ethereum is pursuing a path of horizontal scalability. Taking some modular components but stacking them across several rollups (L2s). The main vision behind Tezos X is to incorporate vertical scaling, one rollup that will incorporate and use all the developments under one roof.

These developments would include things such as:

  • Full composability

  • Highly interoperable

  • Multiple execution environments

  • Atomic transactions

Of course, there are some more details around the technical components that will make this possible, so if you’d like to dig really deep, see the Tezos blog that discusses what exactly those are.

As a whole, Tezos X is bringing greater composability, scalability, and interoperability to the Tezos network. I think the main thing to understand here is how Tezos has already been pursuing this modular nature with the introduction of Smart Rollups, DAL, and more. Tezos X is taking that one step forward by pursuing vertical scalability.

I can’t wait to see the future of Tezos unfold!

Adaptive Issuance Is Here

Adaptive issuance is finally here after the activation of the Paris B upgrade and subsequent Paris C update. Adaptive issuance presents some neat economic changes to Tezos. It's designed to automatically adjust the rate of new tez issued based on the total amount of tez staked. This ensures that only the necessary amount of tez is emitted to secure the network, minimizing inefficiencies and reducing dilution.

Source

The mechanism adjusts rewards based on a target staking ratio, increasing rewards to encourage more staking when the ratio is low and decreasing rewards when the ratio is high. Per Nomadic Labs guidelines:

The Adaptive Issuance rate will initially stay between 4.5% and 5.5%. The span gradually increases over the next 6 months, eventually allowing the rate to fluctuate between 0.25% and 10%.

Alongside adaptive issuance, a new staking mechanism has been introduced. Now, there are two ways to secure the Tezos network apart from the previous, baking. Let's showcase how you can get started staking today.

How Can I Stake?

Head over to the staking DApp from Trilitech to begin initiating this process.

  • Connect Wallet: Connect your Tezos wallet.

  • Delegate: Delegate your tez and choose a baker that can support additional stake with a fee and policy that you deem acceptable. To check this, you can visit tzkt.io to see capacity and status. You'll need to grab their address and paste it into the tab.

  • Stake: After completing the above, your delegation status should appear active. Proceed to click "Stake." You'll be prompted to agree to some terms of use. Following this, enter the amount you wish to stake and click "Stake."

  • Removing Stake: If you wish to remove stake, click "Unstake" and enter the amount you want to to unstake. After doing so, you must wait four cycles for the balance to finalize on the blockchain. For reference, a cycle on Tezos lasts ~2.5 days. So, you'll need to wait about ~11 days for balances to update fully.

It's that easy to stake! For additional information on staking and the new mechanism, read How To Stake on Tezos.

News From The Tezos Ecosystem: Quick Bits

Tezos Ecosystem DAO now features tez-based voting

The Tezos Ecosystem DAO has introduced a new tez-based voting system, allowing community members to directly influence project proposals by voting with their tez. The weight of each vote is proportional to the amount of tez held, and key holders will execute proposals that achieve a supermajority.

World of Women joins Tezos ecosystem

World of Women (WoW) has joined the Tezos ecosystem to enhance women's impact in Web3 by leveraging Tezos. This partnership aims to address the gender gap in participation, leadership, and funding in the digital economy, inspiring millions with a vision of increased gender parity in Web3.

Messari shares the state of Tezos Q1 2024 report

Among the report's highlights, gaming was an outlier, with active gaming addresses up 500%. Be sure to read the full report for more metrics.

Baking Bad demonstrates Unity Tezos SDK in a new shooter game

Baking Bad's new shooter game shows how Tezos simplifies handling authentication, player inventory management, and other features for large-scale games. Read Using the Tezos Unity SDK for Large-Scale Game Development for more information.

Tezos Foundation x Google Cloud

The Tezos Foundation leveraged Google Cloud to boost the security and resilience of Tezos by setting up global archive nodes in under 2 hours and building a snapshot service in just three days. Read more in the case study.

The Museum of The Moving Image collaborates with the Tezos Foundation

The Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI) is collaborating with the Tezos Foundation on a yearlong initiative to exhibit artists who integrate emerging technologies in their work. This partnership will allow visitors to engage with and collect fragments of digital art, extending the museum's reach and fostering creative expression.

Events

  • TezCon in Seattle — June 1st

  • Tuesday TezDay Community Call — June 4th

  • Tezos Town Hall #1 X Space — June 4th

  • TezTalks Live #89: Magic

  • Artz Friday w/ Malicious Sheep — June 7th

  • Digital Art Mile @Basel — June 10–16th

  • Tuesday TezDay w/ DNS Team — June 11th

  • Artz Friday w/ Ryan Tanaka — June 14th

  • TezTalks Live #90: Diane Drubay

  • Tuesday TezDay Community Call — June 18th

  • Artz Friday w/ Bill Knight — June 21st

  • TezTalks Live #91: Kukai Wallet

  • Tuesday TezDay w/ Sutan — June 25th

  • TezTalks Radio #81: Agoria

  • Artz Friday Community Call — June 28th

Community Rewards Program

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

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

Don't have 30 seconds? Tag any Discord message or tweet with #TezosCRP, and we will collect the messages!

The categories and nomination standards have remained the same. For more information, visit the refreshed landing page here. We've also announced the May 2024 winners, so check out the recap here.

About Tezos Commons Foundation

Tezos Commons is a non-profit organization that emphasizes building communities on Tezos and supporting the Tezos ecosystem and its members. By organizing several community-focused events, hosting infrastructure, and funding small projects, Tezos Commons has actively contributed to building communities on Tezos.

Learn more about Tezos Commons. Are you 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. To stay up to date, please visit our events page!

  • TezTalks Live

  • TezTalks Radio

  • X Spaces

  • X Shorts

  • The Blockchain Evolved Show

  • Baking Sheet Newsletter

  • In-Depth Articles

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

Month At A Glance — June 2024 was originally published in Tezos Commons on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.