Update: Week of 1 July 2019
Dear Tezos community, Happy 1-year anniversary of the Tezos betanet launch! It has been amazing to observe the growth of the Tezos ecosystem over the past year and I can’t wait to see what the next year has in store for the project.
Last week, I published our first weekly update in an effort to be more transparent and illuminate the progress that the Tezos ecosystem makes on a daily basis.
Below is our second installment of the weekly update. I am particularly excited this week about the announcement that BTG Pactual and Dalma Capital will utilize Tezos for tokenizing digital assets totaling over USD 1bn. Also, for those who will receive a Ledger Nano S from the Foundation giveaway, we have arranged with Ledger headquarters to make them engraved with the Tezos logo. Have a great weekend!
Best regards,
Ryan
Grantee Updates
In the past week, teams that receive funds from the Tezos Foundation have continued to make substantive progress. Here are some highlights:
- Stove Labs and Tezos Commons Foundation announced the launch of Staked Competitions, a re-usable competition platform for decentralized artists.
- B9lab announced its updated Tezos Developer Course that will teach SmartPy and LIGO in the course curriculum. The Tezos Foundation will sponsor 500 developers to take the course for free. Sign up now.
- Serokell and TQ described the first implementation of a managed asset ledger based on the initial asset interface standard proposed last week (though not grantees, these organizations receive funding from the Foundation).
- Tezblock is progressing with research and development. Their second weekly update can be found here.
- Some Tezos community members played a game of TicTacToe on the Tezos blockchain using a smart contract generated via SmartPy.
- Cryptium Labs gave an update on their work to further develop the Tezos amendment proposal system.
- Paris-Diderot will re-launch its free OCaml MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) on 22 September 2019.
Our current call for Ecosystem Grant proposals is open until 10 July 2019.
Our activities
In addition to our regular administrative work, this week we solidified a deal with BTG Pactual, Latin America’s largest standalone investment bank, and Dalma Capital, a prominent Dubai asset manager, to utilize the Tezos blockchain for Security Token Offerings (STOs). Their deal pipeline of over USD 1bn in assets will be tokenized on Tezos. Read more about it here. This is in addition to the already announced Elevated Returns deal that continues to make progress. Their team recently filed a digital exchange license application with the Thai Securities Commission.
Here are some other highlights from this week:
- There were recommendations from community members on the Ledger Nano S giveaway, and we arranged with Ledger headquarters to make them engraved with the Tezos logo, ꜩ!
- We finalized some additional grants, and we are looking forward to announcing them in the coming weeks.
FAQs
As we continue to respond to many of your questions on channels like Riot and Reddit, we have noticed a few that are coming up frequently and are worth flagging this week.
In the original Tezos Overview Document, there were some “Mars-Shot” items that the Tezos Foundation would go after such as “negotiate with a small nation-state the recognition of Tezos as one of their official state currencies.” What is the Tezos Foundation doing in pursuit of this goal and other “Mars-Shots”?
There are many things that are being done:
Engineering: We are currently funding teams (Nomadic Labs, Cryptium Labs, The Marigold Project, Dai Lambda, and others) to work on the core protocol and surely there will be more in the future. This is in addition to the many projects that are being funded to provide tooling and standards around the Tezos protocol.
Research: We fund many efforts around the globe that will not only work on formal verification, scaling techniques, and privacy-preserving technologies, but also many other things that will benefit the Tezos protocol for years to come. The Foundation has so far funded research through Professor Emin Gun Sirer at Cornell University along with research partnerships with OCaml Labs at Oxford University, Inria in France, and the University of Beira Interior in Portugal. Additional information regarding research grants will be made in the coming weeks.
Communications and Marketing: The Tezos Foundation is continually improving its communication to the wider community. As stated in last week’s update, the Foundation is not a marketing entity but funds others that do marketing work. We invite others with grant proposals for marketing initiatives to submit them here.
Legal Services: The Tezos Foundation is funding an effort by Clause.
Business Development: We are focused more on projects and applications that can launch immediately rather than things that are unlikely to happen until crypto adoption increases overall. While it is important to retain lofty goals, there is plenty to be done right now to increase adoption. The recent project with BTG Pactual and Dalma Capital to utilize Tezos for STOs totaling over USD 1bn of assets, as well as the Elevated Returns project to utilize Tezos to tokenize an additional USD 1bn of assets, are perfect examples of a substantial application that we believe will continue to gain traction in the near term. BD priorities may adapt further based on general movements in the space and we believe this approach will be most beneficial for the Tezos protocol long-term. We aren’t giving up mars-shots, but we need to make sure that we prioritize effectively.
Education: Grants have been given for educational initiatives. Some of which are: B9lab’s Tezos Developer Course, Paris-Diderot’s OCaml MOOC, France-IOI, Cryptium Labs, Tezos Commons Foundation. Additional insight on more educational efforts will be given in a future update.
Are the Tezos Foundation’s assets in fiat or crypto? How much is left to be allocated?
We will be providing a more detailed financial update later this month in our bi-annual report, but our current non-XTZ funds are valued at greater than USD 500m.