Update: Week Of 16 December 2019 – The Year In Review

Let’s start with a brief overview of 2019 by the numbers:

• Over 430 bakers securing the Tezos network
• Over 1,300 Tezos developers trained
• 3 new Tezos smart contract languages introducing 6 new syntax varieties
• At least 5 new regional community organizations – India, Africa, Brazil, Ukraine, China
• 39 Meetup groups around the world
• 2 upgrades approved by stakeholders via the Tezos governance process
• 3 international TQuorum events with over 300 participants at each one

2019 was also the year that Tezos became the first blockchain to automatically upgrade itself without requiring a hard fork. Here is an overview of Tezos governance in 2019:

• The first amendment proposal, Athens, was injected into the protocol on 28 February
• On 29 May, the Tezos protocol successfully amended itself, activating Athens
• Babylon, the second proposed amendment to Tezos, was injected by Nomadic Labs
• Tezos Agora, a governance explorer and discourse forum, was launched
• The Tezos protocol successfully self-amended for the second time, activating Babylon, on 18 October

Additionally, 2019 was a landmark year for the Foundation’s strategic partnerships. All of our partnerships are aimed at creating real-world use cases on Tezos. Below is an overview of some of the key strategic partnerships that we have entered into over the past year.

Strategic Partnerships

Elevated Returns
Elevated Returns, a financial group focused on digitizing traditional financial assets, announced that it will tokenize a pipeline of real assets in excess of 1B USD on Tezos.

BTG Pactual
BTG Pactual, a leading LATAM investment bank announced that it will launch Security Token Offerings (STOs) on Tezos, including an ongoing one for its REITBZ STO. BTG will tokenize a pipeline of assets in excess of 1B USD on Tezos. The first issuance should go live in early 2020.

Fundament Group
Berlin-based Fundament Group will launch the first STO in Germany, regulated by the financial market authority BaFin. Fundament provides end-to-end infrastructure for digital securities and will build on Tezos as their default blockchain going forward.

Globacap
The Foundation entered into a strategic partnership with Globacap, a London-based primary issuance platform for digital securities regulated by the FCA.

Securitize
The Foundation partnered with Securitize, a leading platform to deliver trusted global solutions for creating compliant digital securities, including funds, equity, fixed income and real estate.

Property Alliance Group
Alliance is a leading property developer in Manchester, UK, who announced that it will tokenize £500m of UK real estate assets on Tezos. It partnered with the Foundation, tZero, and STO advisory boutique, Megalodon, for a first STO project, the River Plaza in central Manchester (volume £43m).

French National Gendarmerie’s cybercrime division (C3N)
C3N records judicial expenses on Tezos, which it started back in September— this marks a historic first time that a government entity has developed an operational smart contract and deployed it on a blockchain.

This is just a small amount of the many accomplishments achieved by Tezos community members throughout 2019. We will provide more detailed information about the second-half of 2019 in our next Biannual Update, due for release in Q1 2020. View our first Biannual Update here.

Here is to an even better 2020!
Best regards,
Ryan