TezCon Begins This Weekend

By the time you're reading this, there's a good chance travel plans are already underway.

TezCon 2026 kicks off tomorrow in Seattle, bringing together artists, collectors, musicians, developers, and community members for what has become one of the Tezos ecosystem's most anticipated annual gatherings. Now in its third year, the event continues to grow while staying true to the spirit that made it special from the beginning: celebrating creativity, community, and the relationships that have formed around Tezos.

This year's program features a diverse mix of art, music, conversation, and hands-on experiences, including:

• An exhibition featuring artists working across both physical and digital media

• Live performances from Hello Carmello, Red Alark, Bdwill, Ryan Tanaka, Yoeshi, and other musicians

• Interactive art experiences, including Juniper Paisley's community arts and crafts space

• An exclusive reading from Shreyans Khunteta's unpublished debut novel

• A Sunday community jam session supported by Sustainable Music Northwest

Community initiatives will also play an important role throughout the weekend. Visitors can explore Voices of Iran, the community-led zine organized through TEIA that uses decentralized publishing to amplify the voices of Iranian artists and writers. Physical copies will be available during the event, alongside conversations about how blockchain can preserve and share stories across borders.

Attendees will also have the opportunity to experience TEIA's latest marketplace tooling firsthand, meet members of the community behind the platform, and see how a community-owned marketplace continues to evolve through open governance.

If you're planning to be there, here's a quick reminder:

• Date: Saturday, July 11, 2026

• Location: Artspace Hiawatha Lofts, 843 Hiawatha Place South, Seattle

• Start Time: Programming begins at 4:04 PM

• Sunday: The community Music Showcase continues on July 12

If you're attending for the first time or returning for another year, we hope you have an incredible weekend. Safe travels to everyone making the journey, and we'll be looking forward to sharing highlights from Seattle in next week's edition.

This Week in the Tezos Ecosystem

Community Spotlight: TezGov

Governance has always been one of Tezos' defining features, and over the years the community has continued building tools that make participating in that process easier.

One of those projects is TezGov, a governance interface developed by Tez Capital that brings both Tezos Layer 1 and Etherlink governance together in a single, easy-to-use platform.

Available at gov.tez.capital, the interface allows users to stay informed about active proposals, review governance activity, and participate in voting as new protocol and ecosystem initiatives move through their respective governance processes.

One feature that stands out is the ability for delegators to signal their voting preferences directly to their baker. While bakers ultimately cast governance votes on behalf of delegated stake, TezGov creates another channel for communication between delegators and bakers, making the governance process more transparent and encouraging greater community participation.

The platform currently supports:

• Tezos Layer 1 governance

• Etherlink governance

• Delegator voting signals

• Proposal tracking and voting information

Community-built governance tools like TezGov continue an important tradition within the Tezos ecosystem. Governance works best when people can easily understand what's being proposed and how to participate. Projects like TezGov lower that barrier, making it easier for the community to stay informed and take part in the conversations that shape the network.

Vaults.fyi Brings Etherlink Vaults Under One API

Wrapping up this week's community highlights, another integration is making it easier for developers to build on Etherlink.

Vaults.fyi has integrated Etherlink, giving builders access to native vaults through a single API. Rather than connecting to each vault individually, developers can integrate once and support multiple yield-bearing products directly within their own applications.

The integration currently includes Etherlink-native vaults from Midas, including:

• mBASIS

• mTBILL

By simplifying access to these products, Vaults.fyi allows wallets, fintech applications, portfolio trackers, and neobanks to incorporate tokenized yield products with significantly less development work.

It's the kind of infrastructure that often sits behind the scenes, but plays an important role as an ecosystem grows. The easier it is for developers to integrate financial products, the easier it becomes for users to discover and access them through the applications they already use.

Tezos Summer Events

To Be Perceived, Against Evil Opens at MoMI

Now on view at the Museum of the Moving Image, To Be Perceived, Against Evil is a new commission by Linda Dounia and Rhea Myers created through the ongoing MoMI × Tezos Foundation partnership.

Inspired by Édouard Glissant's concept of the "right to opacity," the installation explores visibility, privacy, memory, and what deserves to remain unseen in an increasingly data-driven world.

Visitors encounter the work through an obscured Media Wall where movement is transformed into encrypted data that interacts with Tezos smart contracts. As people engage with the installation, portions of the artwork are gradually revealed while other areas remain intentionally hidden.

Drawing from themes of ancestry, identity, and personal autonomy, the piece uses blockchain as a creative material, continuing the exploration of technology and artistic expression that defines the MoMI × Tezos partnership.

Visitors can also collect a free process image accompanying the commission through objkt.com, offering a glimpse into the development of the work alongside the installation itself.

To Be Perceived, Against Evil is now open and will remain on view through August 2 at the Museum of the Moving Image.

🔴 Now Streaming: TezTalks DeFi Series | vaults.fyi

Want to learn even more about the team behind Vaults.fyi? In this week's featured episode of TezTalks Radio, we sit down with the builders behind the platform to explore how they're simplifying access to onchain vaults, why standardized infrastructure matters, and how tools like Vaults.fyi can help accelerate the next generation of financial applications on Etherlink.

Tune in for a closer look at the ideas driving the project and the role developer tooling plays in building a more connected DeFi ecosystem.

Now streaming on YouTube.

8 Years of Tezos

This week marks a special milestone for the Tezos ecosystem. On June 30, 2026, Tezos celebrated its eighth birthday, offering an opportunity to look back at the moments that have shaped the network while looking ahead to everything still to come.

To celebrate the occasion, Cryptonio published a retrospective on Tezos Spotlight highlighting eight milestones that helped define the ecosystem's journey over the past eight years. If you'd like to dive deeper into each chapter, we highly recommend reading the full article on Tezos Spotlight.

Looking back, it's remarkable to see how much has evolved since mainnet launched in 2018.

The journey began by proving that Proof of Stake could secure a public blockchain at scale, years before much of the industry embraced the same direction. Shortly afterward came Athens, the first successful self-amendment of a live blockchain, demonstrating that protocol upgrades could happen through onchain governance rather than disruptive hard forks.

That willingness to evolve continued with milestones such as Tenderbake, which replaced the network's consensus mechanism while Tezos remained live, Kathmandu's protocol-funded development model, and governance cycles like Ithaca that demonstrated how community debate could strengthen proposals rather than divide the ecosystem.

Beyond the protocol itself, Tezos also developed a cultural identity that few blockchain ecosystems can claim. The rise of hic et nunc introduced thousands of artists and collectors to onchain creativity, laying the foundation for one of the most vibrant digital art communities in Web3. More recently, the unveiling of the Tezos X roadmap has opened the next chapter, bringing together modular architecture, Smart Rollups, the Data Availability Layer, and a unified execution layer that will continue expanding what developers can build on Tezos.

Looking across those eight years, one theme appears again and again: continuous evolution.

Twenty-one protocol upgrades have improved the network without splitting the community. Developers have created applications across finance, gaming, art, and real-world assets. Creators have established a lasting presence in galleries and museums around the world. Community members have contributed tools, educational resources, and countless initiatives that continue strengthening the ecosystem.

Happy birthday, Tezos, and thank you to every developer, baker, artist, collector, creator, researcher, writer, community organizer, and supporter who has helped shape the journey so far.

Here's to the next chapter. 🥂

Ushuaia Goes Live on Tezos

Tezos celebrated its eighth birthday with another milestone worthy of the occasion: the successful activation of Ushuaia, the network's 21st protocol upgrade on Mainnet at block 13,857,889.

Activated through Tezos' on-chain governance process without interruption or a network fork, Ushuaia continues the tradition of a blockchain that has spent the past eight years continuously improving itself through community participation. Developed by Nomadic Labs, Trilitech, and Functori, the upgrade brings meaningful improvements to scalability while laying the groundwork for future advances in staking, rollups, and post-quantum security.

The headline feature is a major expansion of the Data Availability Layer (DAL), increasing bandwidth from approximately 0.66 MB/s to 10 MB/s, a fifteen-fold increase in capacity. This gives applications significantly more room to process data and supports high-throughput use cases such as gaming, decentralized finance, and the next generation of rollup-based applications.

Ushuaia also introduces several additional improvements:

• Dynamic DAL attestations reduce confirmation times for data availability from roughly one minute to around 12 to 18 seconds.

• Rollup-specific PVM upgrades can now be activated through rollup governance, allowing platforms such as Etherlink to evolve more independently while remaining secured by Tezos Layer 1.

• Testnet support continues for protocol-native liquid staking through sTEZ, quantum-resistant tz5 accounts, and WASM PVM V6, giving the community an opportunity to evaluate these features ahead of future mainnet activation.

The timing feels especially fitting. On the same day Tezos marked eight years since mainnet launched, the network demonstrated once again what has defined its history from the beginning: the ability to evolve through on-chain governance. 21 industry-leading protocol upgrades have now been activated without disrupting the chain, each one building on the last while keeping the community together through a transparent governance process.

Thank you to the protocol teams, developers, testers, community members, and bakers who helped bring Ushuaia to mainnet. Every successful upgrade is a reminder that Tezos continues to do exactly what it was designed to do: adapt, improve, and prepare for what's next.

This Week in the Tezos Ecosystem

TezCon Returns to Seattle

As the Tezos community celebrates another year of growth, attention is also turning toward one of the ecosystem's favorite annual gatherings.

TezCon 2026 returns to Seattle on July 11, bringing together artists, collectors, musicians, builders, and community members for a weekend celebrating creativity, collaboration, and the culture that has grown around Tezos. Since the first preview was shared earlier this spring, the event has continued to expand with new artists, performances, and community initiatives. If you'd like a closer look at everything planned, be sure to check out Yoeshi's full article.

This year's event includes:

• An exhibition featuring artists working across both physical and digital media

• Live music performances from Hello Carmello, Red Alark, Bdwill, Ryan Tanaka, Yoeshi, and others

• Interactive art experiences, including Juniper Paisley's community arts and crafts space

• An exclusive reading from Shreyans Khunteta's unpublished debut novel

• A Sunday community jam session supported by Sustainable Music Northwest

Community initiatives will also take center stage throughout the weekend. Visitors will be able to explore Voices of Iran, the community-led zine organized through TEIA that uses decentralized publishing to share stories and perspectives from Iranian artists. Physical copies will be available during the event, accompanied by discussions on how blockchain can help preserve and distribute creative work across borders.

Attendees will also have the opportunity to experience TEIA's latest marketplace tooling firsthand, meet members of the community behind the platform, and see how the marketplace continues to evolve through community governance.

Now in its third year, TezCon has grown into much more than an annual meetup. It has become a celebration of the people who continue to contribute to the Tezos art ecosystem, creating a space where online friendships become real-world conversations and new collaborations often begin.

Planning to attend? Here's what you need to know:

• Date: Saturday, July 11, 2026

• Location: Artspace Hiawatha Lofts, 843 Hiawatha Place South, Seattle

• Start Time: Programming begins at 4:04 PM

• Bonus: The community Music Showcase continues on Sunday, July 12

Tezos Summer Events

To Be Perceived, Against Evil Opens at MoMI

Now on view at the Museum of the Moving Image, To Be Perceived, Against Evil is a new commission by Linda Dounia and Rhea Myers created through the ongoing MoMI × Tezos Foundation partnership.

Inspired by Édouard Glissant's concept of the "right to opacity," the installation explores visibility, privacy, memory, and what deserves to remain unseen in an increasingly data-driven world.

Visitors encounter the work through an obscured Media Wall where movement is transformed into encrypted data that interacts with Tezos smart contracts. As people engage with the installation, portions of the artwork are gradually revealed while other areas remain intentionally hidden.

Drawing from themes of ancestry, identity, and personal autonomy, the piece uses blockchain as a creative material, continuing the exploration of technology and artistic expression that defines the MoMI × Tezos partnership.

Visitors can also collect a free process image accompanying the commission through objkt.com, offering a glimpse into the development of the work alongside the installation itself.

To Be Perceived, Against Evil is now open and will remain on view through August 2 at the Museum of the Moving Image.

🔴 Now Streaming: TezTalks DeFi Series | Monarch Lend

We talk with Anton, founder of Monarch, about why “easy” DeFi yield can quietly increase your risk and how direct access to Morpho markets changes the tradeoff.

We break down practical tools like smart rebalance, auto vaults, and risk analytics so you can see your exposures clearly and react faster when markets get weird.

Now streaming on YouTube.

After months of discussion, testing, community feedback, and governance, the Ushuaia protocol upgrade is now set to activate on June 29, marking another milestone in the continued evolution of Tezos.

For bakers and node operators, now is the time to prepare by upgrading to Octez v25.0, removing the Adaptive Issuance toggle vote before upgrading, and reviewing the updated deployment guidance and hardware recommendations to ensure a smooth transition.

Ushuaia continues the work of recent protocol upgrades by strengthening the network's scalability, expanding rollup capabilities, and preparing Tezos for the next generation of applications. Among the key improvements are:

Together, these changes continue to lay the foundation for Tezos X while giving developers additional capacity to build more data-intensive applications across the ecosystem.

Every protocol upgrade represents far more than the code that eventually activates onchain. Before reaching this point, proposals are designed by protocol teams, reviewed by developers, discussed by the community, tested across dedicated networks, and ultimately voted on by bakers through Tezos' onchain governance process.

That collaborative process has become one of the defining strengths of the network. Each successful upgrade demonstrates that blockchain protocols can continue evolving without disruptive forks, while giving the community a direct voice in how the tech moves forward.

A sincere thank you goes to everyone who helped bring Ushuaia to this point. From the teams who designed and implemented the proposal, to the developers who tested it, the community members who shared feedback, and the bakers who participated throughout the governance process, every stage reflects the collaborative model that has guided Tezos from the beginning.

With Ushuaia becoming the network's 21st protocol upgrade, Tezos continues to demonstrate what on-chain governance can achieve when protocol evolution is treated as an ongoing process rather than a one-time event. As new technologies emerge and new challenges appear, the network has repeatedly shown its ability to adapt while remaining secure, decentralized, and community governed. With that being said, I think it’s a perfect segue for you to read our latest piece by Cryptonio on the importance of longevity over momentum.

Metals.io Expands with Nickel and Cobalt

As Ushuaia prepares to strengthen the infrastructure beneath the network, projects across the ecosystem continue expanding what people can access on top of it.

This week, metals.io announced the addition of nickel and cobalt, further expanding its growing catalog of tokenized, physically backed commodities available on Tezos.

The launch builds on the platform's recent expansion into strategic metals and brings the total offering to:

• Gold

• Uranium

• A basket of rare earth metals

• Nickel

• Cobalt

Both nickel and cobalt play an important role in industries that continue to experience growing global demand. They are widely used in electric vehicle batteries, renewable energy infrastructure, advanced manufacturing, aerospace, and the hardware powering artificial intelligence and modern computing.

This Week in the Tezos Ecosystem

Art Basel Week Showcases Art on Tezos

With another Art Basel now in the books, it is a good opportunity to look back at a week that brought together artists, collectors, curators, and institutions through a series of exhibitions supported by Art on Tezos.

Across Basel, visitors experienced projects that explored generative systems, artificial intelligence, digital landscapes, and new forms of creative expression, continuing the long-standing relationship between the Tezos art ecosystem and one of the world's most influential weeks for contemporary art.

One of the highlights was the reception for Quayola's En plein air at HEK (House of Electronic Arts). The evening brought together artists, collectors, and members of the community to celebrate the exhibition during Art Basel week, with conversations continuing well into the evening as guests gathered throughout the space.

The installation remained on view from June 15 through June 21 and was accompanied by the release of Provence on objkt.com, giving collectors an opportunity to engage with the work beyond the exhibition itself.

Across the city, visitors to Basel Social Club encountered Emi Kusano's Office Ladies: Rituals of Overflow, presented by Grida. The exhibition explored AI-generated self-portraiture, memory, and simulation, inviting audiences to reflect on the increasingly blurred relationship between digital identity and lived experience.

These exhibitions reflected the diversity of artistic practices emerging across the Tezos ecosystem. From computational landscapes to AI-generated portraiture, the work on display demonstrated how artists continue to use digital tools as creative materials while bringing those ideas into galleries, institutions, and cultural events around the world.

Thank you to everyone who visited the exhibitions, attended the receptions, and helped make another memorable Art Basel week for the Tezos art community.

Tezos Ecosystem Spotlight: Explore the Network with tez.cool

As Art Basel highlighted the creative side of the ecosystem, another community project is helping people better understand everything happening behind the scenes.

Built by Tezos Commons, tez.cool is a community dashboard that brings together many of the network's most useful metrics into a single, easy-to-explore interface.

We built this tool for the baker, developer, delegator, collector, or if you’re simply curious about the ecosystem, the platform provides a broad view of what's happening across Tezos without needing to jump between multiple websites.

Among the information available are:

• Staking and delegation statistics

• Baker performance and analytics

• DeFi activity and ecosystem metrics

• Whale tracking and network movements

• Project directories and ecosystem resources

• Live network statistics and historical data

What makes tez.cool particularly valuable is how it presents information that already exists on-chain in a way that's easier to explore and understand. Instead of searching across several different tools, users can quickly build a picture of network activity from a single dashboard.

Community-built resources like this have become an important part of the Tezos ecosystem over the years and we will continue to build more. They make participation more approachable, help newcomers navigate the network, and give experienced users another way to monitor the health and activity of the blockchain.

Follow Tezos Commons on Bluesky

As the Tezos ecosystem continues to expand, we're bringing our interviews, live Spaces, articles, and community content to more places where people gather and connect. Consider this another home for following the conversations, builders, artists, and stories shaping Tezos every day.

Follow and interact with us on Bluesky.

Tezos Summer Events

To Be Perceived, Against Evil Opens at MoMI

Now on view at the Museum of the Moving Image, To Be Perceived, Against Evil is a new commission by Linda Dounia and Rhea Myers created through the ongoing MoMI × Tezos Foundation partnership.

Inspired by Édouard Glissant's concept of the "right to opacity," the installation explores visibility, privacy, memory, and what deserves to remain unseen in an increasingly data-driven world.

Visitors encounter the work through an obscured Media Wall where movement is transformed into encrypted data that interacts with Tezos smart contracts. As people engage with the installation, portions of the artwork are gradually revealed while other areas remain intentionally hidden.

Drawing from themes of ancestry, identity, and personal autonomy, the piece uses blockchain as a creative material, continuing the exploration of technology and artistic expression that defines the MoMI × Tezos partnership.

Visitors can also collect a free process image accompanying the commission through objkt.com, offering a glimpse into the development of the work alongside the installation itself.

To Be Perceived, Against Evil is now open and will remain on view through August 2 at the Museum of the Moving Image.

🔴 Now Streaming: How Metals.io Is Bringing Real Assets On-chain

This week on TezTalks Radio, host Brandon Langston welcomes back Ben Elvidge to discuss the next evolution beyond Uranium: Metals.io.

Last time, the conversation focused on uranium and the challenge of making a difficult physical commodity accessible through modern financial infrastructure.

Metals.io expands that vision into a broader universe of materials including gold, uranium, strategic metals, and upcoming additions like cobalt, silver, palladium, and nickel.

At the heart of the discussion is a simple question: Why are some of the world's most important materials still so difficult for ordinary investors to access directly?

Now streaming on YouTube.

Introducing Tokenized Strategic Metals on Tezos

When metals.io launched at Tez/Dev earlier this year, the focus was on a simple idea: making important physical commodities easier to access through modern digital infrastructure.

This week, that vision expanded further with the launch of the platform's new Strategic Metals Basket, giving users exposure to a collection of materials that sit at the center of several major global trends, including artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing, clean energy, aerospace, and next-generation computing.

Known as RARE, the basket includes five strategic metals:

• • Hafnium: Used in nuclear reactor control systems and advanced semiconductor manufacturing

• • Neodymium: Essential for the permanent magnets found in electric vehicles and wind turbines

• • Rhenium: A critical component in jet engines and high-performance industrial turbines

• • Indium: Widely used in touchscreens, solar panels, and semiconductor technologies

• • Praseodymium: Found in high-strength magnets, aerospace systems, and advanced manufacturing

What makes these materials particularly interesting is that most people interact with products that depend on them every day without ever thinking about the supply chains behind them. Smartphones, AI hardware, renewable energy infrastructure, aircraft systems, and advanced computing all rely on access to these relatively specialized metals.

The launch also highlights a broader theme that has been developing across the real-world asset sector. Tokenization is increasingly being used to improve how ownership and access function within existing markets. Rather than creating entirely new asset classes, projects like metals.io are exploring how established commodities can become easier to access, transfer, and verify through blockchain infrastructure.

Alongside the new basket, metals.io continues to offer tokenized exposure to both gold and uranium, expanding the range of assets available through a single platform.

A few features stand out:

• • Fractional ownership with low entry requirements

• • 24/7 market access

• • Onchain proof of ownership

• • Physical metals held within regulated custody structures

• • No minimum purchase amounts

The strategic metals market has traditionally been difficult for most individuals to access directly. By bringing these assets onchain, metals.io is opening a window into sectors that play an increasingly important role in the global economy.

For the Tezos ecosystem, it also represents another step in the continued growth of real-world assets on the network. What began with tokenized uranium has expanded into a wide-range commodities platform, demonstrating how Tezos can connect with industries that already exist at a global scale while making participation more accessible along the way.

Kento Turns Digital Art Into Something You Can Hold

Next up, ‘access’ is a common thread running through this week's stories.

Metals is opening commodity markets that have traditionally been difficult for most people to reach. Kento approaches accessibility from a completely different direction, focusing on how people discover, collect, and connect with art.

Launching on Kickstarter this August, Kento brings digital artworks into collectible card packs you can touch, creating a bridge between contemporary art and the familiar experience of opening, trading, and collecting physical cards.

Each pack contains physical cards featuring original works from artists around the world, while maintaining a connection to the digital originals behind them. The result is a format that feels familiar to collectors while introducing people to artists they may never have encountered otherwise.

Season One is built around the theme of web nostalgia, drawing inspiration from the internet many of us remember growing up with:

• • Early websites and interfaces

• • Forums and chat rooms

• • Digital glitches and browser artifacts

• • Internet subcultures and online communities

• • The visual language of an earlier web

It's a theme that feels particularly relevant within art, where many artists have spent years exploring the relationship between technology, memory, identity, and culture.

The first release brings together an impressive roster of creators spanning generative art, illustration, photography, coding, AI, and digital experimentation. Featured artists include Amber Vittoria, Anna Lucia, Ganbrood, Haydi Roket, Cem Hasimi, Canek Zapata, and many others from across the global digital art community.

One of the most interesting aspects of the project is the collecting experience itself. Every card is linked to a digital original, creating a connection between the physical and digital worlds while introducing an element of discovery that has always been central to trading card culture.

Open a pack, uncover an artwork, learn about the artist, and gradually build a collection over time. Sounds like a brilliant idea, right? Join the waitlist here before the Kickstarter campaign launches in early August.

This Week in the Tezos Ecosystem

ART FOR LIFE Uses Creativity to Raise Awareness for Blood Donation

The idea of accessibility appeared throughout this week's headlines, whether through commodities, collecting, or ownership. This next story focuses on something even more fundamental: helping save lives.

Launched on World Blood Donor Day, ART FOR LIFE is a community-driven open call inviting artists to create work that raises awareness about the importance of blood donation. Organized through the Tezos art ecosystem and hosted on TEIA, the initiative brings together creativity and public awareness around an issue that affects communities everywhere.

The concept is simple but powerful. Blood cannot be manufactured. Every donation comes from another person choosing to help someone they may never meet.

Through #Art4LifeTez, artists are being encouraged to explore themes such as solidarity, empathy, shared humanity, care, urgency, and the connections that exist between strangers whose lives become linked through a single act of giving.

Submissions are open to artists working in any medium, provided the work is minted and listed on TEIA using the hashtag #Art4LifeTez. A dedicated gallery page will showcase all participating works, creating a growing collection centered around awareness, compassion, and community action.

The initiative has several goals:

• • Raise awareness about the global need for blood donation

• • Encourage artists to create purpose-driven work connected to real-world issues

• • Build bridges between the Tezos art ecosystem and organizations working to improve public health

• • Demonstrate how creative communities can contribute to causes beyond the art world itself

What makes the project particularly compelling is the challenge it presents to artists. Rather than focusing on a specific aesthetic or medium, participants are being asked to communicate an idea. How do you visualize generosity? What does shared humanity look like? How do you represent the fact that a single donation can help multiple lives?

The answers will likely be as diverse as the artists participating.

Submissions remain open until July 13, after which works will move through both curatorial review and community voting. Honorarium recipients will be announced later in July.

Art has always been a way for people to tell stories, start conversations, and bring attention to issues that matter. ART FOR LIFE extends that tradition into the Tezos ecosystem, inviting artists to use their creativity in support of an idea that reaches far beyond the boundaries of any single community.

Sometimes a piece of art changes how someone sees the world. This month, the artists participating in ART FOR LIFE hope it might also encourage someone to give blood and help save a life.

Follow Tezos Commons on Bluesky

As the Tezos ecosystem continues to expand, we're bringing our interviews, live Spaces, articles, and community content to more places where people gather and connect. Consider this another home for following the conversations, builders, artists, and stories shaping Tezos every day.

Follow and interact with us on Bluesky.

Tezos Summer Events

To Be Perceived, Against Evil Opens at MoMI

Now on view at the Museum of the Moving Image, To Be Perceived, Against Evil is a new commission by Linda Dounia and Rhea Myers created through the ongoing MoMI × Tezos Foundation partnership.

Inspired by Édouard Glissant's concept of the "right to opacity," the installation explores visibility, privacy, memory, and what deserves to remain unseen in an increasingly data-driven world.

Visitors encounter the work through an obscured Media Wall where movement is transformed into encrypted data that interacts with Tezos smart contracts. As people engage with the installation, portions of the artwork are gradually revealed while other areas remain intentionally hidden.

Drawing from themes of ancestry, identity, and personal autonomy, the piece uses blockchain as a creative material, continuing the exploration of technology and artistic expression that defines the MoMI × Tezos partnership.

Visitors can also collect a free process image accompanying the commission through objkt.com, offering a glimpse into the development of the work alongside the installation itself.

To Be Perceived, Against Evil is now open and will remain on view through August 2 at the Museum of the Moving Image.

🔴 Now Streaming: How Metals.io Is Bringing Real Assets On-chain

This week on TezTalks Radio, host Brandon Langston welcomes back Ben Elvidge to discuss the next evolution beyond Uranium: Metals.io.

Last time, the conversation focused on uranium and the challenge of making a difficult physical commodity accessible through modern financial infrastructure.

Metals.io expands that vision into a broader universe of materials including gold, uranium, strategic metals, and upcoming additions like cobalt, silver, palladium, and nickel.

At the heart of the discussion is a simple question: Why are some of the world's most important materials still so difficult for ordinary investors to access directly?

Now streaming on YouTube.

Ushuaia Approaches the Final Vote

With just three days remaining in the Promotion phase, Ushuaia is approaching the final stage of the governance process and is on track to become Tezos' 21st protocol upgrade.

As bakers continue casting their votes, this feels like a good moment to revisit what the proposal brings to the network and why it matters for the next phase of Tezos' development.

At its core, Ushuaia focuses on three areas that have been recurring themes across recent upgrades: scalability, rollup infrastructure, and long-term security. Many of the changes also continue laying the groundwork for Tezos X and the next generation of applications being built on the network.

The most significant change is a major expansion of the Data Availability Layer:

• DAL bandwidth increases from approximately 0.66 MB/s to 10 MB/s, a 15x increase in capacity

• Dynamic DAL attestations reduce confirmation times from roughly 66 seconds to around 12-18 seconds under normal conditions

• Rollup-specific PVM upgrades can be activated through rollup governance, allowing faster iteration for Etherlink and future rollup environments

Together, these improvements create substantially more room for data-intensive applications, high-throughput execution layers, and faster movement between Layer 1 and Layer 2 environments.

Meet us at the Agora

Ushuaia also introduces several features on testnet for community evaluation before any future mainnet activation.

One of the most discussed is sTEZ, a protocol-native liquid staking mechanism designed to give users a trustless way to maintain liquidity while participating in staking. Rather than relying on third-party operators, the system is built directly into the protocol and is intended to distribute stake automatically across participating bakers. The implementation remains in testing and community review, though it provides an early look at what liquid staking could eventually become on Tezos.

The proposal also introduces tz5 accounts on testnet, bringing the first post-quantum signature scheme to Tezos. While quantum-resistant accounts will not activate on mainnet as part of Ushuaia, the testnet rollout gives wallets, custodians, and infrastructure providers time to begin preparing for a future where post-quantum cryptography becomes increasingly important.

Taken together, Ushuaia continues a direction that has become increasingly visible over the past few upgrade cycles. The network is expanding its execution capacity, improving the experience for rollups and applications, and preparing for longer-term technological challenges well before they become immediate concerns.

The Promotion phase remains open for three more days before the proposal advances to its final voting stage. If approved, Ushuaia is expected to activate later this summer and become the 21st protocol upgrade in Tezos’ history.

As always, you can follow the real time progress of the proposal on Tezos Agora.

New Public RPC Nodes Available for the Tezos Community

As Tezos continues to evolve, so does the infrastructure that supports the applications, wallets, and services people rely on every day.

This week, the infrastructure team at Trilitech announced the launch of two new public RPC nodes available for the community to use free of charge within rate limits.

The newly available endpoints are:

Tezos Mainnet
Tezos Shadownet

For newer readers, RPC nodes act as a bridge between applications and the blockchain itself. Wallets, explorers, dApps, analytics platforms, and developer tools all rely on RPC infrastructure to read data, submit transactions, and interact with the network.

While RPC infrastructure often operates behind the scenes, it plays an important role in the overall user experience. Reliable public endpoints make it easier for developers to build applications, test new ideas, and maintain services without needing to operate their own infrastructure from day one.

The addition of a dedicated Shadownet endpoint is particularly useful for developers experimenting with upcoming features and infrastructure before they reach production environments. As more builders begin testing technologies such as Tezos X, rollups, and future protocol enhancements, accessible development infrastructure becomes increasingly valuable.

This Week in the Tezos Ecosystem

Ben Elvidge Discusses Tokenized Commodities on Nasdaq

As conversations around real-world assets continue to expand across the industry, another spotlight landed on a project many readers will recognize from recent Tez/Dev discussions.

This week, Ben Elvidge joined the Investing News Network podcast to discuss how metals.io is approaching the modernization of commodity markets. The conversation was later highlighted by Nasdaq as part of its coverage of emerging tokenized asset infrastructure.

The discussion focused on a simple but significant idea: many commodity markets still operate through systems that were designed long before modern digital infrastructure existed. Access can be limited, settlement can be slow, and ownership is often layered through multiple intermediaries.

Metals.io approaches the market from a different angle by allowing investors to buy, hold, and transfer blockchain-based tokens backed by physical commodities stored in secure facilities in Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

The platform currently provides access to assets including:

• Gold

• Uranium

• Rare earth and strategic metals

According to Ben, the goal is to modernize how ownership and access work without changing the underlying commodities themselves. By using blockchain infrastructure, ownership records become easier to verify, transfers can happen more efficiently, and participation becomes available to a much broader audience.

The conversation also touched on a broader trend that has been gaining attention across both financial institutions and regulators. Tokenization is increasingly being viewed as a way to improve market infrastructure rather than simply create new digital assets. Real-world assets, commodities, and financial instruments are beginning to move onto rails that offer greater transparency, programmability, and accessibility.

You can listen to the full episode here.

Follow Tezos Commons on Bluesky

We are thrilled to announce that we have expanded our social media presence beyond our typical channels. It is truly amazing to witness the Tezos community flourishing and growing on this platform. We are committed to keeping you updated and engaged by posting all of our interviews, live spaces, and written content here.

Follow and interact with us on Bluesky.

Tezos Summer Events

To Be Perceived, Against Evil Opens at MoMI

As conversations around preservation, digital culture, and creative expression continue across the ecosystem, a new commission is now on view in New York as part of the ongoing partnership between the Museum of the Moving Image and the Tezos Foundation.

To Be Perceived, Against Evil brings together the work of Linda Dounia and Rhea Myers in an installation that explores visibility, privacy, memory, and what it means to remain partially unknowable in an increasingly data-driven world.

Inspired by the writings of Édouard Glissant and his concept of the "right to opacity," the work asks a simple but powerful question: what deserves to remain unseen, untranslated, or protected?

Visitors encounter the piece through the Media Wall, which initially appears obscured. As people move through the space, their presence is transformed into encrypted branching data that interacts with Tezos smart contracts. Collective participation gradually reveals portions of the artwork while deliberately preserving areas that remain hidden.

The themes run deeper than the technology itself. For Linda Dounia, opacity connects to her research with the Serer community in Senegal, where sacred trees carry histories of ancestry, memory, and creation. For Rhea Myers, the concept speaks to personal autonomy and the ways systems often expect identity to be fully legible and constantly exposed.

The result is an artwork that uses blockchain as a creative material rather than simply a delivery mechanism, continuing a theme that has emerged throughout the MoMI × Tezos programming series.

Visitors can also collect a free process image accompanying the commission through objkt.com, offering a glimpse into the development of the work alongside the installation itself.

To Be Perceived, Against Evil is now open and will remain on view through August 2 at the Museum of the Moving Image.

🔴 Now Streaming: How Metals.io Is Bringing Real Assets On-chain

This week on TezTalks Radio, host Brandon Langston welcomes back Ben Elvidge to discuss the next evolution beyond Uranium: Metals.io.

Last time, the conversation focused on uranium and the challenge of making a difficult physical commodity accessible through modern financial infrastructure.

Metals.io expands that vision into a broader universe of materials including gold, uranium, strategic metals, and upcoming additions like cobalt, silver, palladium, and nickel.

At the heart of the discussion is a simple question: Why are some of the world's most important materials still so difficult for ordinary investors to access directly?

Now streaming on YouTube.

Tezos Systems: Exploring the Network Through a Community Lens

This week, we wanted to spotlight a project that reflects a different kind of contribution to the ecosystem.

Most people encounter Tezos through an application, an artwork, a governance proposal, or a protocol upgrade. Behind all of those experiences sits an enormous amount of data that helps tell the story of what is happening across the network. Transactions, staking activity, governance participation, baker performance, protocol history, wallet activity, and countless other signals are constantly being generated, though making sense of that information is often easier said than done.

That's where Tezos Systems comes in.

Built by community member Baking Benjamins, Tezos Systems brings together a wide range of ecosystem information into a single platform. Network statistics, baker data, governance activity, whale tracking, staking metrics, protocol history, and NFT analytics can all be explored from one place, making it easier to understand both what is happening on Tezos today and how the network has evolved over time.

What makes the platform particularly useful is the amount of context layered into the experience. Rather than simply presenting raw data, it helps answer the kinds of questions people naturally ask when exploring a blockchain ecosystem.

• How active is the network?

• How many people are staking?

• How has governance participation changed over time?

• What protocol upgrades shaped the network's development?

• Who are the largest holders and most active participants?

One feature that stood out to us is Your Tezos Story, which generates a personalized timeline for any wallet address. Users can see when their account first appeared on the network, how many governance cycles they have participated in, and which protocol upgrades they have lived through since joining the ecosystem.

For long-time community members, it offers an interesting reminder of just how much Tezos has changed over the years. Upgrades like Carthage, Delphi, Edo, and many others become more than names on a governance timeline. They become milestones that people experienced as the network continued to evolve.

The project also reflects something that has always been true about Tezos. Many of the ecosystem's most valuable contributions come directly from community members who identify a need and decide to build a solution themselves. In this case, the result is a platform that helps people better understand the network, participate more effectively, and explore the history that brought Tezos to where it is today.

If you haven't spent time exploring it yet, Tezos Systems is well worth a visit. You may find yourself discovering a statistic you didn't know, revisiting a forgotten chapter of Tezos history, or gaining a deeper appreciation for just how much activity is happening across the network every day. Lastly, if you want to learn more about Tezos Systems, you can also dive deep into our latest article by Cryptonio.

This Week in the Tezos Ecosystem

Community Spotlight: TheTezosCommunity (TTC)

One of the easiest ways to understand an ecosystem is to look at what happens between the major announcements.

The protocol upgrades, conferences, and product launches often attract the most attention, but communities are built through the smaller interactions that happen every week. People showing up for events, meeting new artists, discovering projects, learning something new, or simply spending time together around shared interests.

That is where TheTezosCommunity has carved out an important role over the years. Known throughout the ecosystem as TTC, the community-led initiative has become a gathering point for Tezos users through a steady calendar of events, games, spaces, art initiatives, educational activities, and social experiences. Their work helps connect artists, collectors, gamers, builders, and newcomers in ways that make the ecosystem feel approachable and active regardless of what else is happening across the network.

TTC's latest 1of1 Week celebrates one-of-one artwork and the unique relationship that exists between an artist and collector when a piece has a single owner. Throughout the week, community members have the opportunity to participate in activities and win original artworks collected from creators across the Tezos ecosystem.

The schedule includes:

• Tezos Gartic drawing night
• Rumble Royale competition
• Tezos Quiz
• Community poker games
• Support Artists Day #76
• Artist Spaces and community discussions

You can follow them on X and keep up to date with their weekly agenda.

What makes TTC particularly valuable is its consistency. Week after week, they maintain a full load of activities that give people a reason to return, participate, and engage with one another. Many artists receive additional visibility through community showcases, collectors discover new work, and newcomers often find their first entry point into the ecosystem through one of these events.

Community initiatives can sometimes be difficult to measure through dashboards or network statistics, though their impact is often easy to see. Friendships form, collaborations emerge, artists gain collectors, and people find reasons to remain engaged long after their first interaction with Tezos.

As this issue focuses on community contributions, TTC serves as a great reminder that ecosystems grow through people creating spaces where others want to spend their time.

Follow Tezos Commons on Bluesky

We are thrilled to announce that we have expanded our social media presence beyond our typical channels. It is truly amazing to witness the Tezos community flourishing and growing on this platform. We are committed to keeping you updated and engaged by posting all of our interviews, live spaces, and written content here.

Follow Tezos Commons on Bluesky.

Tezos Summer Events

To Be Perceived, Against Evil Opens at MoMI

As conversations around preservation, digital culture, and creative expression continue across the ecosystem, a new commission is now on view in New York as part of the ongoing partnership between the Museum of the Moving Image and the Tezos Foundation.

To Be Perceived, Against Evil brings together the work of Linda Dounia and Rhea Myers in an installation that explores visibility, privacy, memory, and what it means to remain partially unknowable in an increasingly data-driven world.

Inspired by the writings of Édouard Glissant and his concept of the "right to opacity," the work asks a simple but powerful question: what deserves to remain unseen, untranslated, or protected?

Visitors encounter the piece through the Media Wall, which initially appears obscured. As people move through the space, their presence is transformed into encrypted branching data that interacts with Tezos smart contracts. Collective participation gradually reveals portions of the artwork while deliberately preserving areas that remain hidden.

The themes run deeper than the technology itself. For Linda Dounia, opacity connects to her research with the Serer community in Senegal, where sacred trees carry histories of ancestry, memory, and creation. For Rhea Myers, the concept speaks to personal autonomy and the ways systems often expect identity to be fully legible and constantly exposed.

The result is an artwork that uses blockchain as a creative material rather than simply a delivery mechanism, continuing a theme that has emerged throughout the MoMI × Tezos programming series.

Visitors can also collect a free process image accompanying the commission through objkt.com, offering a glimpse into the development of the work alongside the installation itself.

To Be Perceived, Against Evil is now open and will remain on view through August 2 at the Museum of the Moving Image.

🔴 Now Streaming: Inside TzEL and the Future of Private Payments on Tezos

This week on TezTalks Radio, we’re joined by Arthur Breitman, co-founder of Tezos, for a deep conversation about TzEL, an experimental project exploring private, post-quantum payments on Tezos testnet.

At the center of the discussion is a deceptively simple question: If blockchain data can remain public forever, what does privacy actually mean over time?

Rather than treating privacy as a momentary concern, this episode looks at the long-term reality of encrypted transaction data that may still exist decades from now and what happens if future cryptographic assumptions change.

The conversation moves through private payments, post-quantum cryptography, rollups, the DAL, and the engineering realities of turning research ideas into working systems.

This is one of the clearest conversations yet on how Tezos infrastructure, rollups, governance, and long-term adaptability connect together underneath the surface.

Now streaming on YouTube.

happiness is in your palm by Niko Alerce

Proof of Palm is Here

This week opens on a lighter note, with artists across the ecosystem once again filling timelines, marketplaces, and collections with palm trees of every kind imaginable.

Proof of Palm 2026 is officially underway, continuing one of those community traditions that feels uniquely native to the Tezos art scene. Organized by absurdeity, the event invites artists to create playful palm tree-inspired works and mint them on Tezos throughout the month of May.

Part of what makes Proof of Palm so enjoyable each year is how open-ended it becomes. Some artists lean into surreal landscapes and colorful illustrations, while others approach it through photography, generative systems, animation, or humor. The common thread is less about style and more about participation. People jumping in, experimenting, and contributing their own interpretation to a shared creative prompt.

This year’s event is already building a wide mix of works across the ecosystem, including pieces like happiness is in your palm by Niko Alerce.

Collectors and visitors can explore submissions through:

• NFTBiker Proof of Palm Event Page
• The #proofofpalm2026 tag on X
• A special curated selection assembled by Tamás Antal on objkt.com

Events like this continue to highlight something important about the Tezos art ecosystem. Alongside large exhibitions, institutional partnerships, and curated programs, there is still a strong culture of open participation where artists can gather around a simple idea and collectively turn it into something much bigger over time.

Proof of Palm runs through May 31, so there is still plenty of time to mint, collect, and explore what the community is creating this year.

Preserving the Conversation Around Tezos

From preserving artwork and collections to preserving the conversations themselves, another set of community resources launched this week with a similar long-term mindset.

Tezos Commons officially launched Tezos Commons Radio, a new archive dedicated to preserving Spaces, interviews, ecosystem calls, and community discussions that would otherwise disappear over time.

The idea behind it is simple, though increasingly valuable as the ecosystem grows. Some of the most insightful conversations around Tezos happen live. Developers discussing protocol changes, artists reflecting on creative work, founders explaining products, or community members sharing perspectives during Spaces and calls. Those discussions often move quickly through timelines and become difficult to revisit later.

Tezos Commons Radio creates a dedicated home for that material, making it easier for people to return to important conversations long after they originally aired.

Another major resource also went live this week with the launch of the new Tezos Media Center.

The Media Center brings together press releases, reports, ecosystem resources, media assets, and recent coverage into a single public-facing hub. It also provides a clearer snapshot of the broader ecosystem, highlighting developers, partners, adoption hubs, grantees, and ongoing initiatives across Tezos.

A few sections that stand out include:

• Recent ecosystem press releases and protocol updates
• Access to reports, whitepapers, and ecosystem resources
• Direct links into Tezos Spotlight articles and research
• Media assets and contact resources for press and partners

Both launches reflect something that becomes increasingly important as ecosystems mature: documentation, accessibility, and historical continuity.

This Week in the Tezos Ecosystem

404_LAND Expands the HEK × Tezos Partnership

A missing page on the internet usually signals a dead end. In 404_LAND, the error becomes the entire point.

The newly announced exhibition presented through the partnership between HEK (House of Electronic Arts) and the Tezos Foundation explores digital spaces that resist being fully mapped, explained, or controlled, bringing together artists whose work moves through instability, fragmentation, machine logic, identity, and hidden systems.

Curated by Auronda Scalera and Alfredo Cramerotti, the exhibition takes its name from the familiar HTTP 404 error and reimagines it as both metaphor and framework. Instead of treating the error as failure, the show approaches it as an entry point into spaces that remain unresolved, obscured, or intentionally difficult to fully decode.

The newly revealed artist lineup gives a much clearer sense of how broad that exploration will become.

• Hind Al Saad, together with Martin Juras and Levi Hammett, presents SELF(ENCODED), a recursive conversation between identity, systems, and encoded memory

• dmstfctn presents The Models, where AI-driven characters improvise endlessly inside a 3D game engine environment that constantly hovers between coherence and collapse

• Gabriel Massan brings Victims, a machinima work examining violence, repetition, and survival inside unstable political and digital systems

• Kat the Poet Engineer contributes a new interactive generative piece built around broken signals, missing images, and fragmented perception

• Alida Sun presents The world isn’t ending / Their world is ending, exploring ecological instability, resilience, and disappearance through generative digital systems

• Varvara & Mar present Everything Is In Your Hands, an interactive work where gesture and glitch become part of the hidden architecture of digital communication

What makes the exhibition especially compelling is how naturally these themes connect to contemporary online life. Algorithmic systems, unstable realities, fragmented identities, incomplete information, and partially hidden structures increasingly shape how people experience the internet itself, and each artist approaches those conditions from a very different perspective.

The exhibition also continues to expand the broader HEK × Tezos collaboration into more immersive and conceptual territory. Rather than treating blockchain as a backdrop, the partnership continues to position it as part of the artistic material itself, woven directly into how these works are experienced, interpreted, and shared.

The exhibition opens on June 12 through HEK’s virtual platform and runs until August 9, 2026. It is the first of two virtual exhibitions being produced through the 2026 HEK × Tezos Foundation partnership, alongside an outdoor presentation scheduled during Art Basel later this year.

You can RSVP here.

Tezos Spring Events

To Be Perceived, Against Evil Opens at MoMI

As conversations around preservation, digital culture, and creative expression continue across the ecosystem, a new commission is now on view in New York as part of the ongoing partnership between the Museum of the Moving Image and the Tezos Foundation.

To Be Perceived, Against Evil brings together the work of Linda Dounia and Rhea Myers in an installation that explores visibility, privacy, memory, and what it means to remain partially unknowable in an increasingly data-driven world.

Inspired by the writings of Édouard Glissant and his concept of the "right to opacity," the work asks a simple but powerful question: what deserves to remain unseen, untranslated, or protected?

Visitors encounter the piece through the Media Wall, which initially appears obscured. As people move through the space, their presence is transformed into encrypted branching data that interacts with Tezos smart contracts. Collective participation gradually reveals portions of the artwork while deliberately preserving areas that remain hidden.

The themes run deeper than the technology itself. For Linda Dounia, opacity connects to her research with the Serer community in Senegal, where sacred trees carry histories of ancestry, memory, and creation. For Rhea Myers, the concept speaks to personal autonomy and the ways systems often expect identity to be fully legible and constantly exposed.

The result is an artwork that uses blockchain as a creative material rather than simply a delivery mechanism, continuing a theme that has emerged throughout the MoMI × Tezos programming series.

Visitors can also collect a free process image accompanying the commission through objkt.com, offering a glimpse into the development of the work alongside the installation itself.

To Be Perceived, Against Evil is now open and will remain on view through August 2 at the Museum of the Moving Image.

🔴 Now Streaming: Inside TzEL and the Future of Private Payments on Tezos

This week on TezTalks Radio, we’re joined by Arthur Breitman, co-founder of Tezos, for a deep conversation about TzEL, an experimental project exploring private, post-quantum payments on Tezos testnet.

At the center of the discussion is a deceptively simple question: If blockchain data can remain public forever, what does privacy actually mean over time?

Rather than treating privacy as a momentary concern, this episode looks at the long-term reality of encrypted transaction data that may still exist decades from now and what happens if future cryptographic assumptions change.

The conversation moves through private payments, post-quantum cryptography, rollups, the DAL, and the engineering realities of turning research ideas into working systems.

This is one of the clearest conversations yet on how Tezos infrastructure, rollups, governance, and long-term adaptability connect together underneath the surface.

Now streaming on YouTube.

Community Spotlight: Building For the Culture

This week, we're turning the spotlight toward a group of community-built tools that help preserve the growing archive of art and culture on Tezos.

Every collection tells a story, and as that history continues to grow, so does the importance of keeping the media, metadata, and context behind those works accessible for years to come. Media files need to remain accessible, metadata needs to stay intact, and collectors need confidence that the history attached to an artwork will still be available years from now.

This week, Tezos highlighted several community-built tools designed to help do exactly that. While each approaches the challenge differently, they all share the same goal: making it easier to preserve artwork and metadata for the long term.

Some of the tools available today include:

• Tezos Archiver by Jack Tezos, which crawls and archives NFT metadata and media files

• NFTBiker Pin Tool by NFTBiker, allowing users to pin metadata and media across multiple IPFS services simultaneously while handling batch processing in the background

• Porcupin by fafo_lab, an open-source self-hosted IPFS node that watches wallets and automatically repins NFT data over time

• Artsaver by flexasaurusrex, which downloads entire collections including both media and metadata into clean local archives

• Tezos Collection Archiver by JestemZero, providing a fast way to create local backups of complete collections directly from a wallet

What stands out is that none of these tools were developed as part of a coordinated initiative. They emerged from members of the community identifying a need and building practical solutions around it.

That speaks to something about the ecosystem as a whole. Collecting, creating, and preserving digital art are all part of the same process. The artwork itself matters, but so does ensuring the files, metadata, and context surrounding it remain accessible over time.

As more collections are created and more history accumulates on-chain, tools like these become an increasingly valuable part of the ecosystem's foundation. They help ensure that the cultural record being built today remains available for future collectors, researchers, artists, and communities to explore.

Tezos Upgrade Tracker: Cooldown Phase

While the community continues building tools around art preservation, governance has also reached another checkpoint this week.

The Ushuaia proposal has successfully completed the Exploration phase after reaching both quorum and supermajority support from participating bakers. With that milestone now behind it, the proposal advances into the 10-day Cooldown phase before entering its final Promotion vote.

Thank you to all the bakers who took part in the process and helped move the proposal forward.

Ushuaia continues the direction established by recent protocol upgrades, focusing on scaling infrastructure, improving the experience for rollups, and preparing the network for future cryptographic requirements.

Among the key features proposed are:

• A 15x increase in Data Availability Layer bandwidth, expanding capacity from approximately 0.66 MB/s to 10 MB/s

• Dynamic DAL attestations, reducing the time required for data confirmation

• Greater flexibility for rollup environments to evolve through governance mechanisms

• Early groundwork for quantum-resistant tz5 accounts

• Experimental support for protocol-native liquid staking infrastructure through sTEZ

The proposal also continues the Tezos X journey by expanding the data capacity available to execution layers and future applications. As more builders begin experimenting with Tezos X Previewnet and increasingly data-intensive workloads, these protocol-level improvements provide additional room for applications to scale.

For now, the proposal enters its cooling-off period, giving bakers and the wider community time to review the upgrade before the final Promotion vote begins. If approved in the next phase, Ushuaia will move one step closer to activation later this year.

You can follow the proposal's progress on Agora as it advances through governance.

This Week in the Tezos Ecosystem

Open Worlds Celebrates Art on Tezos at MoMI

From preserving art through community-built tools to experiencing it in person, the conversation around art on Tezos continued this week at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York.

Open Worlds: An Afternoon of Digital Art Encounters brought together artists, collectors, and members of the community for an afternoon that explored different approaches to creativity, performance, and generative art. Hosted by the Museum of the Moving Image in partnership with Art on Tezos, the event highlighted three artists whose practices approach technology from very different perspectives.

Visitors had the opportunity to meet and hear from:

• Travess Smalley, whose work explores generative image systems and computational art, including a talk and signing for his Pixel Rugs publication

• OONA, whose performances examine themes of technology, identity, and gender through the lens of digital culture

• Edgar Fabián Frías, a multidisciplinary artist and educator whose practice brings together performance, psychology, spirituality, and contemporary media

Events like Open Worlds continue to demonstrate how the Tezos art community extends far beyond the digital realm. Artists, curators, institutions, and collectors are creating opportunities to experience these works together, adding context, dialogue, and human connection to the creative ecosystems being built online.

A big thank you to everyone who attended, participated, and helped bring the afternoon to life.

Tezos Spring Events

To Be Perceived, Against Evil Opens at MoMI

As conversations around preservation, digital culture, and creative expression continue across the ecosystem, a new commission is now on view in New York as part of the ongoing partnership between the Museum of the Moving Image and the Tezos Foundation.

To Be Perceived, Against Evil brings together the work of Linda Dounia and Rhea Myers in an installation that explores visibility, privacy, memory, and what it means to remain partially unknowable in an increasingly data-driven world.

Inspired by the writings of Édouard Glissant and his concept of the "right to opacity," the work asks a simple but powerful question: what deserves to remain unseen, untranslated, or protected?

Visitors encounter the piece through the Media Wall, which initially appears obscured. As people move through the space, their presence is transformed into encrypted branching data that interacts with Tezos smart contracts. Collective participation gradually reveals portions of the artwork while deliberately preserving areas that remain hidden.

The themes run deeper than the technology itself. For Linda Dounia, opacity connects to her research with the Serer community in Senegal, where sacred trees carry histories of ancestry, memory, and creation. For Rhea Myers, the concept speaks to personal autonomy and the ways systems often expect identity to be fully legible and constantly exposed.

The result is an artwork that uses blockchain as a creative material rather than simply a delivery mechanism, continuing a theme that has emerged throughout the MoMI × Tezos programming series.

Visitors can also collect a free process image accompanying the commission through objkt.com, offering a glimpse into the development of the work alongside the installation itself.

To Be Perceived, Against Evil is now open and will remain on view through August 2 at the Museum of the Moving Image.

🔴 Now Streaming: Inside TzEL and the Future of Private Payments on Tezos

This week on TezTalks Radio, we’re joined by Arthur Breitman, co-founder of Tezos, for a deep conversation about TzEL, an experimental project exploring private, post-quantum payments on Tezos testnet.

At the center of the discussion is a deceptively simple question: If blockchain data can remain public forever, what does privacy actually mean over time?

Rather than treating privacy as a momentary concern, this episode looks at the long-term reality of encrypted transaction data that may still exist decades from now and what happens if future cryptographic assumptions change.

The conversation moves through private payments, post-quantum cryptography, rollups, the DAL, and the engineering realities of turning research ideas into working systems.

This is one of the clearest conversations yet on how Tezos infrastructure, rollups, governance, and long-term adaptability connect together underneath the surface.

Now streaming on YouTube.

TzEL Brings Post-Quantum Private Payments to Tezos

This week, the spotlight is entirely on TzEL, a new experimental rollup exploring what private payments could look like in a post-quantum world.

Announced by the teams at Nomadic Labs and Trilitech, TzEL is now live on Tezos testnet as a working research implementation for private, quantum-resistant transactions.

What makes this especially important is the problem it is trying to solve.

Most blockchain privacy systems today rely on elliptic-curve cryptography. That works under current conditions, though quantum computers are expected to eventually break those standards. The challenge becomes much bigger when you remember how blockchains operate. Transaction data, encrypted memos, and note payloads are stored permanently onchain. That creates a real long-term concern where encrypted information captured today could potentially be decrypted years from now once quantum systems become powerful enough.

TzEL approaches privacy from the beginning with that future in mind. Instead of elliptic-curve cryptography, the system uses post-quantum cryptographic primitives together with zk-STARK proofs to protect transactions and associated data. It also includes features such as encrypted payment memos, viewing keys, detector keys, and delegated proving flows.

A few things stand out immediately:

• Private transactions designed for long-term quantum resistance
• zk-STARK proofs secured through post-quantum cryptography
• Encrypted memos and viewing controls for transaction privacy
• Delegated proving that allows proof generation to be outsourced securely
• A live rollup stack already operating on Tezos Shadownet

One of the major technical hurdles around post-quantum privacy systems is proof size. The proofs generated here are roughly 300KB, far larger than what most existing privacy systems use. On many chains, that becomes difficult and expensive to handle at scale.

This is where Tezos’ Data Availability Layer becomes particularly relevant. DAL was designed to support large-scale data publication efficiently, and TzEL can post these much larger proof payloads without congesting the network itself. It turns a piece of infrastructure that has mostly been discussed in terms of scaling into something with a very direct application for privacy systems.

Arthur Breitman described it clearly, “Private transactions have a long memory: the data encrypted today may still be around when tomorrow’s attacks arrive. With TzEL, we set out to build a shielded ledger for Tezos whose privacy stack is post-quantum end to end.”

That framing captures why this matters. TzEL is still experimental research infrastructure and should be viewed that way. It is not production-ready, audited, or intended for real value today. What it does provide is something much more important at this stage: a live end-to-end prototype exploring how private blockchain transactions could remain private much further into the future.

And for a topic that has mostly lived in theory and academic discussion, seeing a working implementation live on Tezos testnet makes this week feel particularly significant.

You can go ahead and test the wallet today and go through the tutorial here.

Tezos Upgrade Tracker: Ushuaia Advances

Alongside this week’s focus on post-quantum privacy, governance activity continues moving forward as the Ushuaia proposal approaches the end of its Exploration phase.

With two days remaining in the current voting period, the proposal has already successfully reached both quorum and supermajority thresholds, meaning it is now set to move into the next Cooldown phase once voting closes.

A big thank you goes out to the bakers participating in governance and helping move the process forward.

Ushuaia continues the broader direction the protocol has been taking over the past several upgrades, with a strong focus on scaling, rollup infrastructure, and long-term cryptographic preparation.

A few of the major features included in the proposal are:

• A 15x increase in DAL bandwidth, moving from ~0.66 MB/s to 10 MB/s
• Faster DAL confirmation timing through dynamic attestations
• More flexibility for rollup environments to evolve through governance
• Early groundwork for quantum-resistant tz5 accounts
• Experimental support around sTEZ and future staking infrastructure

Taken together, the proposal keeps building toward higher throughput, more flexible execution environments, and stronger long-term infrastructure across the network.

You can follow the live governance cycle here.

Tezos Spring Events

Open Worlds: Digital Art at MoMI During Frieze Week

During Frieze Week in New York, Museum of the Moving Image will host Open Worlds: An Afternoon of Digital Art Encounters, organized in collaboration with Art on Tezos and supported by the Tezos Foundation.

The event brings together talks, performances, and a book signing across three distinct artistic practices, offering a closer look at how digital art continues to evolve within the Tezos ecosystem.

The afternoon includes:

• Travess Smalley presenting a talk and book signing for Pixel Rugs
• Edgar Fabián Frías leading a live performance with local Indigenous artists
• OONA sharing a performance and talk

The program wraps with drinks, snacks, and time to connect with the artists in a more informal setting.

Events like this highlight another layer of the ecosystem. Alongside infrastructure and applications, there is a continued focus on creative expression and real-world engagement, bringing digital work into physical spaces and conversations.

If you’re in New York, it’s a chance to step into that intersection firsthand.

🗓 May 16, 1:30–6 PM EST
📍 Museum of the Moving Image
🎟 Free with RSVP

🔴 Now Streaming: How Ushuaia Prepares Tezos for Shared Applications

This week on TezTalks Radio, we’re joined by Yann Régis-Gianas to unpack Ushuaia, a new Tezos protocol proposal that sits directly in the path toward Tezos X.

From the outside, Tezos X promises something simple: a more unified Tezos experience where EVM and Michelson applications can interact more directly without the awkward fragmentation users are used to across chains, rollups, wallets, and app environments.

Ushuaia is part of the infrastructure underneath that promise. This episode focuses on what Ushuaia actually unlocks, what becomes harder without it, and how the clean roadmap for Tezos X meets the reality of engineering constraints.

Now streaming on YouTube.

Tezos X Previewnet Goes Live

This week marks the first time developers can publicly experiment with one of the core ideas behind Tezos X in a live environment.

The Tezos X Previewnet is now live, giving builders access to the first public testnet where the EVM and Michelson interfaces interact through a shared ledger.

That matters because it changes how applications can be designed across the ecosystem.

Most multi-environment systems today rely on separate chains, bridges, wrapped assets, and additional layers that introduce complexity every time users or applications move between them. Tezos X approaches this differently by allowing both environments to operate within the same system from the beginning, and the result is native atomic composability.

In practice, that means EVM and Michelson contracts can interact directly within the same transaction flow, allowing actions across both environments to settle atomically together as part of a single execution. Assets and logic move seamlessly across the shared ledger, giving developers a much more unified way to design applications.

The example shared in the announcement captures it well. A user holding USDC through an EVM wallet can interact directly with a Michelson-based ticketing platform priced in tez, with the payment and purchase settling atomically in one action.

For developers, the implications are much broader:

• Solidity developers can continue using familiar EVM tooling and workflows
• Michelson developers gain direct access to EVM users, liquidity, and assets
• Applications can combine both environments inside the same transaction flow
• Formal verification remains available through Michelson contracts

That last piece is especially important. Michelson was designed with formal verification in mind, allowing developers to mathematically prove how contracts behave. As AI-assisted development tools improve, those guarantees are becoming far more accessible to builders working on production systems.

Right now, the focus is on testing in real conditions. The Previewnet gives developers space to deploy, experiment, break assumptions, and see how these interactions behave before anything moves toward mainnet.

The broader timeline is already taking shape. If the next Etherlink governance proposal is approved later this year, Tezos X would move toward mainnet with both interfaces live and fully composable from day one.

More than anything, this feels like the point where Tezos X stops being theoretical. Builders can now interact with the architecture directly and start exploring what applications look like when EVM and Michelson operate as part of the same system.

Tezos Spring Events

Tezos Breakfast Club Miami Wraps Up

This week’s Breakfast Club in Miami brought together another strong cross-section of the ecosystem, with developers, artists, founders, and community members gathering ahead of the wider conference rush.

The team from metals.io was also in attendance, adding another layer to the conversations happening around tokenized commodities and access to real-world markets.

These Breakfast Club gatherings continue to play an important role in the ecosystem. They create space for people across very different corners of Tezos to meet in the same room, exchange ideas, and build relationships that often continue long after the event wraps up. Stay tuned for more events like this in the future.

Also, big thanks to everyone who stopped by in Miami!

Open Worlds: Digital Art at MoMI During Frieze Week

During Frieze Week in New York, Museum of the Moving Image will host Open Worlds: An Afternoon of Digital Art Encounters, organized in collaboration with Art on Tezos and supported by the Tezos Foundation.

The event brings together talks, performances, and a book signing across three distinct artistic practices, offering a closer look at how digital art continues to evolve within the Tezos ecosystem.

The afternoon includes:

• Travess Smalley presenting a talk and book signing for Pixel Rugs
• Edgar Fabián Frías leading a live performance with local Indigenous artists
• OONA sharing a performance and talk

The program wraps with drinks, snacks, and time to connect with the artists in a more informal setting.

Events like this highlight another layer of the ecosystem. Alongside infrastructure and applications, there is a continued focus on creative expression and real-world engagement, bringing digital work into physical spaces and conversations.

If you’re in New York, it’s a chance to step into that intersection firsthand.

🗓 May 16, 1:30–6 PM EST
📍 Museum of the Moving Image
🎟 Free with RSVP

🔴 Now Streaming: The Story Behind Tezzardz and Everything Around It

This week on TezTalks Radio, we sit down with George Goodwin, better known as OMGiDRAWEDit, one of the most recognizable artists in the Tezos ecosystem.

If you’ve spent time in Tezos art, you’ve likely seen his work with bold colors, strange characters, and chaotic scenes that somehow hold together the longer you look.

It starts before Tezzardz, before Tezos, back when George was still trying to figure out what kind of artist he wanted to be, and what was missing from his work.

Now streaming on YouTube.

Tezos X: From Roadmap to Reality

This week brings one of the clearest updates yet on where Tezos is heading, with a detailed post published by the teams at Nomadic Labs, Trilitech, and Functori outlining how Tezos X is moving from concept into implementation.

Tezos X is no longer framed as a long-term vision. The first phase is about to roll out, starting with a testnet that brings EVM and Michelson together on a single shared ledger. That architecture changes how applications are built and how users interact with them.

Instead of operating across separate environments, applications can run within one system. A Michelson contract can interact directly with an EVM contract inside the same transaction, allowing assets and logic to move across both without additional layers or fragmentation.

From a user perspective, this means fewer steps and a smoother experience. A transaction that would typically require bridging or multiple confirmations can now settle atomically in one flow.

For builders, it opens up a broader design space:

• Deploy using Solidity or Michelson with existing tools
• Access both EVM and Tezos-native users from the same application
• Call across environments natively within a single transaction
• Retain formal verification through the Michelson interface

Under the hood, Tezos X operates as an enshrined execution layer. It processes transactions at high speed while settling back to Layer 1 for security, keeping the system non-custodial and aligned with Tezos governance.

The rollout timeline is already defined:

• May 2026: Testnet launch with EVM and Michelson on a shared ledger
• June 2026: Etherlink governance vote for mainnet activation
• H2 2026: Transition toward RISC-V, enabling more programming languages and faster iteration

This update builds on the work delivered over the past two years. Block times have been reduced, the Data Availability Layer is live, Etherlink has expanded execution capacity, and latency has dropped to the millisecond range through instant confirmations.

With those pieces in place, Tezos X brings them together into a single execution environment where developers can build across runtimes and design applications that tap into multiple ecosystems at once.

The roadmap is now entering the stage where developers can test it, build on it, and push it forward.

Tezos Spring Events

Tezos Breakfast Club: Miami

As the ecosystem heads into another busy stretch of events, there’s a chance to connect in a more relaxed setting during Consensus week.

If you’re in Miami, the Tezos Breakfast Club is hosting a morning meetup on May 7, bringing the community together over coffee, breakfast, and conversation.

There’s no formal agenda here. It’s a simple setup that works well. People gathering, catching up, and exchanging ideas before the day gets underway.

Here’s what to expect:

• Coffee, breakfast, and a casual atmosphere
• Conversations with builders, operators, and community members
• A chance to connect before the main conference schedule begins

Register here.

Open Worlds: Digital Art at MoMI During Frieze Week

During Frieze Week in New York, Museum of the Moving Image will host Open Worlds: An Afternoon of Digital Art Encounters, organized in collaboration with Art on Tezos and supported by the Tezos Foundation.

The event brings together talks, performances, and a book signing across three distinct artistic practices, offering a closer look at how digital art continues to evolve within the Tezos ecosystem.

The afternoon includes:

• Travess Smalley presenting a talk and book signing for Pixel Rugs
• Edgar Fabián Frías leading a live performance with local Indigenous artists
• OONA sharing a performance and talk

The program wraps with drinks, snacks, and time to connect with the artists in a more informal setting.

Events like this highlight another layer of the ecosystem. Alongside infrastructure and applications, there is a continued focus on creative expression and real-world engagement, bringing digital work into physical spaces and conversations.

If you’re in New York, it’s a chance to step into that intersection firsthand.

🗓 May 16, 1:30–6 PM EST
📍 Museum of the Moving Image
🎟 Free with RSVP

🔴 Now Streaming: The Story Behind Tezzardz and Everything Around It

This week on TezTalks Radio, we sit down with George Goodwin, better known as OMGiDRAWEDit, one of the most recognizable artists in the Tezos ecosystem.

If you’ve spent time in Tezos art, you’ve likely seen his work with bold colors, strange characters, and chaotic scenes that somehow hold together the longer you look.

It starts before Tezzardz, before Tezos, back when George was still trying to figure out what kind of artist he wanted to be, and what was missing from his work.

Now streaming on YouTube.

Ushuaia: The Next Tezos Protocol Upgrade

This week brings us back to the protocol layer, where the next upgrade proposal has officially been introduced.

Following the activation of Tallinn, Nomadic Labs, Trilitech, and Functori have put forward the 21st Tezos upgrade: Ushuaia.

This proposal continues the direction we’ve been seeing over the past few cycles, building toward higher throughput, more flexible staking, and long-term security, while giving the ecosystem time to adapt along the way.

At a high level, Ushuaia focuses on three main areas:

The most immediate change is the upgrade to the Data Availability Layer. Bandwidth increases from roughly 0.66 MB/s to 10 MB/s, a 15× jump that allows significantly more data to be published onchain. That opens the door for applications that rely on higher throughput, including games, high-frequency DeFi systems, and more data-heavy use cases.

Alongside that, Ushuaia introduces dynamic DAL attestation. Instead of waiting through a fixed delay, data is confirmed as soon as enough of the network has observed it. In practice, this reduces confirmation time from around a minute to closer to 12 to 18 seconds under normal conditions.

There is also an important shift in how rollup infrastructure evolves. Ushuaia allows certain PVM features to be activated through rollup governance, rather than waiting on full Layer 1 upgrade cycles. That gives builders working on Etherlink and future Tezos X environments more flexibility to iterate as features become ready.

Beyond those core changes, Ushuaia introduces a few features behind testnet flags, giving the community space to explore what may come next:

Each of these is being introduced gradually, with a focus on testing, feedback, and iteration before any wider activation.

Taken together, Ushuaia builds directly on the momentum of recent upgrades. It pushes scalability forward, improves responsiveness across layers, and lays down early pieces for what comes next, all while keeping the network stable and familiar for users and operators.

The proposal period is now underway, with voting open through early May and a potential activation window later this summer. We encourage developers, bakers, and ecosystem teams to test their applications and tools on the dedicated test network, Ushuaianet, which will be announced soon. A release candidate for Octez v25.0, which contains the Ushuaia protocol as well as general improvements, will also be published shortly.

Bakers, it’s your time to shine in the Tezos ecosystem and start voting! As always, you can follow the governance process in real-time at Tezos Agora.

This Week in the Tezos Ecosystem

Stronger Infrastructure: BLS Signers Multiply Across Tezos

From protocol upgrades to day-to-day operations, this week also highlights something happening a bit closer to the ground.

As Tezos moves further into its BLS-powered consensus era, bakers are starting to see more choice in how they run their infrastructure, especially when it comes to signing.

With tz4 consensus keys and aggregated attestations now part of the flow, signing plays a bigger role in performance and reliability. Faster and more efficient attestations reduce network traffic, lower node load, and contribute to quicker finality and more predictable rewards.

What stands out is how the ecosystem is responding, instead of a single standard approach, multiple signer solutions are now available, each designed with different operational setups in mind:

• Tezos RPI BLS Signer by Nomadic Labs
• TezSign by Tez Capital
• Russignol by Rich Ayotte
• Signatory by ECAD Labs

These range from lightweight setups like Raspberry Pi devices to more advanced configurations using trusted execution environments in the cloud. Different bakers operate at different scales, with different requirements around cost, security, and performance. Having multiple options allows each operator to choose what fits best, rather than adapting to a single model.

It also strengthens the network as a whole with a broader set of tools reduces the risk of infrastructure becoming too uniform, which helps maintain decentralization and resilience over time.

As more bakers adopt these setups, this becomes another layer of progress that doesn’t always get headline attention, though it plays a key role in how the network performs day to day.

Tezos Spring Events

Tezos Breakfast Club: Miami

As the ecosystem heads into another busy stretch of events, there’s a chance to connect in a more relaxed setting during Consensus week.

If you’re in Miami, the Tezos Breakfast Club is hosting a morning meetup on May 7, bringing the community together over coffee, breakfast, and conversation.

There’s no formal agenda here. It’s a simple setup that works well. People gathering, catching up, and exchanging ideas before the day gets underway.

Here’s what to expect:

• Coffee, breakfast, and a casual atmosphere
• Conversations with builders, operators, and community members
• A chance to connect before the main conference schedule begins

Register here.

🔴 Now Streaming: The Story Behind Tezzardz and Everything Around It

This week on TezTalks Radio, we sit down with George Goodwin, better known as OMGiDRAWEDit, one of the most recognizable artists in the Tezos ecosystem.

If you’ve spent time in Tezos art, you’ve likely seen his work with bold colors, strange characters, and chaotic scenes that somehow hold together the longer you look.

It starts before Tezzardz, before Tezos, back when George was still trying to figure out what kind of artist he wanted to be, and what was missing from his work.

Now streaming on YouTube.

metals.io: Opening the Door to Markets That Were Never Built for You

This week, we’re spending some time with one of the most interesting launches to come out of Tez/Dev.

A lot of markets have evolved quickly over the past decade, however, rare metals have moved at a very different pace. These are assets tied to energy, infrastructure, and manufacturing, yet access still runs through systems that feel outdated and difficult to navigate unless you already operate inside them.

That is where metals.io comes in.

In a strong piece this week, Cryptonio walks through the bigger idea behind the platform and why it matters. What started with uranium.io has now expanded into a broader system, bringing gold, uranium, and a growing set of strategic metals into a single onchain environment.

The experience itself is straightforward, though there is a lot happening underneath. Access is continuous, ownership is fractional, and settlement happens on-chain instead of over long clearing cycles. Behind that, the system handles custody, compliance, pricing, and verification of physical backing.

A few details help make the shift clearer:

• Access to gold, uranium, and a range of strategic metals within one system
• Continuous markets with fractional ownership instead of large entry barriers
• Onchain settlement that replaces slow, multi-day processes
• Direct exposure to physically backed assets rather than indirect proxies

The newer additions are where things become especially interesting. Metals like hafnium, rhenium, indium, neodymium, and praseodymium rarely come up unless you are deep inside specific industries. At the same time, they play a role in semiconductors, EVs, advanced manufacturing, and defense systems. Demand exists, but access has always been limited.

That is the epiphany that metals.io is introducing. The metals themselves remain the same but the way people access them is changing.

Pricing these assets also becomes easier to see, participation to owning these metals becomes more direct, and settlement happens immediately thanks to Tezos. In markets that have historically been opaque and restricted, those changes begin to compound and benefit the casual user.

With additional metals already on the way, including silver, palladium, nickel, and cobalt, this starts to look less like a single product and more like a growing layer for accessing metals markets more broadly.

If you want a deeper look at the thinking behind it, Cryptonio’s full article is well worth the read.

That same direction carried into a dedicated livestream this week, where the team and partners walked through what metals.io represents in practice.

The session brought together Ben Elvidge from metals.io, Crispin Clarke from Curzon Uranium, Dimitrios from Noemon Tech, Alexander from VNX, and host ActionCEO from Genzio. The discussion focused on why these metals matter right now and how access to these markets has evolved.

The livestream also included a live walkthrough of the platform, which helped connect the concept to something tangible. Seeing how access, pricing, and settlement come together makes the model easier to understand.

Taken together, the article and the livestream point in the same direction. metals.io is building a more direct path into some of the world’s most important commodities, supported by infrastructure that makes access faster, clearer, and easier to navigate.

This Week in the Tezos Ecosystem

Tezos X: Building Across EVM and Michelson, Together

From metals and real-world markets opening up, the conversation this week also loops back to the foundation that makes all of this possible, good infrastructure.

At Tez/Dev, Arthur Breitman’s keynote gave one of the clearest looks yet at where Tezos is heading next, and more importantly, how the pieces already in place start to connect.

Framed around “Tezos in 2026: Good infrastructure is just the beginning,” the focus moved beyond upgrades and into what those upgrades enable.

A few ideas stood out and carried through the rest of the week:

• A unified execution layer through Tezos X
• A shift toward products, revenue, and real usage
• Native interaction between EVM and Michelson environments

What this points to is a system where developers are no longer choosing between environments. Instead, they can build across them, access different user bases, and move assets natively without introducing additional layers or friction.

Developers will be able to deploy using Solidity or Michelson, work with their existing stacks, and extend applications across both environments without rewriting core logic. Assets and calls can move natively between EVM and Michelson, which changes how applications are designed and how liquidity flows.

There is also a strong focus on performance with ultra-low latency, combined with Tezos L1 security, there is no duo that can match this offering.

Beyond the features, there is now a roadmap that gives a clearer sense of how this rolls out over the rest of the year.

That last step opens the door to more familiar languages and faster iteration, making it easier for developers to build without being limited to a single stack.

Taken together, this builds on what we were presented with at Tez/Dev. Infrastructure is reaching a point where it supports more complex systems. The focus is shifting toward what gets built on top of it, how users interact with it, and how applications scale across environments.

If you want to watch the full keynote, you can find it here.

Build on Etherlink With Just a Prompt

As the week moves from infrastructure and real-world assets into how people actually build, there’s another shift worth paying attention to.

A new tool created by 0xYpsono is making it possible to build directly on Etherlink using nothing more than a prompt.

Instead of writing code line by line, you describe what you want in plain English, and the system handles the rest. Using a dedicated Claude Skills setup, it can generate, structure, and deploy dApps and smart contracts in one flow.

The experience is simple on the surface, though it changes how people approach building:

• Describe your idea in plain language
• Generate contracts and app logic automatically
• Deploy directly onto Etherlink

What stands out here is how quickly the barrier to entry shifts. You move from needing a full development setup to being able to test an idea almost immediately.

It also ties back to everything else happening across the ecosystem. Faster execution, unified environments, and now tools that reduce the gap between idea and execution.

If you want to try it yourself, you can jump in here.

🔴 Now Streaming: Community Spotlight | How LMDesigns8 Is Blending Art, Wellness, and Tezos

This week on TezTalks Live, host Stu is joined by Leah Michelle, also known as LMDesigns8, a multidisciplinary artist creating immersive XR experiences, AR play spaces, and meditative virtual worlds.

In this conversation, Leah shares how her personal journey, including health challenges, has shaped her creative direction and how that perspective has led her to build work focused on healing, presence, and connection.

Now streaming on YouTube.

Tezos Intents: A Different Way to Move Across Chains

Coming out of the past few weeks, where a lot of focus has been on infrastructure and what it enables, this is one of the first examples of how that thinking is turning into a product experience.

Tezos Intents is set to launch sometime this year, and it introduces a new way to move assets across chains from a single account, without handing over custody or dealing with the usual friction that comes with bridging.

At its core, the idea is simple. You describe what you want to happen, and the system handles how it gets done.

From an Etherlink account, users will be able to initiate cross-chain swaps, set their conditions, and let solvers compete to fulfill that request. The entire process happens with full on-chain visibility, while funds remain in the user’s control throughout.

What stands out here is how the flow changes compared to traditional bridges.

• One account manages assets across multiple chains
• No gas required to declare an intent
• Solvers execute trades through an RFQ-based system
• Funds stay in a smart account, secured until conditions are met

Instead of moving assets into bridge contracts or juggling wallets across networks, everything is coordinated from a single point of control.

Under the hood, an MPC network verifies that the solver has delivered the expected result before any settlement is finalized. That removes the need for manual trust while keeping the process transparent and enforceable onchain.

There is also a shift in how accounts are structured. Rather than generating simple addresses on each chain, Tezos Intents deploys smart accounts that can enforce rules, approvals, and constraints across environments. That opens up more control over how assets move and how transactions are authorized.

Taken together, this represents a broader direction that has been building across the Tezos ecosystem. Cross-chain interaction is becoming a core part of how applications are designed, and the focus is moving toward making that experience feel consistent and controlled from the user’s side.

If you’re looking to get early access or participate as a solver, you can sign up here.

Metals.io Heads to The Economist Nuclear Summit

At Tez/Dev, Metals.io was introduced as an expansion to real-world assets becoming accessible on Tezos.

This week, that direction is already extending beyond the Tezos ecosystem itself.

The team behind Metals.io will be exhibiting at The Economist Nuclear Summit on April 15 in London, bringing the conversation into a room focused on the future of energy and global supply.

The summit brings together industry leaders and policymakers to explore the role of nuclear energy as demand continues to rise, and Metals will be part of that discussion through the lens of tokenization.

On stage, Arthur Breitman and Ben Elvidge will speak about how tokenized uranium and other strategic resources can benefit from blockchain-based infrastructure. The focus is practical. How access changes, how markets operate, and what becomes possible when these assets move onto more transparent and programmable rails.

If you are following along, you can learn more about the event here.

Tezos Ecosystem Expands Global Presence with New Regional Entities

Alongside everything happening on the product and protocol side, there’s also a structural shift taking place in how the ecosystem grows globally.

This week, new entities were introduced to expand Tezos’ presence in two key regions. Tezos Middle East, based in Dubai International Financial Centre, and Tezos Southeast Asia, based in Singapore, are being established to support builders, incubate projects, and deepen ecosystem engagement on the ground.

These regions have become important centers for areas Tezos continues to focus on, including gaming, capital markets, DeFi, and art. The approach here is practical. Build locally, move quickly, and develop expertise within each region rather than managing everything from a single hub.

To help coordinate this structure, the Tezos Patronage Association (TPA) has also been introduced. Based in Switzerland, it brings together organizations across the ecosystem to maintain alignment while allowing each entity to operate independently.

What stands out is how this reflects the broader nature of Tezos.

The ecosystem has always been distributed, with different groups contributing across regions and domains. This update builds on that by creating a more defined structure for regional growth, while still keeping the flexibility that allows teams to respond to opportunities as they come up.

Arthur Breitman described it in simple terms: “Tezos is a global ecosystem, and its institutional structure should reflect that reality. A more distributed model gives different organizations the autonomy to move quickly, develop domain expertise, and respond to opportunities as they arise. That kind of subsidiarity makes the broader Tezos effort more dynamic, more adaptable, and better positioned for long-term ecosystem growth and broader adoption.”

For teams in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, this means something concrete. Local support, direct engagement, and a clearer path to building within the ecosystem.

And for Tezos as a whole, it marks another step toward a more globally coordinated network, with multiple hubs contributing to the same long-term direction.

This Week in the Tezos Ecosystem

TezDev 2026: A Personal Recap

We know a lot of the community is still buzzing over the past week from Tez/Dev and once the event wraps and everyone heads home, the reflections start to come in. This week we want to share a personal recap, a kind that captures what it actually felt like to be there.

One of the strongest write-ups this week came from Cryptonio on Tezos Spotlight, and it lines up closely with what many people experienced on the ground.

He describes a shift from ideas being discussed to systems being actively worked on. Conversations around composability, intents, and instant confirmations were grounded in real progress, with teams building on top of infrastructure that is already in place.

There’s also a clear observation about direction. The focus is moving toward products people actually use, with revenue and real engagement starting to act as signals for what is gaining traction. That shift showed up in multiple sessions, and it reflects where the ecosystem is heading next.

His perspective on Metals adds another layer to that. What started with uranium has now expanded into a broader set of assets, opening access to markets that were previously out of reach for most participants.

And beyond the talks, he highlights something that is easy to overlook. The feel of the event itself. A space that stayed active throughout the day, with people moving between booths, testing applications, and engaging directly with what teams were building.

If you want a more personal look at the week, it’s well worth reading the full recap here.

Spring Events

Tezos Soirée: Paris Blockchain Week

As the focus shifts from Cannes to Paris, the next gathering for the community is already around the corner.

The Tezos Soirée is set to take place on April 14, just ahead of Paris Blockchain Week, offering a more intimate setting to connect before the larger conference begins.

Hosted at the Nomadic Labs office in Bastille, the evening is designed around conversation rather than programming. No panels, no presentations, just time to meet the people building, operating, and contributing across the ecosystem.

Here’s what to expect:

• An evening of networking with builders, founders, and ecosystem contributors
• Drinks and food in a relaxed setting
• Space for real conversations and idea exchange

Spots are limited so it’s worth securing a place early if you’re planning to be in Paris.

🔴 Now Streaming: Michael from Bitnomial

This week on TezTalks Live, host Stu takes a closer look at a major milestone for Tezos: the launch of the first-ever U.S.-regulated XTZ futures on Bitnomial.

For the first time, both institutional and retail traders can access Tezos through a CFTC-regulated futures market, opening the door to structured price discovery, hedging, and broader participation from traditional financial players.

Now streaming on YouTube.

Tez/Dev 2026: The Community Comes Together

Picking up after an incredible week at Tez/Dev, this year’s gathering in Cannes offered a clear look at where the ecosystem stands today and where it’s heading into the future with some amazing moments that still have people buzzing.

Across the sessions, demos, and conversations on the floor, there was a consistent pattern. Teams are building directly on top of the infrastructure that has been rolling out over the past year. The discussions around atomic composability, staking architecture, and intent-based design reflected systems that are already in use, not ideas waiting to be implemented. Etherlink’s instant confirmations came up repeatedly in that context, showing how developers are actively designing products around faster execution. Instant confirmations are going to be a major hit that will build new product experiences that we haven’t seen yet in this space.

Another shift was visible in how different parts of the stack are being designed. Staking, bridging, and liquidity are being approached as connected systems, with the expectation that users move across them as part of a single experience. That thinking showed up across multiple sessions and carried through the day.

Midway through the program, Arthur Breitman’s keynote brought those layers together by focusing on what comes next. The path toward Tezos X is becoming more concrete, with near-term milestones like testnet progress and longer-term changes such as the move toward a RISC-V-based rollup engine. The direction centers on enabling multiple runtimes to operate within the same ecosystem without creating fragmentation.

Several themes continued to come up across sessions and conversations:

• Applications are being built directly on top of the recently introduced infrastructure
• Etherlink’s speed is shaping how products are designed and experienced
• Cross-layer interaction is being treated as a standard part of the user flow
• Real-world assets are moving into systems that people can access and use

That last point came into focus with one of the most discussed launches of the day.

Metals Enter the Picture

Metals, built by the team behind Uranium.io, introduced access to assets that have historically been limited to institutional markets. Gold, uranium, and a group of strategic metals are now available with continuous market access and physical backing.

The structure behind it reflects a broader direction that has been developing on Tezos:

• Access to gold, uranium, and key industrial metals
• 24/7 markets with fractional ownership
• Exposure to assets defined by constrained supply and long-term demand

This sits within a larger movement where real-world assets are becoming part of the infrastructure rather than standalone experiments.

From Tez/Dev to EthCC

The momentum also carried into EthCC, where Arthur’s talk on post-quantum readiness focused on preparation timelines. Migrating cryptographic systems requires coordination across wallets, custodians, and infrastructure providers, which makes early integration an important part of the process.

That connects to the ongoing work within the protocol, where post-quantum keys are being introduced in a way that allows the ecosystem to adapt gradually.

At the Etherlink booth, that same energy carried into hands-on interaction. Visitors jumped into the _{Proof of Speed challenge}, competing for leaderboard spots, and signed up through Metals for access to onchain gold and uranium. The experience connected directly with what had been discussed earlier in the week, giving people a way to engage with it in real time.

Arthur also joined Hack Seasons for a panel exploring how money, credit, and real-world assets are moving onchain, extending the conversation beyond Tezos and into the broader direction of the space.

Looking across the full week, the progress showed up in specific ways. Teams presented working products instead of early concepts, infrastructure components were demonstrated together rather than in isolation, and real-world asset platforms launched with live access and clear use cases.

To everyone who showed up, shared their work, contributed to the conversations, and supported the ecosystem throughout the week, thank you. The energy and participation from the community made this one of the strongest Tez/Dev events to date, and it set a clear tone for the rest of the year. We look forward to meeting you all again in 2027.

This Week in the Tezos Ecosystem

Tezos x Bitstamp

Coming out of a week centered on real-world applications and infrastructure, there’s also another signal showing up on the US market side.

Bitstamp, now part of Robinhood, has added Tezos (XTZ) to its list of tradable assets.

Throw of Dice: A Live On-chain Experiment by Figure31

Lastly, as the week winds down, there’s one more release that brings things back to experimentation and creativity.

A new project from Figure31 is going live on Etherlink, and it leans into something a bit more playful, while still being fully onchain.

Curated by Grida, throwOfDice is a live animated series where each NFT represents a unique dice throw, generated in real time.

The mechanics are simple on the surface, though there is more happening underneath:

• Each piece features between 1 and 9 dice, with values from 1 to 9
• The outcome evolves continuously based on the previous minter’s wallet address
• Every mint influences what comes next

It turns chance into a shared system, where each participant leaves a mark on the sequence.

Projects like this reflect another side of the ecosystem. Alongside infrastructure, markets, and real-world assets, there is still room for experimentation, play, and creative systems that only make sense in an onchain environment.

If you want to explore it live, you can follow it here.

And that’s a wrap for this week as we’ll close out Issue #301. From Tez/Dev in Cannes to new real-world assets launching, expanding access to XTZ, and experiments playing out live on Etherlink, this week covered a lot of ground. As always, Tezos continues to move across multiple layers at once, with each part adding to the macro vision.

Thanks for being here, following along, and subscribing to The Baking Sheet. Cheers!

🔴 Now Streaming: Michael from Bitnomial

This week on TezTalks Live, host Stu takes a closer look at a major milestone for Tezos: the launch of the first-ever U.S.-regulated XTZ futures on Bitnomial.

For the first time, both institutional and retail traders can access Tezos through a CFTC-regulated futures market, opening the door to structured price discovery, hedging, and broader participation from traditional financial players.

Now streaming on YouTube.

Tez/Dev 2026 Is Here

Issue #300 lands at the right moment. Tez/Dev is just a few days away, and the week has started to come together around it.

This is one of those points in the year where everything feels a bit more connected. Conversations that have been happening across chats, threads, and timelines start to come together in the same room. You get a clearer sense of what people are actually working on, what is gaining traction, and where things are heading next.

Now we have the full agenda, and it brings that picture into focus.

The day opens quickly and moves straight into the foundation. Native atomic composability, staking design, and the architecture behind canonical LSTs set the tone early. These are the systems teams are actively building with, and they carry through everything that follows.

From there, the conversation shifts into performance. A session on Etherlink’s instant confirmations looks at what low-latency execution actually enables once it moves into real usage. It is a step away from theory and into what developers can work with today.

Midway through the day, the focus broadens:

• Panels on intents, RFQs, and the future of bridging
• A deeper look at agentic development and how applications are being designed
• Arthur Breitman’s keynote on where Tezos is heading next

The second half leans into use cases. Tokenized metals and commodities trading take the spotlight, connecting onchain systems with real-world markets. It builds on a direction that has been developing over time, where more tangible activity is starting to come into view.

Later sessions expand that lens further, with conversations around yield, new earning models, and the next phase of crypto-native applications. Alongside that, art on Tezos continues to hold its place, bringing the ecosystem back to one of its strongest cultural threads.

And once the sessions wrap, the day carries on. Art After Dark brings everyone back together in a different setting, and TezQuest runs throughout the day, encouraging people to explore projects, try apps, and meet the teams behind them.

Taken together, the agenda reads less like a schedule and more like a snapshot of where Tezos is right now.

With Tez/Dev only a few days out, this is where everything starts to come into focus.

If you’re planning to be in Cannes, you can register here.

Beyond Tez/Dev

Tez/Dev is only one part of what is shaping up to be a full week in Cannes.

At EthCC, Arthur Breitman will take the stage in the Core Protocol track with a talk titled Preparing Blockchains for the Post-Quantum Era.

It is a conversation that looks further ahead. What happens when quantum computers are strong enough to challenge today’s cryptography? Blockchains carry a unique responsibility here. Their data is public, permanent, and expected to hold its integrity for decades.

Arthur’s talk will focus on why preparation needs to begin now, and what that means for protocols that are designed to last.

If you are already planning to attend Tez/Dev, this makes the week even more worthwhile. Between ecosystem meetups, developer sessions, and protocol discussions, Cannes offers a ton of layers that tell the Tezos story. See you all in a few days!

Ushuaia: The Next Tezos Protocol Proposal

If Tez/Dev is where the ecosystem comes together in person, this week also brought a look at what is coming next at the protocol level.

Nomadic Labs, Trilitech, and Functori have officially introduced the name of the next Tezos upgrade: Ushuaia.

The stabilization phase is already underway, and what we are seeing early on is a proposal that continues to push on multiple fronts at once. Security, scalability, and staking design are all moving forward together.

At a high level, Ushuaia builds directly on recent upgrades while opening the door to features that may carry into the next phase of the roadmap.

Here is what stands out:

• A 15x increase in DAL bandwidth, bringing capacity up to 10 MB per second
• Dynamic DAL attestation, reducing confirmation times to roughly 12 to 18 seconds
• Early groundwork for faster rollup storage through a new WASM PVM version
• A protocol-native approach to liquid staking, introduced under a feature flag
• The first step toward post-quantum accounts with new tz5 keys

The DAL improvements continue the push toward higher throughput and more demanding applications. Faster attestation directly improves how quickly data can move between layers, which shows up in real user experience for things like bridging and withdrawals.

At the same time, the WASM PVM updates are laying the groundwork for a deeper change in how rollups handle storage. It is one of those upgrades that may feel incremental now but has a direct impact on performance down the line.

On the staking side, enshrined liquid staking introduces a new option that sits between today’s models. It gives users access to liquidity without relying on centralized intermediaries, while keeping governance neutral. It is being introduced carefully, under a feature flag, with room for community feedback before any wider activation.

And alongside all of that, the work on quantum-resistant keys continues. There is no urgency today, but this is about preparing early so the ecosystem has time to adapt without pressure.

What stands out with Ushuaia is how it continues a familiar pattern for Tezos. Upgrades are not isolated changes, they are layered, incremental steps that build on each other towards the ultimate goal: Tezos X. 

The proposal is now in its stabilization phase, with a public test network already live for developers, bakers, and teams to begin testing.

As always, this is where the community comes in. Feedback, testing, real-world input and, will shape how this proposal moves forward from here and you can do that at Tezos Agora.

This Week in the Tezos Ecosystem

Tezos EVM AI Hackathon

While a lot of attention this week is on Tez/Dev and what’s coming next at the protocol level, you can also see where things are starting to get applied with a newly announced hackathon.

Hosted by Now Media, the Tezos EVM AI Hackathon opens submissions from March 27 through April 9, with $5,000 in prizes for teams exploring what AI looks like onchain.

This is less about polished products and more about direction. What happens when AI systems start interacting directly with smart contracts and decentralized environments?

The scope is intentionally open:

• AI agents interacting with smart contracts
• Decentralized AI inference
• On-chain governance powered by AI
• AI-driven DeFi applications

There is also a live kickoff happening through an X Space, where judges and contributors will walk through the details and expectations. It is a chance to hear directly from the people reviewing submissions and understand what they are looking for.

The judging panel brings together a mix of builders, curators, and operators across the ecosystem, including Ian Rogers and Aleksandra Art.

The timeline is straightforward:

• March 27: Submissions open
• April 9: Submissions close
• April 15: Winners announced via livestream

Prizes are split across the top three teams, with a focus on AI innovation, technical execution, reach, and ecosystem impact.

Underneath it all is a simple idea. If you have built on Ethereum, you can build here. Etherlink brings full EVM compatibility, low fees, fast finality, and the security of Tezos into the same environment. That makes it easier to experiment without starting from zero.

If you are thinking about participating, you can get the full details and apply here.

HEK Basel × Tezos: A New Exhibition Announced

Alongside everything happening on the builder side, the cultural side of the ecosystem continues to move forward in its own way.

This week, HEK Basel and the Tezos Foundation shared an early look at the first virtual exhibition of the year under their ongoing partnership.

The curatorial direction will be led by Auronda Scalera and Alfredo Cramerotti, a duo known for working across both institutional spaces and digital environments. Their past work spans projects like Art Dubai Digital and collaborations with organizations such as the British Council and the Italian Ministry of Culture.

The exhibition, titled 404_LAND, takes an interesting starting point.

It looks at the idea of the “error” not as a failure, but as a space. A place where things are hidden, overlooked, or sitting just outside of structured systems. The works will explore those in-between layers of the internet. The parts formed by algorithms, firewalls, and networks, but not always visible within them.

The show opens on June 12 through HEK’s virtual platform, with a physical touchpoint as well. A dedicated kiosk in the HEK lobby will allow visitors to experience the exhibition on-site, while the full experience remains accessible online.

There are a few elements to watch for:

• The exhibition will be viewable through HEK’s virtual platform
• NFTs tied to the show will be released on objkt.com
• A virtual opening tour will be led by the curators

More details, including the full list of participating artists, will be shared in May so stay tuned!

🔴 Now Streaming: Inside the Role of Chief Baker at Tezos Foundation, Chris Pinnock

This week on TezTalks Radio, host Brandon Langston is joined by Chris Pinnock, Chief Baker at the Tezos Foundation.

Baking is often described simply, but in practice it sits at the center of everything: consensus, signing, security, coordination, and infrastructure.

🔍 In this episode, we explore:

• What a Chief Baker actually does beyond the title

• Where pressure shows up first in the baking layer

• The kinds of risks and failure modes that matter most

• What separates a smooth week from a difficult one

• How BLS signature aggregation works in practice

• What changed when BLS moved from theory to live infrastructure

• How the Tezos Foundation structures and operates multiple bakeries

• The trade-offs between simplicity and resilience

• Real moments where the system was under pressure and what was learned

• How incident response works when speed and caution both matter

• The biggest shifts in baking over the past few years

• What challenges lie ahead as Tezos continues to scale

Now streaming on YouTube.

Tezos Referenced in U.S. SEC Digital Commodities Framework

For years, one question has quietly followed Tezos and much of the broader crypto space: how exactly should these networks be classified?

That question has shaped conversations across regulators, builders, and institutions. It has influenced how products are designed, how participation is structured, and how entire ecosystems are understood from the outside looking in.

This week, there’s a meaningful signal in that ongoing discussion.

In a recent release from the U.S. SEC, Tezos (XTZ) was explicitly referenced among examples of what are being described as “digital commodities.” The definition leans heavily on functionality. Networks that are already operating, where value comes from usage, participation, and supply and demand within the system itself. Not from promises. Not from future earnings tied to a company. But from the system as it exists today.

Tezos appearing in that list places it clearly within that conversation.

It reflects a view of Tezos as a network that stands on its own mechanics. A chain where validation, governance, and evolution are driven by participants rather than centralized control. A system that has continued to upgrade itself, cycle after cycle, without relying on a single coordinating entity to push it forward.

For a long time, the line between what is considered a security and what is considered a commodity has been one of the biggest open questions in the space. This doesn’t close that conversation entirely, but it does show where thinking is starting to land, at least in part, and it’s happening alongside similar discussions elsewhere.

At EthCC in Cannes, that same question takes a different form through a policy roundtable focused on how liquid staking and decentralized assets should be classified under MiCA. Contributors from across the Tezos ecosystem are helping bring those conversations into the room, alongside policymakers and industry participants working through Europe’s evolving framework.

Two different regions. Two different regulatory approaches. But both are circling the same core idea.

How do you define networks that don’t behave like traditional financial instruments?

This week, Tezos finds itself directly inside that answer. With that being said, if you would like to attend the policy discussion at EthCC, register here.

This Week in the Tezos Ecosystem

TezDev 2026 Agenda Goes Live

After weeks of hints and early announcements, the full picture for TezDev 2026 is finally here.

The agenda is now live, and it gives a clear sense of how the day in Cannes will unfold. From the first session to the final panel, it’s turning out to be one of the most packed and wide-ranging TezDev programs to date.

The day opens with a quick welcome before moving straight into what’s being built right now. Early sessions focus on core infrastructure, from native atomic composability to staking design and how canonical LSTs are being approached within the ecosystem. These aren’t abstract ideas, they’re the building blocks that developers and teams are actively working with today.

From there, the conversation shifts into real-time performance. A fireside chat on Etherlink’s instant confirmations digs into what low-latency execution actually looks like in practice, and what it unlocks for DeFi and beyond.

Midway through the day, the focus broadens.

Panels on intents, RFQs, and bridging explore how liquidity and user experience are evolving, followed by a deeper look at agentic development and how applications may be designed moving forward. Then comes a moment many will be waiting for, Arthur Breitman’s keynote, stepping back to look at where Tezos is heading next and what the current wave of infrastructure enables from here.

The second half of the agenda leans into use cases.

Tokenized metals, commodities trading, and new financial primitives take center stage, connecting onchain systems with real-world markets. It’s a continuation of a theme that’s been building over time, bringing more tangible assets and activity into the ecosystem.

Later panels expand that lens even further. Discussions around yield, new earning models, and the next phase of crypto-native applications sit alongside a dedicated focus on art and digital creativity, a space where Tezos has continued to carve out its own identity.

And once the sessions wrap, the day doesn’t end there. Art After Dark closes things out with a 360° immersive experience, bringing together the creative side of the ecosystem in a different format.

​You'll also be able to participate in TezQuest, a series of challenges that will have you meet projects, experience apps, and more. Participants will compete for prizes from a pool worth up to $7,000!

Taken together, the agenda reads less like a list of talks and more like a snapshot of where things stand right now. Infrastructure, applications, markets, and culture all moving at once, each with its own track, but all part of the same story unfolding in Cannes.

Tezos Events

Tez/Dev 2026: Less than 2 Weeks Away!

Tez/Dev is officially back, and this is the kind of date worth circling early.

Monday, March 30, 2026, the Tezos ecosystem heads back to Cannes for the next edition of Tez/Dev, once again hosted at the Hôtel Martinez on the Croisette. Registration is live now, with the full agenda and experience details still to come.

This is one of those anchor moments in the year where everything feels more connected. You can follow updates online all month long, but Tez/Dev is where the conversations tend to tighten up. Builders get face time. Teams show what is actually working. People who have been moving in parallel finally end up in the same room. It is a day that usually leaves you with new context, new contacts, and a clearer sense of what is getting traction across the ecosystem.

What we know so far is the shape of the day, even if the schedule is still being built:

• Dev updates and panel deep-dives

• Hands-on time with apps and teams

• A chance to compete for prizes

• An immersive art party to close the night

A quick practical note for anyone planning ahead: registration on Luma is required for approval, and it says you will be asked to verify token ownership with your wallet as part of the process.

If you are already mapping out EthCC week in Cannes (March 30 to April 2), Tez/Dev sits right at the start of the week, which makes it a strong first touchpoint for meeting people and setting the tone for everything that follows.

Event basics

• Date: Monday, March 30, 2026

• Venue: Hôtel Martinez, 73 Bd de la Croisette, 06400 Cannes, France

• Registration: https://luma.com/tezdev-2026

If you are planning to attend, getting your request in early is the move as the program reveal will drop soon.

🔴 Now Streaming: The 5.5 Million Tez Decision Explained

This week on TezTalks Radio, we’re joined by Mat Cybula, CEO of TenX Protocols, following the announcement of a strategic staking partnership with the Tezos Foundation.

In January, TenX acquired approximately 5.5 million tez. But beyond the headline, this conversation focuses on something more important: how that decision was made, and what it actually means in practice.

🔍 In this episode, we explore:

• How the internal decision to acquire tez came together

• The biggest concerns raised before committing capital

• What made Tezos a “yes” for TenX

• What a “strategic staking partnership” actually involves

• What TenX is running today and how to verify it

• What delegators should expect in terms of fees, payouts, and reporting

• How validator performance and transparency will be communicated

• What due diligence from the Tezos Foundation looks like behind the scenes

• How TenX approaches security, key management, and failure scenarios

• The balance between yield optimization and operational safety

• How TenX thinks about decentralization and stake concentration

• Why Tezos governance and upgrade reliability stood out

• How TenX plans to approach on-chain voting

• Whether TenX plans to contribute beyond validation

Throughout the conversation, Mat keeps coming back to a simple idea: running infrastructure is about responsibility, not just returns.

Now streaming on YouTube.

Square Enix Is Now Running a Tezos Validator

There are certain names in gaming that instantly stand out. This week, one of them joined the validator set on Tezos.

Japanese entertainment giant, Square Enix, is now operating a baker node on the Tezos network, helping validate transactions and support the protocol’s operation.

For a company whose catalog includes legendary global franchises like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and Space Invaders, the move represents another step in its growing involvement with blockchain-related infrastructure and digital ownership.

Square Enix has already explored the space through investments in projects like Soccerverse, HyperPlay, and The Sandbox. Running a validator on Tezos adds a new dimension to that participation, placing the company directly inside the network’s infrastructure.

Hideaki Uehara, General Manager of Investment and Business Development at Square Enix Holdings, described the decision as part of a broader effort to better understand the underlying systems powering blockchain ecosystems while contributing to their operation.

For the Tezos gaming ecosystem, the timing is notable. Activity across games and gaming platforms built on Tezos reached roughly 440,000 unique users and over 31 million transactions in 2025, reflecting steady growth across both casual and larger-scale titles.

Efe Kucuk, Head of Gaming at Trilitech, highlighted the significance of the moment, noting that having a major publisher like Square Enix validating the network adds credibility while strengthening ties between the gaming industry and the infrastructure supporting it.

As the ecosystem continues expanding across Etherlink and the broader Tezos stack, participation from established game publishers signals something important: the relationship between gaming studios and blockchain networks is moving beyond experimentation and into real infrastructure.

Welcome to the Tezos community, Square Enix.

TezQuest Brings Challenges and Prizes to TezDev

While some of this week’s news highlights major gaming companies joining the network, the next story turns toward a gaming event at TezDev that enables the community to win some awesome prizes on the event floor.

If you’re planning to attend TezDev this March in Cannes, there’s a new way to explore the event floor.

Introducing TezQuest: a series of interactive challenges taking place inside the XP Zone, where attendees can meet projects, try apps, and compete across the ecosystem.

Participants will be able to move between booths and experiences across the floor, completing tasks and challenges along the way.

Up to $7,000 in prizes will be available, including:

• iPad Pro
• DJI Osmo
• Ledger hardware wallets

The XP Zone is designed to bring TezDev to life in a hands-on way, giving attendees the chance to interact directly with projects building across the ecosystem rather than just hearing about them on stage.

TezDev takes place on March 30 in Cannes, and if you want to take part in TezQuest, securing your ticket is the first step.

This Week in the Tezos Ecosystem

Arthur Breitman: Preparing Blockchains for the Post-Quantum Era

As this year’s conference season begins to take shape in Cannes, another major conversation is coming to the stage alongside the community gatherings and ecosystem events.

At EthCC, Tezos co-founder Arthur Breitman will be speaking in the Core Protocol track with a talk titled “Preparing Blockchains for the Post-Quantum Era.”

The topic tackles a question that often gets pushed into the future: what happens to blockchains when quantum computers become powerful enough to break today’s cryptography?

Unlike many traditional systems, blockchains carry a unique challenge. Their data is public, permanent, and expected to remain valid for decades, which means the security decisions made today need to hold up far into the future. Waiting until quantum computers arrive would likely be too late.

Arthur’s talk will explore why post-quantum preparation needs to begin now, and what it means for protocols that aim to remain secure and usable over the long term.

If you’re planning to attend TezDev, it’s worth noting that EthCC[9] is happening the same week in Cannes, making it an ideal opportunity to catch both events.

Between ecosystem meetups, developer talks, and protocol discussions, it’s shaping up to be a busy week on the French Riviera, hope to catch you there!

Tezos Events

Tez/Dev 2026: Registration is Now Open!

Tez/Dev is officially back, and this is the kind of date worth circling early.

Monday, March 30, 2026, the Tezos ecosystem heads back to Cannes for the next edition of Tez/Dev, once again hosted at the Hôtel Martinez on the Croisette. Registration is live now, with the full agenda and experience details still to come.

This is one of those anchor moments in the year where everything feels more connected. You can follow updates online all month long, but Tez/Dev is where the conversations tend to tighten up. Builders get face time. Teams show what is actually working. People who have been moving in parallel finally end up in the same room. It is a day that usually leaves you with new context, new contacts, and a clearer sense of what is getting traction across the ecosystem.

What we know so far is the shape of the day, even if the schedule is still being built:

• Dev updates and panel deep-dives

• Hands-on time with apps and teams

• A chance to compete for prizes

• An immersive art party to close the night

A quick practical note for anyone planning ahead: registration on Luma is required for approval, and it says you will be asked to verify token ownership with your wallet as part of the process.

If you are already mapping out EthCC week in Cannes (March 30 to April 2), Tez/Dev sits right at the start of the week, which makes it a strong first touchpoint for meeting people and setting the tone for everything that follows.

Event basics

• Date: Monday, March 30, 2026

• Venue: Hôtel Martinez, 73 Bd de la Croisette, 06400 Cannes, France

• Registration: https://luma.com/tezdev-2026

If you are planning to attend, getting your request in early is the move as the program reveal will drop soon.

🔴 Now Streaming: Why Major Art Institutions Are Choosing Tezos

This week on TezTalks Live, host Stu is joined by Vinciane Jones, Art Vertical Partnership Manager at Trilitech, and Aleksandra Art, Head of Arts at Trilitech, to explore how Tezos art is stepping further into the institutional world.

With newly announced partnerships involving HEK Basel and the renewed collaboration with the Museum of the Moving Image, the conversation centers on what it means for blockchain-based art to be exhibited, studied, and supported by established cultural institutions.

Watch the full episode on YouTube.

State of Tezos Q4 2025

First up this week, a new quarterly report from Messari was released offering a snapshot of where the Tezos ecosystem stood at the end of 2025, and one theme stands out clearly: activity continues to shift toward Etherlink.

During Q4, Etherlink processed 18.6 million transactions, a 50% increase quarter over quarter, while daily active addresses on the network nearly doubled to around 9,860. The growth reflects a broader trend across the ecosystem as developers and users increasingly move execution-heavy activity to the L2.

Several infrastructure milestones helped drive that momentum. Two kernel upgrades, Ebisu in October and Farfadet in December, significantly expanded Etherlink’s capacity. Together, they pushed throughput from 8 million gas per second to 27 million, while also introducing instant transaction confirmations, allowing users and applications to receive transaction receipts before block production.

Q4 by the Numbers

Several indicators highlighted growing activity across the ecosystem during the quarter:

• Etherlink transactions: ↑ 50% QoQ → 18.6M
• Etherlink daily active addresses: ↑ 96.6% QoQ → ~9.9K
• Active validators: ↑ 3% QoQ → 264
• Monthly active developers: ↑ 16.2% QoQ → 229 contributors across 4,300+ repositories

These numbers reinforce a broader trend the report points to: as Etherlink’s infrastructure expands, more execution and user activity are naturally gravitating toward the L2.

Infrastructure Leads the Story

While market conditions were softer during the quarter, infrastructure progress stood out.

Etherlink’s upgrades dramatically expanded throughput while keeping fees low, allowing the network to absorb rising transaction demand without congestion. On the Layer 1 side, the Tallinn protocol upgrade moved through governance and was later activated in January 2026, reducing block times from eight seconds to six and introducing improvements like the Address Indexing Registry.

Developer activity also continued to grow, with 229 monthly active contributors working across more than 4,300 repositories, a 16% increase QoQ.

Culture and Community

Outside of infrastructure, the Tezos art ecosystem had one of its strongest quarters of the year.

The Art on Tezos: Berlin festival brought together more than 700 visitors and 200 artists, while the Francisco Carolinum museum acquired multiple TeleNFT works exhibited at the event. Meanwhile, the partnership between the Museum of the Moving Image and the Tezos Foundation continued to expand its programming around blockchain as a creative medium.

Heading into 2026, the key question is whether the ecosystem’s growing infrastructure can translate into sustained activity beyond incentive programs.

With Etherlink’s throughput expanded, Tallinn improving Layer-1 efficiency, and new applications continuing to launch, the foundation for the next phase of growth is clearly being put in place.

If the past quarter showed anything, it’s that Tezos’ center of gravity is evolving and Etherlink is increasingly where much of the action is happening.

Read the full report.

Tezos Hub Goes Live on Blockster

Alongside the latest research and ecosystem reports, a new channel has opened for people who want to follow Tezos developments in one place.

A dedicated Tezos hub is now live on Blockster, bringing together stories, updates, and ecosystem highlights around the self-upgrading protocol.

The hub acts as a central feed for Tezos-related coverage on Blockster, giving readers an easy way to keep track of what’s happening across the network. Expect everything from ecosystem news and product launches to deeper looks at the teams building on Tezos.

Readers can also subscribe to receive the latest posts as they’re published, along with occasional behind-the-scenes insights and previews of upcoming stories.

For anyone looking to stay plugged into the pace of development across Tezos, it’s a simple new place to keep an eye on the conversation.

This Week in the Tezos Ecosystem

Simplifying On-Chain Governance on Tezos

Beyond reports and new hubs, there’s also an important conversation unfolding around how the protocol itself evolves. This week, developers from Nomadic Labs are cooking and shared an early proposal outlining ways to simplify Tezos’ governance process as part of the upcoming Protocol “U” upgrade.

The goal is straightforward: make governance faster, easier for bakers to manage, and less operationally heavy, while preserving the decentralization and legitimacy that have defined Tezos upgrades from the beginning.

Governance is such a foundational part of the protocol, the proposal is being shared early so the community can review it and offer input before anything moves forward.

What the Proposal Aims to Fix

Over time, a few recurring challenges have surfaced:

• Bakers currently vote up to three times per governance cycle, which can create voting fatigue
• The current cycle lasts about 70 days, slowing iteration on upgrades
• Communication and coordination around votes can become heavy for both bakers and developers

The proposed adjustments aim to streamline that process without weakening safeguards.

What Could Change

If implemented in Protocol U, the governance cycle could shift to a simpler structure:

• Total cycle duration: reduced from 70 days → 28 days
• Voting periods: reduced from 14 days → 7 days
• Voting rounds: reduced from three votes → two votes
• Persistent votes: votes cast in the first round automatically carry into the second unless changed
• Quorum opt-out: bakers can opt out of quorum participation if they prefer not to vote

The simplified structure would look like this:

Selection (7 days)
Bakers upvote proposals. A candidate moves forward if it reaches 20% support.

Promotion (7 days)
A final ratification vote requiring 80% supermajority with a quorum.

Adoption (14 days)
A preparation window before the protocol activates automatically.

Faster Iteration, Same Safeguards

The changes aim to reduce friction while maintaining legitimacy.

Shorter voting windows concentrate attention around governance discussions, while persistent votes reduce operational overhead for bakers who already support a proposal.

Meanwhile, the 80% supermajority requirement and quorum rules remain unchanged, ensuring that protocol upgrades still require broad consensus.

Feedback Requested

Nomadic Labs shared the proposal early specifically to gather input from the community, especially bakers, who are the core participants in the governance process.

Key areas where feedback is requested include:

• The proposed 7-day voting periods
• The 20% threshold during the Selection stage
• How quorum should be recalibrated after introducing the new system
• Operational impacts on baker workflows

If you are a baker or closely involved in governance, this is a good moment to review the proposal and share your thoughts.

Feedback is encouraged directly on Tezos Agora, where the discussion is already underway.

Tezos Events

Tez/Dev 2026: Registration is Now Open!

Tez/Dev is officially back, and this is the kind of date worth circling early.

Monday, March 30, 2026, the Tezos ecosystem heads back to Cannes for the next edition of Tez/Dev, once again hosted at the Hôtel Martinez on the Croisette. Registration is live now, with the full agenda and experience details still to come.

This is one of those anchor moments in the year where everything feels more connected. You can follow updates online all month long, but Tez/Dev is where the conversations tend to tighten up. Builders get face time. Teams show what is actually working. People who have been moving in parallel finally end up in the same room. It is a day that usually leaves you with new context, new contacts, and a clearer sense of what is getting traction across the ecosystem.

What we know so far is the shape of the day, even if the schedule is still being built:

• Dev updates and panel deep-dives

• Hands-on time with apps and teams

• A chance to compete for prizes

• An immersive art party to close the night

A quick practical note for anyone planning ahead: registration on Luma is required for approval, and it says you will be asked to verify token ownership with your wallet as part of the process.

If you are already mapping out EthCC week in Cannes (March 30 to April 2), Tez/Dev sits right at the start of the week, which makes it a strong first touchpoint for meeting people and setting the tone for everything that follows.

Event basics

• Date: Monday, March 30, 2026

• Venue: Hôtel Martinez, 73 Bd de la Croisette, 06400 Cannes, France

• Registration: https://luma.com/tezdev-2026

If you are planning to attend, getting your request in early is the move as the program reveal will drop soon.

🔴 Now Streaming: Why Major Art Institutions Are Choosing Tezos

This week on TezTalks Live, host Stu is joined by Vinciane Jones, Art Vertical Partnership Manager at Trilitech, and Aleksandra Art, Head of Arts at Trilitech, to explore how Tezos art is stepping further into the institutional world.

With newly announced partnerships involving HEK Basel and the renewed collaboration with the Museum of the Moving Image, the conversation centers on what it means for blockchain-based art to be exhibited, studied, and supported by established cultural institutions.

Watch the full episode on YouTube.

Tez/Dev 2026: Cannes is on the calendar

Tez/Dev is officially back, and this is the kind of date worth circling early.

Monday, March 30, 2026, the Tezos ecosystem heads back to Cannes for the next edition of Tez/Dev, once again hosted at the Hôtel Martinez on the Croisette. Registration is live now, with the full agenda and experience details still to come.

This is one of those anchor moments in the year where everything feels more connected. You can follow updates online all month long, but Tez/Dev is where the conversations tend to tighten up. Builders get face time. Teams show what is actually working. People who have been moving in parallel finally end up in the same room. It is a day that usually leaves you with new context, new contacts, and a clearer sense of what is getting traction across the ecosystem.

What we know so far is the shape of the day, even if the schedule is still being built:

• Dev updates and panel deep-dives

• Hands-on time with apps and teams

• A chance to compete for prizes

• An immersive art party to close the night

A quick practical note for anyone planning ahead: registration on Luma is required for approval, and it says you will be asked to verify token ownership with your wallet as part of the process.

If you are already mapping out EthCC week in Cannes (March 30 to April 2), Tez/Dev sits right at the start of the week, which makes it a strong first touchpoint for meeting people and setting the tone for everything that follows.

Event basics

• Date: Monday, March 30, 2026

• Venue: Hôtel Martinez, 73 Bd de la Croisette, 06400 Cannes, France

• Registration: https://luma.com/tezdev-2026

If you are planning to attend, getting your request in early is the move as the program reveal will drop soon.

This Week in the Tezos Ecosystem

MoMI × Tezos Foundation programming is now open in NYC

If Tez/Dev is the moment the ecosystem gathers in one place and compares notes face to face, this next update is the reminder that the cultural side of Tezos keeps moving too, in public, in a real museum, with work you can actually go see.

The Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI) and the Tezos Foundation have officially opened their 2025–2026 programming in New York, continuing a partnership that treats Tezos as a creative material rather than a backdrop.

The shape of the program this year is broader than a single exhibition cycle. It includes:

• Five artist-pair commissions that will appear on MoMI’s Schlosser Media Wall

• A new FA2 Fellowship is designed to bring artists and developers into the same room

• Microgrants supporting artists working with Tezos as a medium

• Live performances and time-based works

The first round of artist pairings sets the tone right away, with names that span internet-native practice, institutional critique, and time-based work: James Bloom × Gottfried Jäger, Sarah Friend × Yehwan Song, Linda Dounia × Rhea Myers, and Jonas Lund × Yoshi Sodeoka.

Now on view: “Lick Pic” (Sarah Friend × Yehwan Song)

The first commission to go live is “Lick Pic”, a collaborative work by Sarah Friend and Yehwan Song, on view at MoMI from February 19 to May 10, 2026.

At a glance, it’s immediately memorable: four mechanical tongue sculptures “lick” mounted phones and tablets, and the screens cycle through images from MoMI’s collection.

But the part that makes it feel especially “Tezos” is how it stays connected to a living context. The installation is tethered to activity on objkt, linking what’s happening in the market in real time with what’s happening on the wall in the museum. It turns scrolling and collecting into part of the artwork’s pacing, which is exactly the kind of feedback loop this partnership tends to explore.

And there’s a collector-friendly layer baked in, too. Each MoMI × Tezos commission is accompanied by a process image that anyone can collect at no cost, so visitors and community members can take a fragment of the work home in a way that feels accessible, not gated.

Free collect link (process image).

If you’re in NYC over the next couple of months, this is a great excuse to make the trip to Astoria and see what Tezos looks like when it’s framed as museum-scale moving image work instead of a timeline update.

🔴 Now Streaming: Why Major Art Institutions Are Choosing Tezos

This week on TezTalks Live, host Stu is joined by Vinciane Jones, Art Vertical Partnership Manager at Trilitech, and Aleksandra Art, Head of Arts at Trilitech, to explore how Tezos art is stepping further into the institutional world.

With newly announced partnerships involving HEK Basel and the renewed collaboration with the Museum of the Moving Image, the conversation centers on what it means for blockchain-based art to be exhibited, studied, and supported by established cultural institutions.

Watch the full episode on YouTube.