Partnerships, grants, and team members

Recently, Bruno Le Maire, who serves as France’s Minister of the Economy and Finance spoke about Tezos in an interview to Magazine Capital.

Le Maire, of all projects to mention, mentions Tezos as the very first start-up that has caught his eye. The fact he mentioned it and mentioned it first, shows it’s definitely something the Government of France has been eyeing. Additionally, Bruno Le Maire has spoken about Tezos at the 2019 Paris Blockchain Conference.

“I am thinking in particular of Tezos which allows the development of a blockchain protocol overcoming the known defects of public blockchains.” — Bruno Le Maire

The developments and news surrounding Tezos have been overwhelmingly positive and the market is reacting well to it. With the Bank of France showing high interest in Tezos and France’s Minister of Economy and Finance praising Tezos, it is being further legitimized and known.

Additionally, the long awaited zk-SNARKs protocol upgrade is coming very soon. It will be truly, an exciting vote to watch how the community reacts to it.

Banque de France is one of the largest banks in France and serves as the country’s monetary authority if this was not already known. Let me repeat, the Bank of France serves as the country’s monetary authority.

With over $1 trillion in deposits, over $80 billion in gold reserves, and more than 11,000 full-time employees, getting attention from the Bank of France is quite a big deal.

Additionally, Jacob Arluck of TQTezos posted earlier today, that the Bank of France will deploy the Tezos protocol and utilize it at the central and commercial banks they have around France.

zK-SNARKs Will be Voted on as “Soon as Possible”

Earlier, at TQuorum, Marco from Nomadic Labs, the group behind the historic Athens proposal, announced that zk-SNARKs is Nomadic Labs next Tezos upgrade proposal and will be voted on in the coming months.

“We are currently including the Sapling library from ZCash … We hope to propose it as soon as possible” — Marco of Nomadic Labs

“We are indeed working on adding zero-knowledge cryptography via a future protocol upgrade proposal later this year. The exact shape that this integration will take is not yet decided.” — Benjamin Canou of Nomadic Labs

Given that Marco from Nomadic Labs has specified that they are including the “sapling library from Zcash” it’s reasonable to conclude with absolute certainty, that the next proposal from Nomadic Labs will revolve around zk-SNARKs.

This will be an interesting vote that will garner a lot of support. The Bank of France has made its intentions known that in order to deploy the Tezos protocol and utilize it at their central and commercial banks around France, they want “fine-tuned privacy”.

The four Tezos Foundations in Asia — Tezos Southeast Asia, Tezos Hong Kong, Tezos Japan and Tezos Korea Foundation — jointly announced the official launch of tzVentures, a Tezos-centric blockchain incubator. tzVentures, led by Dr. Jay Lee, plans to leverage Tezos community members from around the globe to support promising blockchain projects. tzVentures aims to incubate early-stage blockchain companies building their projects on the Tezos platform. During the incubation program, startups will receive mentoring from experienced members of tzVentures, technical support from Tezos communities, access to a dedicated co-working space, marketing support, and various networking and partnership opportunities, among others.

tzVentures has its headquarters in Seoul, Korea, but its operations are global as it leverages the Tezos community of worldwide foundations and related organizations around the globe. tzVentures has a team of experienced mentors coming from prestigious backgrounds, including Kang who was formerly Head of Marketing at ICON, and Dr. Lee is a Columbia Business School alumni connected with multiple VCs and incubators. They are also the authors of a best-selling IT book in Korea, “How To Become A Blockchain Company”. This expertise will be further complemented by strategic advice provided by regional community organizations such as and starting with Tezos Southeast Asia. Successful blockchain projects that build on the Tezos platform will be introduced to a global network of investors and VCs to receive equity investments. tzVentures will invite traditional VCs that invest in fiat currency, bridging the gaps between crypto and traditional startup investments.

Elevated Returns, a blockchain based firm focused on digital assets in the real estate market, and New York based AlphaPoint, a platform built for the issuance of security tokens (STO’s) have just announced a partnership to bring digitized real estate to Southeast Asian real estate.

After launching digital tokens for the $18 million St Regis Aspen Resort in late 2018, Elevated Returns has leveraged AlphaPoint’s technology to power a new marketplace with over $1 billion USD worth of digital real estate in Southeast Asia. Now, AlphaPoint and Elevated Returns are partnering to build a white label, full-stack digital real estate exchange atop the Tezos blockchain.

Decet building a new type of agricultural futures exchange on Tezos.

Decet, is working and developing within the Tezos ecosystem, sponsored by a generous grant from the Tezos Foundation.

This is an introduction of sorts and the first in a series of articles that will be published by Decet on Tezos fueled decentralized applications as they relate to agriculture, specifically, grain and bean markets in the central United States.

Decet will design and market a new product and financial ecosystem for farmers and grain elevators to transact with each other and allow them to benefit from futures and options contracts in the same way the trading houses and major exchanges have over the last century.