TezNation, missed me? It is okay, you know you did. Wasn’t it wonderful to have witnessed our Betanet launch together? The excitement was palpable! Think I shed a tear or two when it happened, definitely something to tell our grandchildren about. What next, Mainnet 2–4 weeks? ;)

Ha! If I knew the path to $1000 Tez, would I be here on my unicorn busy writing another piece of rainbow hopium cloud into your mind and using support email?? Just joking Charles relax.

No. Instead this is a musical piece of rainbow for the Tezos community. Please use https://youtubeloop.net/ and put in this song on repeat as you read my message and understand the lyrics.

Do you remember The Lion King? Sing it along with me! Let’s go!

From the day we arrive on this planet, and blinking, step into the sun.

TezNation, the time of war is over. Our community has slayed so much Tezos FUD since ICO 2017 that even this battle meme commander had slight doubts if it would ever end. End it did with the launch of our network and we finally have our coins. Hope you did as I did and put them in the ovens baking away now. The OGs and legions of the Tezos army had awakened to make everything possible this year, from the depths of thanks, congratulations to everyone!

Without the amazing OCamlPro devs going all out with their time to make things happen, we may still have had an inactive blockchain and the launch of Betanet would have never been birthed on time.

Community efforts will become a storybook one day, no doubt.

So what now you ask? Our spears are as sharp as ever. Our shields as strong as ever. Our stance as solid as ever. What now of our community legion?

It is time to give birth.

What a champion!

Getting teary eyed? Love right here.

Yes you heard right. It is time to give birth, just like the OCaml devs and the Tezos Foundation birthed the betanet.

Do you still remember the day you were birthed?

There's more to see than can ever be seen, More to do than can ever be done.

So what do I mean by giving birth. It is time everybody starts initiatives of their own, because now that we have our coins, where else should we direct our energy other than building out the ecosystem?

The value of our coins are correlated to how much value is in the network. The worries of our past are over, we should now put our energy into doing things that help Tezos, rather than when we did things to save Tezos. There is a big difference.

Tezos needs no saving any longer, TezNation succeeded. Because of us, it is bright sunshine across TezNation now.

Simba, everything the light touches, is our kingdom.

For the new members who have joined us after launch, you can read my previous puffs here, here, and here. You have some catching up to do but luckily the community is pretty well organized and continues to provide a lot of resources for you to get started easily.

There's far too much to take in here, more to find than can ever be found.

A lot happens daily in the community, and new members are always welcome to enter and start building. In fact, we hope you can add your talents at such a level that makes you legends of Tezos.

Have a listen!

But the sun rolling high, Through the sapphire sky.

Who invented Tacos? Now you know.

Baking Delegations are sprouting up everywhere!

Some new Bakers! DYOR!

The OCaml MOOC is starting soon :)

Keeps great and small on the endless round, it's the circle of life.

Our community is busy pulling out the Tezos beast carrot and showcasing it to the blockchain world.

TezNation, keep writing and producing quality content. One day somebody will go build a Tezlibrary full of our community’s work. Historical archives will allow us to look back on it all, say in 5 years time, to see if we got our ideas right or not. These are just some of the writing the community has published so far. Keep up the good work on producing quality and helpful guides on wallets, nodes and delegations too.

New members, what are you waiting for? Get reading!

And it moves us all, through despair and hope.

TezNation, let me tell you a story.

Back in the transatlantic slave trade days occurring between Africa and North America, we witnessed the Central and Western African people taken against their will and thrown onto ships bound for the Caribbean and American plantations. We know this tragedy caused a lot of suffering and went down in history as an abomination of mankind. Bare with me on this story, my point will come.

The different level seen of the powerful physical specimen in the African American sportsmen and women of today compared to the African sportsmen and women is like a level 5.5 and a level 11. The African Americans in NFL, NBA, Olympics etc are impressive giants and excel in many power and high intensity sports. The Jamaicans, West Indians, Bahamians too. Why is this the case?

It is linked back to the slave trade days. The slave traders chose only the strongest of the Africans they could find to board the ships, slaves were judged on their physique and the weak and old were tossed aside. In those days the high seas were treacherous and had inhumane conditions that were not fit for a transatlantic journey. Thus many of these weaker strong Africans did not survive the journey. Only the ones that could endure mentally and physically reached the end destination.

Now once at the ports after an arduous journey, only the strong were picked and sent to work in the plantation fields. Again, the weak and sickly were cast aside. These mentally and physically strong humans then had to work in fields with crude agricultural tools and in backbreaking shifts day after day. Many passed away. The ones that did survive to last another day, had the ability to have family and birth the next generation. Think about this. The strongest of Africans, then strongest of the strongest of Africans on the crude ships, then strongest of the strongest of Africans on the crude ships who survived the backbreaking plantation work.

These genetics were passed down to the next based on pure survival beast strength, and because the children were slaves too, they either were strong enough to survive again and have the following generation or they passed away too.

The result in today’s American sportsmen and sportswomen speak for themselves, absolute dominance in many sporting fields. Go watch a live NBA or NFL game. Impressive power. Compare the build to the Africans of today where Africans dominate the endurance races but not the power sports.

So my point is, we went through a selection ourselves, mentally, through our own unfortunate Tezos events.

Obviously nothing at the level of the atrocities of the slave trade. The point is we went through a lot of mental stress during the tribulations of the unstable foundation era, many exited well before the community helped the current president into his position. Many mentally didn’t last earlier this year too when Betanet didn’t arrive early enough for them. Now even more have left since they could sell their coins and liquidate their holdings.

So who is left? Who is left out of this year long struggle? Only the most hardcore of mentally strong Tezos members are left. You may not know it, but you are a mentally strong beast now because you have gone through the tragic events of our past.

We don’t have a great history and beginning, and the problems were nothing to be proud of, so how do we use our forcefully formed mental strength to take Tezos to the next level?

We are the ones who can withstand anything the crypto world can forever throw at us. This mental strength now needs to be harnessed by us and put into building out our ecosystem. The pains of the past are the past. The ones who have gone through it have the right to decide when it is history. So we should make that decision now. We must make it a better experience for the next generation of community members through building.

“I shall either find a way or make one.”

We have to lift the spirit in the community through our actions. We have to think of community projects or organizations we can launch to make the Tezos ecosystem a brighter, more vibrant place. If each one of us tries some initiative that caters to the community, wouldn’t the chance of talent flowing into our ecosystem be much higher?

TezNation, after everything we have been through, I ask you,

If not us, then who?

Through faith and love, Till we find our place

I love how they named the wallet Galleon! Set sail we must towards a better place!

It doesn’t interest me

what you do for a living.

I want to know

what you ache for.

Why are we still here? Is it because Tezos has become a part of our lives? Is it because we want to be part of something more than just ourselves? The journey has begun. Are you coming?

As we go through the circle of life, we will find ourselves. At that time of searching, it will be then when we realize we have found our place. This place is named Tezos and our time is now.

On the path unwinding, in the circle, The Circle of Life.

Finally, it is time for me to end our time on this rainbow cloud. In the future, I plan to contribute in a way that doesn’t include meme commanding and puffing rainbows into your mind.

TezNation, this account was fun while it lasted. And it certainly provided relief in times of despair.

We are a true Tezos commonwealth. There is a deep intrinsic motivation in the community leadership to find ways to serve and go about creating more leaders. Take note of what you can do in the Tezos community space TezNation, there are many opportunities as long as you are willing to be committed.

We must care for every small fish as much as the big, and the new as much as the old.

At first, when the fallout began, it didn’t seem like there was an end in sight. Some of us had hoped our coins would be readily available well within a year. This resulted in a lot of anxiety in the Tezos community. People had asked me what is my purpose. People thought why bother with doing anything at all when it is easier to just move everything to a more matured community on a blockchain with no history of FUD. Well, I do hold a bag of Tezos coins. And it is not a shitcoin. And the intelligence within this community is second to none. So I stayed. We started using humor and became meme commanders as we joined together to get through that tough period. Our Taco jokes happened frequently every 2–4 days. It was a way to survive our inability to push things forward towards a resolution at a faster speed. It was useful then, it is not so useful now.

We could learn from other blockchains too, TezNation. This is one example of a good idea for future ecosystem growth if we have the capacity.

We are excited to announce the official launch of ICX Station, a global accelerator program sponsored by the ICON Foundation. ICX Station will have hubs, known as Launchpads, in major cities around the world, with the first location being the San Francisco Launchpad. Now is the time to start building, and ICX Station will help lead the future of blockchain-based businesses running on the ICON Protocol. Every technology goes through a hype cycle, and we believe blockchain technology is no exception. However, people tend to overestimate the short-term potential and underestimate the long-term potential of nascent technologies. The ICX Station team is not short sighted. We truly believe in the disruptive potential of blockchain technology. We keep ourselves grounded in reality and look for projects with practical use case and those that support the blockchain infrastructure we’re trying to build. All Launchpads have the same mission: Accelerate projects pushing the boundaries of real-world adoption of blockchain technology using the ICON Protocol. With this mission statement in mind, along with the ICON ethos of “Hyperconnect the World”, ICX Station will open Launchpads around the world to help bring together a global network of investors and entrepreneurs. We can’t do this alone, but with the support of the global community we can turn this vision into a reality. Projects accepted into ICX Station will be able to focus on what’s important, their project. While entrepreneurs stay focused on building the business, Launchpad Managers will take care of everything else. This includes introductions to important service providers (smart contract auditing, law firms, marketing firms, etc.), fundraising support, technical support from ICON experts, white paper review, and much more. If a project faces a roadblock, the Launchpad Managers are there to remove it. ICX Station enables entrepreneurs in the ICON community to have the chance to receive a direct investment from the ICON Foundation of up to $100,000 USD equivalent of ICX, along with the aforementioned services and guidance. The blockchain industry is truly fascinating. It’s an industry with rapid innovation, a 24/7 market, and use-case being built alongside infrastructure. All this excitement comes with plenty of noise. We want to be your partner in blockchain to sort out this noise and help you build the disruptive technologies of the future. For more details about the application process, what ICX Station has to offer, and the ICX Station team, please visit our website. Your Partner in Blockchain, ICX Station Team

As we near Mainnet launch, the sky is the limit to what we can achieve. Reaching towards the levels of Ethereum and Bitcoin takes a huge amount of professional effort on everybody’s part. It is up to the many to shape positive Tezos outcomes in the real world. Governance, protocol upgrades, education, all these things come into play soon. We have to start thinking about these things seriously in the various community chat rooms. Real work is happening and the time for play is over.

Thank you TezNation! As the circle of life says, everything has a beginning and an end. This is the end of my writing efforts here. Good bye.

I have to go work on birthing something of greater importance.