Decentralized open-source blockchain, Tezos (XTZ) is making a foray into the DeFi and NFT ecosystem. This move is also the result of a tri-partnership with three different projects namely; Opus Dei, Sad Python, and the Gebo Wallet.
In a recent interview with Tezos (XTZ), the founders of the projects discussed in-depth their individual projects. Also, on how the projects are interconnected to make Tezos (XTZ) the perfect DeFi and NFT ecosystem.

More on the Projects
As previously indicated, the projects include;

Opus Dei Money Protocol – It is a decentralized multi-chain platform for trading, creating, and exchanging digital assets. Simply put, it is also a peer-to-peer (P2P) lending and borrowing platform, accepting Tezos assets as collateral. Interestingly, Opus Dei is also a community-governed money protocol. This means that major decisions need to be approved by community members.
Opus Dei will also facilitate the development of DeFi-as-a-Service (DaaS), Gebo wallet, and DAO functionalities.

Sad Python – is the flagship NFT project of the Tezos (XTZ) ecosystem. It is also a unique and top-notch NFT project that is designed with DeFi features. Also, its DeFi features are made possible via its PYTH token. PYTH is the native token of the Sad Python ecosystem.

Following the company launching a fiat-pegged tied to the value of the Mexican peso, Tether, the stablecoin issuer has announced the firm has launched tether tokens on the Polygon network. The Polygon integration follows the stablecoin being added to the Avalanche and Kusama blockchain networks.

Tether Joins the Polygon Blockchain Ecosystem
The largest stablecoin by market capitalization, tether (USDT), is now supported on the Polygon blockchain (formally called Matic). USDT's market valuation today is $72.6 billion and the stablecoin trade volume is $59.15 billion out of the $106.34 billion in global trade volume on Friday.
Tether Launches on Polygon, USDT Stablecoin Now Hosted on 11 Blockchain Networks

In addition to Polygon, USDT is supported on the Omni Layer blockchain, Ethereum, Tron, EOS, Liquid, Algorand, Solana, Bitcoin Cash (SLP), Kusama, and Avalanche. Furthermore, €195,998,829 worth of EURT, ¥20,503,468 worth of CHNT, and 226,289 XAUT (tether gold) have been issued by the firm.
Expanding to the Polygon network's layer two (L2) scaling solution on top of the Ethereum blockchain will provide tether (USDT) users with cheaper transfer fees. Polygon has more than 19,000 decentralized applications (dapps) and the network's native token MATIC is the 21st largest by market valuation.

"We're excited to launch USDT on Polygon, offering its community access to the most liquid, stable, and trusted stablecoin in the digital token space," Paolo Ardoino, the CTO at Tether said in a statement sent to Bitcoin.com News. "The Polygon ecosystem has witnessed historical growth this year and we believe Tether will be essential in helping it continue to thrive," the Tether CTO added.
The Polygon team confirmed the launch on Friday when the official Twitter page tweeted: "Tether USDT launches on Polygon."

In addition to tether (USDT) launching on Polygon, Polygon Studios CEO Ryan Wyatt explained that the team had put together a multi-million dollar fund to help Terra blockchain developers migrate to Polygon.
Tether says the Polygon announcement on Friday, "further solidifies Tether's position as the most widely adopted stablecoin."

The news of tether (USDT) being implemented on the Polygon network follows the token's market capitalization losing $10.4 billion since May 10, 2022. On that day, USDT's market valuation was $83 billion and today it's approximately $72.6 billion.
Furthermore, Tether launched a fiat-pegged token tied to the Mexican peso called MXNT on May 26, and MXNT tokens will be available on Solana, Ethereum, and Polygon as well.

The most accessible blockchain application platform was in France on April 12th to 14th for the Paris Blockchain Week Summit. Joining a long list of heavyweight blockchain projects, several key Lisk figures were present at the event to showcase its latest developments in Lisk's thriving ecosystem.

With over 3,000 attendees and more than 250 confirmed speakers, PBWS was a resounding success, and Lisk certainly benefited from that.

The project's Community Lead, Miguel, took part in a panel discussion at the Junior stage of the event, and was later interviewed by David Lin, for Kitco News.
Additionally, the Marketing team at Lisk took up residence in a booth, very close to the entrance of the Palais Brongniart, making it easy to get noticed, and ultimately resulting in two days of mingling, interviews, and brand awareness.

If you missed the event, here is the recap from Lisk at the Paris Blockchain Week Summit.

Sponsoring PBWS: Tech Track by Lisk
Lisk is honored to have taken part in this exclusive event and thankful for the opportunity to sponsor the conference's tech talks, featuring highly renowned developers, startups and researchers in the blockchain industry, covering topics such as the metaverse, DAOs, NFTs and, of course, Interoperability.

Miguel discusses with the panel
Lisk is happy to report that this exposure led to productive and successful talks with numerous acclaimed companies, investors, and developers, who showed great interest in the project.

Building Awareness: Conference Booth
In Retrospect
The marketing team at Lisk made more than 100 contacts in the industry, opening up new avenues for potential partnerships, as well as educating potential future users and developers about the platform and its vision. The team is confident that sponsoring a booth was vital for that purpose.

The marketing team at the PBWS
Lisk booth at PBWS
Insights
Representing one of Lisk's USPs, the illustration below was the main attraction of the project's booth, featuring two high fiving characters dressed as Lisk and JavaScript respectively.

Miguel and David Lin after the interview
In speaking to developers, they were pleased to find out that with Lisk one can build a blockchain application, fully customizable, soon interoperable, written entirely in JavaScript and TypeScript, removing the hassle of having to learn a new programming language, and/or having to code in an unfriendly tool-kit.

Building Interest: Media Opportunities
Kitco News
Invited by David Lin, Kitco News' anchor, Lisk's Community Lead Miguel discussed a number of blockchain-related topics including:

The state of the cryptocurrency industry
The current and potential use cases for NFTs
How GameFI can contribute to mainstream adoption
How Lisk approaches Interoperability
New Lisk Illustration representing the project's USP.
New Lisk Illustration representing the project's USP.
Throughout the interview, Miguel also shared some light on his career path leading onto his current role, motivating aspiring blockchain enthusiasts to get involved regardless of their professional background.  

The full interview is now available on Kitco News' channel on YouTube.

Panel Discussion: Junior Stage
Moderated by Orian Tal from Market Across, Lisk's Community Lead, Miguel, provided his insights into "how to land a job in Blockchain".

Together with Jeremy Wauquier, Alyra's President, Miguel discussed a number of topics including:

How to find a job
Valuable skills to have
Work environment
Pro's and con's
Trends in the space
Miguel speaks with the panel on stage
"At the end of the day, having an interest in the industry will set you apart." - Miguel.

Do you want to land a job in blockchain? Click here to watch the full discussion, and don't forget to check out Lightcurve's latest openings.

Marek Stiller, Kryptowaluty
The last highlight is Marek Stiller's interview with Lisk's Marketing Manager, Michal, where the latter took the opportunity to reflect on Lisk's development. In Polish, both discussed a number of topics including the vision for the project, the importance of interoperability as well as other upcoming milestones. Here is the full interview in Polish, with English subtitles.

Michal gets interviewed at the Lisk booth
Building Conversion: Online Activity
Lisk was also active throughout the whole event on social media, live tweeting from the conference with photos and videos, which received great support and engagement from the project's community. As a result, the team intends to continue this trend at future events.

If you are curious as to Lisk's main takeaway's from the conference's talks check out this thread.

A la prochaine fois, Paris
Lisk is thrilled about its successful attendance and participation in PBWS, one of Europe's biggest blockchain events.

The venue of the PBWS on the last day
Finally, as a result of the great support and engagement received from the community during the week, the team at Lisk has revealed that it has other exciting plans throughout the year, and will announce all upcoming events on its socials in due course.

The getaway to blockchain is coming to you. Stay tuned.

Decathlon
Decathlon is a French sporting retail giant with 2080 stores in 56 countries. In 2020, they generated $11.4 billion in revenue and have close to 100,000 employees.

In 1976 the first Decathlon store was opened in Lille by Michel Leclercq, France, now it is known as the largest sporting goods retailer worldwide.

Séan Garnier
Séan Garnier is a French freestyle footballer. He is a two-time Football Freestyle World Champion, a three-time French champion, a Red Bull athlete, Urbanball Ambassador and Founder and member of S3 crew.

He a very large social following with over 3.74 million YouTube subscribers and over 5.4 million Instagram followers.

Tezos Technology Used In The Decathlon X Séan Garnier Street Football Boots
Now, it has been announced that Tezos technology has been used in the Decathlon X Séan Garnier Street Football Boots product line in order to provide an NFT experience.

The collaboration has been done with the help and support of Nomadic Labs.

The football boots come with an attached NFT 'Golden Ticket' which is said to: 'give access to new personalized and exclusive experiences with the world champion… a golden ticket that extends the experience!'

On the Golden Ticket NFT experience Decathlon stated:

'This is the first step in building a future where digital goods are connected to physical goods.'

This suggests that more utilization of Tezos blockchain technology will accompany Decathlon products in the future.

Ithaca 2 Activates And The Tenderbake Consensus Algorithm Is Now Live
'Ithaca 2' – the ninth Tezos core protocol upgrade has been activated and this upgrade switches out the Tezos consensus algorithm from Emmy* to Tenderbake.

This means that the consensus algorithm has changed from being a Nakamoto style algorithm (Emmy*), to a BFT-style algorithm (Tenderbake).

This upgrade lowers block times, delivers faster finality, and has the potential to be optimized further down the line to deliver advanced scaling solutions.

It's been a long journey towards Tenderbake activation for the Tezos community and now it has recently happened with Ithaca 2.

The first research paper on Tenderbake was submitted in early 2020. This research paper included notable people and organizations such as CEA List, Université Paris-Saclay, and Nomadic Labs among others.

CEA List, who are part of the CEA, otherwise known as the French Alternative Energies And Atomic Energy Commission. The French Alternative Energies And Atomic Energy Commission have an annual budget of €5 billion and have over 20,000 employees.

In April 2021, Tenderbake was launched on testnet.

In early 2022 Tenderbake could have also been activated in 'Ithaca 1', however that amendment upgrade did not quite secure enough of a supermajority to push it over the line.

Now, Tenderbake has been activated with the Ithaca 2 core protocol amendment upgrade on the 1st of April 2022.

Summarized optimizations included in Ithaca 2:

Lower blocktimes and improved finality.

Faster transactions.

Smoother running applications.

Preparation for scaling solutions including transaction and smart contract optimistic rollups (expected to be enshrined into the blockchain itself), and enabling WASM and EVM compatibility.

Reducing the requirement to become a network validator ("baker") by 25% from 8,000 tez to 6,000 tez, strengthening the decentralized nature of Tezos.

The GrantShares DAO is launching on Neo N3 to distribute funding to grassroots developers and ecosystem beneficial projects. The DAO will manage an initial treasury funded by the Neo Foundation.

As the first DAO to launch on Neo N3, GrantShares is designed to provide financial support to smaller initiatives that do not currently fit the scope of Neo's existing grant programs. Voting members of the organization include COZ, AxLabs, Red4Sec, NGD Enterprise, NeoResearch, NEXT, Neo SPCC, Neo Foundation, Neo Global Development, and Neo News Today.

Anyone is encouraged to submit a proposal for the members of the DAO to discuss and vote.

The initial funding limit for GrantShares is $50,000 per proposal, and can be used to fund local events, dApps, developer tools, education initiatives, and more. Projects seeking larger amounts should apply for grants through one of Neo's Eco Support tracks.

The DAO's smart contracts are developed and maintained by AxLabs and have already been deployed to the Neo MainNet. In the coming weeks, AxLabs aims to release the accompanying dApp for applicants to submit proposals. The dApp will create an issue in the GrantShares repository where DAO members can discuss the potential grantee's proposal before voting.

In addition to distributing funding, AxLabs designed the GrantShares smart contracts to serve as a reference implementation for other N3 developers. The DAO contracts are open-source on the GrantShares repository.

The GrantShares dApp is tentatively expected to launch in mid-April 2022.

Papa John's NFT Bag Giveaway
Papa John's is using the Tezos blockchain to give away free NFT bags designed by two talented NFT designers; Tom Hoff and Ash Sketch. One lucky winner given the chance to with a real-life version. The NFTs can be claimed here.

There are nine NFT bags from 19,840 to choose from and claiming a bag enters the owner into a draw to win a collectible real-life Papa John's bag, with the winner being chosen on the 14th April 2022. This will be the 'Papa 1984' yellow bag, by Ash Sketch.

The bag is worth £250 and users are able to mint one NFT bag per wallet in order to enter the draw.

Papa John's is the fourth-largest pizza delivery restaurant chain in the United States, operating over 5000 restaurant locations worldwide. The pizza bag giveaway will represent the company's first foray into the NFT market and for this they chose to utilize the environmentally friendly Tezos blockchain in order to distribute the offering.
Papa John's stated:

Most Proof of Work blockchains are very inefficient and wasteful by design. They can use millions of times more energy than modern Proof of Stake blockchains like Tezos. By comparison, creating and trading NFTs on Tezos takes around the same amount of energy as sending an email or a social media post.

Last year big rival Pizza Hut entered the NFT market with their pizza art NFT offering.

People will be able to buy the real-life versions of these bags in an exclusive drop of five real Papa 1984, Papa Cheese Melt and Papa Tag bags which will go on sale via Depop, the fashion marketplace, on 7 March 2022.