ChainCatcher news, Tezos Layer 2 blockchain Etherlink announces the launch of its mainnet and reveals its reward program.The Apple Farm reward program will distribute $3 million in rewards to participants in the first season. The program uses a points system, where participants earn "apples" for engaging in decentralized finance (DeFi) on Etherlink. Other rewards include exclusive non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and special Discord roles.It is reported that Etherlink has completed significant ecosystem upgrades, such as the Bifrost upgrade and integrations with Spiko and Midas.

ChainCatcher news, according to Chainwire, the RWA end-to-end solution Fraktion announced the completion of a €110 million seed round financing, with participation from Cabrit Capital, Tezos Foundation, Vox Capital, and well-known angel investors such as Olivier Huby (former MFEX), Andréa Bensaïd (Eskimoz), and Guillaume Mayot (Lukeion).Fraktion launched in mid-2023 on the Tezos blockchain, and the new funding is intended to accelerate the development of its technology platform and expand its influence in the real-world asset space.

ChainCatcher news, according to Decrypt, Tezos co-founder Kathleen Breitman stated that the recent rise in the crypto market reflects an increase in regulatory certainty in major markets such as the United States. There will be more instances of linking real-world assets to cryptocurrencies, as this makes it easier to navigate the regulatory environment.

ChainCatcher news, the UAE-based venture capital firm Quantix Capital is collaborating with Singapore's Tezos blockchain adoption center TZ APAC to promote game development on the Tezos platform.This collaboration includes a $1 million investment specifically to support emerging gaming projects on Tezos. The two companies will not only provide financial support but also offer networking resources and guidance through senior members of Quantix Capital and TZ APAC.Quantix Capital and TZ APAC stated that their goal is to drive the long-term growth of the Tezos ecosystem by providing developers with the necessary resources and guidance.

ChainCatcher news, according to Coinpedia, American billionaire investor Tim Draper recently shared his altcoin portfolio on the Thinking Crypto podcast.The projects he invested in include Arkham, whose team can associate Bitcoin wallets with real identities, sparking institutional interest. Draper also holds Tezos, appreciating its governance mechanism and security, which are suitable for smart contract and decentralized application development.In addition, he has invested in the DeFi liquidity network Bancor and the decentralized domain protocol Handshake. He emphasized that before investing, it is essential to ensure that the tokens have real utility, rather than being purely speculative.

ChainCatcher news, according to CoinDesk, the development company Trilitech, focused on the Tezos blockchain, announced the launch of a JavaScript-driven smart rollup "Jstz".The team stated that the Layer 2 rollup to be built on Tezos will allow developers to use JavaScript and its vast resources. What sets Jstz apart is its design that conforms to standard JavaScript APIs, enabling developers to utilize an ecosystem composed of JS tools and libraries.

ChainCatcher news, according to CoinDesk, Tezos will collaborate with digital asset card provider and Mastercard partner Baanx to launch a new crypto payment debit card.Transactions involving the non-custodial crypto card branded with Tezos will take place on Etherlink, a Layer 2 blockchain compatible with Ethereum, powered by Tezos Smart Rollups technology for fast and inexpensive payments.The debit card supported by the Tezos Foundation will be accepted by over 110 million global merchants compatible with Mastercard.

ChainCatcher news, the development team behind Tezos will launch the Tezos X upgrade, which creates a single Canonical Rollup capable of handling and scaling all activities on the Tezos network, restoring composability and making Tezos more interoperable.

ChainCatcher news, the 16th upgrade of the Tezos protocol, Paris, has been launched on the mainnet on June 5, aiming to make the network faster and more scalable.A key goal of this upgrade and Tezos's scalability roadmap is to maintain low transaction fees in the EVM-compatible L2 network Etherlink, even under high network demand.Tezos co-founder Arthur Breitman stated that after the upgrade, Etherlink is now cheaper than Arbitrum and Optimism, and the user experience (UX) has improved.

ChainCatcher news, the proof-of-stake blockchain Tezos announced on social media that it has launched tzBTC 2.0.It is reported that tzBTC 2.0 is an improved iteration of tzBTC, and a key innovation of tzBTC 2.0 is the use of the Acurast execution environment to automate the minting and burning process. The Tezos Foundation will subsidize a fixed annual fee, allowing Gatekeepers to mint and burn for free, addressing the drawback of the original tzBTC version where minting and burning were limited to a few large organizations.

ChainCatcher news, according to CoinDesk, Tezos blockchain validators will vote on the newly released protocol upgrade proposal, which aims to reduce the network block confirmation time to 10 seconds and activate DAL to improve throughput and L2 scalability.

ChainCatcher news, TriliTech has partnered with ConsenSys to launch a Tezos Snap compatible with the MetaMask wallet. A Snap is a MetaMask plugin that helps integrate the wallet and extend its functionality to new blockchain ecosystems.It is reported that MetaMask previously announced a new feature called Snaps, which allows it to extend to non-EVM chains such as Cosmos, Solana, and Starknet. Snaps are software modules that can integrate with MetaMask, enabling the wallet to be used across chains.

According to ChainCatcher, The Block reported that the proof-of-stake blockchain Tezos has partnered with Snoop Dogg's son Cordell Broadus (also known as Champ Medici) to establish a $1 million art fund, which has announced its first batch of grantees, including emerging singers, musicians, and artists such as Laurie Marqueton, Uzumaki Cepeda, Malachi Wright, Cory Anne Roberts, and Reggie Couz.

ChainCatcher news, the public blockchain Tezos has announced the activation of its 13th core protocol upgrade "Mumbai," which introduces the layer two scaling solution Smart Rollups. After the "Mumbai" upgrade, Tezos will provide a WebAssembly (WASM) execution environment, allowing developers to build on-chain using general programming languages such as Rust, C, and C++, making it easier for developers to create and deploy Dapps.Other upgrade features include: support for interactive fraud proofs, pipelined validation, and reducing block time from 30 seconds to 15 seconds, etc. (source link)

ChainCatcher news, Google Cloud announced that it will become a validator node on the Tezos network, allowing Google Cloud's enterprise customers to deploy Tezos nodes.ChainCatcher previously reported that in September 2022, Google Cloud became a validator node for the Ronin Network. In November, Aptos announced a partnership with Google Cloud, which will support some of its validator nodes and other services. (source link)

ChainCatcher news, according to CoinDesk, the NFT marketplace Rarible has announced its expansion to the Tezos blockchain. The Rarible aggregation tool will also support purchasing Tezos-based NFTs from markets such as Objkt, Teia, fxhash, and Versum. It is reported that Rarible will comply with all creator royalty policies of the Tezos NFT markets.Previously, Rarible announced the deployment of marketplace building tools on Polygon in January this year, allowing creators to build custom markets around NFT collections. (source link)

ChainCatcher news, according to GlobeNewswire, gaming giant Ubisoft has partnered with the decentralized storage and computing network Aleph.im to launch fully decentralized AAA game NFT smart contracts on the Tezos blockchain. In the first phase of the collaboration, Aleph.im will work with Ubisoft's Strategic Innovation Lab to develop dynamic game NFTs, while Ubisoft's "Digits" NFT distribution platform, Ubisoft Quartz, will also introduce a decentralized storage solution. (source link)

ChainCatcher news, the institutional staking platform Kiln announced that it has provided a staking solution for XTZ (Tezos) to Binance.US, allowing Binance.US users to stake XTZ directly on the platform to earn rewards. (source link)