TezTalks Radio - Tezos Ecosystem Podcast

Tezos Commons

Delivering news and updates across the Tezos Ecosystem. Join us for a conversation about Tezos and humanizing the people behind the Tezos Ecosystem

  • 44 minutes 12 seconds
    120: The Story Behind Tezzardz and Everything Around It

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    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 — bold colors, strange characters, chaotic scenes that somehow hold together the longer you look.

    But this conversation goes deeper than style.

    🎙️ 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.

    🔍 In this episode, we explore:

    •  The shift from darker, monochrome work to vibrant, character-driven worlds 
    •  What it really means to “find your voice” as an artist 
    •  Why NFTs felt different from the start — and why they mattered 
    •  How Tezos became more than a platform and started to feel like home 
    •  What stayed true through every phase of the Tezos art scene 
    •  The real story behind Tezzardz and what it was responding to 
    •  How success changed George’s perspective as an artist 
    •  Why projects like Bedroom Nostalgia and Disordurance reveal a deeper side of his work 
    •  The tension between being an artist and becoming a content creator 
    •  What it takes to keep going when attention fades 

    At its core, this is a conversation about something most artists wrestle with quietly:
     how to grow without losing the thing that made your work yours in the first place.

    18 April 2026, 4:00 am
  • 38 minutes 4 seconds
    119: How TEIA Was Rebuilt After Hic et Nunc

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    This week on TezTalks Radio, host Brandon Langston sits down with Ryan Tanaka, a longtime builder in the Tezos art ecosystem behind projects like TEIA, teia.cafe, and Tezcon.

    The conversation starts with a moment many remember, when Hic et Nunc shut down. For some, that was the end. For others, including Ryan, it became the reason to rebuild.

    🎙️ This episode explores what it actually takes to keep a creative ecosystem alive when the platform disappears.

    🔍 In this episode, we explore:

    •  Why Ryan chose to rebuild after Hic et Nunc instead of moving on 
    •  How fragmentation across tools like teia.cafe created real friction for users 
    •  Why music and on-chain media remain under-discovered on Tezos 
    •  What it’s like to build and ship features inside a DAO 
    •  Why simple ideas like wallet-to-wallet messaging are harder than they seem 
    •  What’s still missing for artists in the space today 
    •  How builders stay motivated through quieter market cycles 
    •  Whether decentralized platforms can avoid the same patterns as Web2 
    •  Why the Tezos art community has endured while others faded 
    29 March 2026, 4:00 am
  • 30 minutes 20 seconds
    118: Inside the Role of Chief Baker at Tezos Foundation, Chris Pinnock

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    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
    23 March 2026, 4:00 am
  • 20 minutes 45 seconds
    117: The 5.5 Million Tez Decision Explained

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    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.

    🎙️ This episode looks at Tezos from the perspective of an operator responsible for uptime, security, and long-term trust.

    🔍 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.

    If you’re delegating, building, or just trying to understand what serious operators look for before committing to Tezos, this episode gives a clear view into how those decisions are made.

    18 March 2026, 3:00 am
  • 30 minutes 3 seconds
    116: Latency, Instant Confirmation, and the Next Phase of Tezos

    Enjoyed our podcast? Shoot us a text and let us know—because great conversations never end at the last word!

    This week on TezTalks Radio, host Brandon Langston speaks with Yann Régis-Gianas, Head of Engineering at Nomadic Labs, about what Tezos X is — and more importantly, what it changes for the people actually using Tezos.

    Rather than focusing on abstract architecture, this conversation centers on experience. What does latency really mean? What is instant confirmation in practical terms? And when these pieces come together, how different does Tezos feel?

    🔍 In this episode, we explore:

    • What Tezos X is and how Yann explains it in simple terms
    • How this direction differs from previous upgrades
    • Where development stands today and what milestones come next
    • The challenges and unknowns the engineering team is navigating
    • Who benefits most from Tezos X — users, developers, or both
    • What latency means in everyday usage
    • How instant confirmation changes the feel of payments, games, and apps
    • The difference between perceived speed and actual finality
    • What kinds of applications become more realistic as confirmation times drop
    • How latency improvements connect back into the broader Tezos X vision
    • What Yann is personally curious to see once these pieces are fully in place
    19 February 2026, 10:00 pm
  • 44 minutes 24 seconds
    115: How Tezos Starts to Feel Like One Product

    Enjoyed our podcast? Shoot us a text and let us know—because great conversations never end at the last word!

    This week on TezTalks Radio, host Brandon Langston is joined by Thomas Letan for a grounded conversation about what it actually means for Tezos to feel like one product.

    Rather than starting with promises or roadmaps, this episode begins with a real moment: a failed FA token deposit just hours after an Etherlink upgrade went live. From there, Thomas walks through how reliability is tested when things break, what it takes to fix issues transparently, and how trust is rebuilt at the user level.

    The conversation then shifts to speed, not benchmarks, but the kind of immediacy users feel when apps respond instantly. With Instant Confirmations, Tezos moves closer to real-time experiences, opening the door for new kinds of applications that simply could not exist before.

    🔍 In this episode, we explore:

    • What a real failure looks like from a user’s point of view
    • How Etherlink 6.1 fixed a regression without leaving users stuck
    • Why “funds are safe” has to mean something operational, not rhetorical
    • What reliability really means when mainnet behaves differently than tests
    • How Instant Confirmations change what apps can do in real time
    • Why under-50ms feedback matters for trading, gaming, and live UX
    • What “commitment” means when a sequencer says a transaction is in
    • How first-come-first-served ordering creates predictable user experience
    • What developers gain without having to rewrite their apps
    • How Tezos X aims to remove mental overhead for users who just want things to work
    • What end users should actually notice as Tezos starts to feel whole
    1 February 2026, 4:00 am
  • 28 minutes 6 seconds
    114: Working With People in Tezos | A Conversation With Islam

    Enjoyed our podcast? Shoot us a text and let us know—because great conversations never end at the last word!

    This week on TezTalks Radio, host Brandon Langston is joined by Islam, Community Manager at Trilitech, for a thoughtful conversation about responsibility, judgment, and the emotional reality of working closely with people.

    Before entering the Tezos ecosystem, Islam seriously considered a career in medicine. That interest in care, responsibility, and human impact never disappeared. It simply found a different place to live. In this episode, we explore how those values translate into community work, where decisions matter, clarity is essential, and there is rarely a script to follow.

     Our guest is Islam, a community manager at Trilitech whose work sits at the intersection of people, communication, and responsibility across the Tezos ecosystem.

     In this episode, we explore:

    • What drew Islam toward medicine and what stayed with him after choosing a different path
    • How responsibility shows up in community roles without formal authority
    • The parallels between medical clarity and careful communication
    • How judgment is formed when rules alone are not enough
    • What community experiments reveal, even when they fall short
    • The emotional weight of working closely with people at scale
    • Lessons drawn from long-term loyalty and expectation
    • What good engagement actually looks like from the community side
    • One misconception about community-facing roles that causes the most friction
    • What Islam hopes his work contributes to over time, beyond metrics
    28 December 2025, 6:00 am
  • 42 minutes 40 seconds
    113: What a Year Changed at Bosque Gracias

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    This week on TezTalks Radio, host Brandon Langston reconnects with Bosque Gracias, the artist collective and residency built by hand in the forests of Patagonia by Rosio and Mariano. After years offline and a chance reconnection during lockdown, Bosque found a new creative chapter through Tezos. Now, one year later, we return to see how that chapter has unfolded.

    🎙️ Our guest is Mariano, co-founder of Bosque Gracias, returning to reflect on how the residency has grown over the past year and how hosting artists continues to shape both the space and his own practice.

     In this episode, we explore:

    What it feels like, in hindsight, to reconnect to the internet after five years offline

    - How daily rhythm changes when residencies fill an entire calendar

    - Moments when forest, river, and weather quietly reroute creative work

    - Unexpected collaborations sparked by Bosque’s pairing wheel

    - Times when things broke down and improvisation led to meaningful outcomes

    - How hosting others has revived parts of Mariano’s own artistic practice

    - The story of the engraver living on a mountain island and what visiting her studio reveals

    - The tension between growing the residency and protecting its soul

    - What Mariano hopes artists feel on their first morning at Bosque as spring begins

    23 December 2025, 4:00 am
  • 35 minutes 2 seconds
    112: A Baker’s Path From Venezuela To Tezos

    Enjoyed our podcast? Shoot us a text and let us know—because great conversations never end at the last word!

    This week on TezTalks Radio, host Brandon Langston speaks with Libertez, a longtime Tezos baker and contributor whose perspective on money and trust was shaped not by theory, but by lived experience. Having grown up in Venezuela during a period of economic collapse, Libertez brings a grounded and deeply personal lens to conversations about crypto, baking, and decentralization.

    Our guest is Libertez, a home baker and writer active in the Tezos community, known for keeping his setup accessible and for sharing thoughtful reflections on trust, value, and resilience through his writing on Tezos Commons.

    🔍 In this episode, we explore:

    What life felt like in Venezuela before the slow unraveling began

    The moment when instability became impossible to ignore

    How crypto entered Libertez’s life as a necessity, not speculation

    What it meant to rely on these tools during the hardest stretches

    Why he chose to become a baker and keep his setup intentionally simple

    What decentralization looks like in daily practice, not theory

    How writing became a way to process and share experiences that still matter

    What Libertez sees when he looks at Tezos today, after years of watching it grow

    A message for newcomers who are just beginning to explore baking or delegation

    14 December 2025, 4:00 pm
  • 43 minutes 5 seconds
    111: Inside TAPL - How Tezos Artists Turn Live Matches Into Performance

    Enjoyed our podcast? Shoot us a text and let us know—because great conversations never end at the last word!

    In this episode, host Blangs reconnects with Hashbrown, the multi-talented artist, musician, and founder of TezTones and the TezTones Artletics Premier League (TAPL)  for a deep dive into the evolving rhythm of collaborative on-chain creation.

    Broadcasting from his solar-powered mountain studio, Hashbrown shares what it's like to build a live, competitive art league from the quiet of nature. From Season 3’s rising intensity to the raw unpredictability of live matches, we explore how the TAPL format blends freestyle chaos with high-stakes creativity and why keeping it fun remains the north star.

    We also get into how mountain silence has shaped his process, why over-polished art can miss the mark, and how TAPL forces him to wear every creative hat at once. Whether he’s writing code, spinning music, or mediating live-match meltdowns, Hashbrown is remixing what it means to create on Tezos.

    What You’ll Learn:

    • How off-grid living changes the rhythm of artistic flow
    • Why TAPL is part art show, part sports night, and part jam session
    • Lessons from burnout, rebuilding fun, and the art of letting go
    • Why Tezos is the perfect playground for collaborative expression
    • What the future holds for TAPL  and how to join the next match
    20 November 2025, 9:00 pm
  • 42 minutes 49 seconds
    110: Paper Buddha | Collage, Code, and the Spirit of Tezos Counterculture

    Enjoyed our podcast? Shoot us a text and let us know—because great conversations never end at the last word!

    We trace Paper Buddha’s path from collage and Buddhist iconography to securing Tezos as a baker, exploring how remix culture, meditation, and code fuse into a global counterculture practice. Along the way, we unpack permanence on-chain, sustainable patronage, and multi-chain strategy that rewards collectors without hype.

    • collage as a language for remix culture and East–West fusion
    • Detroit grit, Zen practice, and authenticity shaping process
    • three-stage workflow: wild sourcing, meditative cutting, intentional sharing
    • impermanence versus permanence and why censorship resistance matters
    • generative mandalas in P5 and encoding style into algorithms
    • Tezos as punk rock: accessibility, global culture, and Turkish freedom mints
    • baking as sustainable patronage and income smoothing for artists
    • bridging validator and art communities with practical tooling
    • multi-chain vaults, pricing equilibrium, and collector rewards
    • upcoming drops for Marfa, Halloween, and Miami, feeding back into the baker

    10 October 2025, 5:00 am
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