TL;DR Improving blockchain UX is probably required before we can do much else with them, and Deku v2 seems like a good next step towards that. Worthy Goals Censor- and seizure-resistant money Lower the trust required for people to contract with each otherI.e access to smart contracts I.e access to better governance (DAO's, new voting systems, etc.) Worthy Subgoals

As announced in our previous blog post, a critical bug was found in the implemention of views introduced in protocol proposal PtHangzHo. Through the joint efforts of Marigold, Nomadic Labs, and Trilitech, we have developed a patched protocol PtHangz2a that includes a fix to this bug, as well as several other bug fixes implemented after injection of PtHangzHo. Going Forward We are currently in the Promotion Period for PtHangzHo. If, at the end of this period on November 18th, PtHangzHo has a quorum and supermajority of approving votes, it will be adopted on Mainnet. Yesterday, Nomadic Labs has made available a new release candidate for Octez: 11.0~rc2. This version includes a user activated protocol override: nodes running this software will automatically switch to PtHangz2a on Mainnet, if PtHangzHo is adopted. If PtHangzHo is accepted, all bakers and nodes running v11 of Octez will automatically switch to PtHangz2a. In this event it is crucial for all bakers and nodes to upgrade to v11, or they will find themselves unable to participate in the consensus. If PtHangzHo is rejected, we will inject either PtHangz2a or a successor in the next cycle.

Links: Design of an implementation-independent validation system for Tezos economic protocol TZS git repo of all originated Michelson scripts 4/28/2021 Agenda Progress operationalizing benchmark suite!

We want to present two plans, a short term and a long term Short term plan: Build on MR!2439 It works! Including CI and a little reporting app: https://benchmarks.marigold.dev Tests are easy to add but a bit tedious to write (written in an OCaml DSL). Can be transitioned to use the TZS format relatively easily. Code is unlikely to get merged in, for multiple good reasons: Introduces new dependencies on core and core_bench The code is not up to the high standards of the protocol. Duplicates code, uses exceptions with abandon, etc.

Hanukkah story is given towards the end of 1 Macabees Good translation of 1 Macabees: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Maccabees+1&version=RSVCE Exposition by some solid messianic jews: https://www.torahclass.com/bible-studies/other-studies/688-Hanukkah-is-for-christians Good devotions for each night: https://www.jewishvoice.org/learn/messianic-chanukah-devotionals What I like about thethis one is that it gives prayers to pray in English that aren't weird. By contrast,the traditional prayers talk about lighting the Hanukkah candles as God commanded, but God commanded this nowhere, so that's just wrong.