Tezos is a decentralized blockchain platform that differentiates itself by being the first "self-amending" blockchain. This means that its protocol can be updated and improved upon through a formalized governance process without the need for a hard fork, ensuring a more streamlined upgrade process and reducing the risk of network fragmentation. Additionally, Tezos also supports smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps).

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Tezos is a protocol "designed to evolve". Learn about
Tezos blockchain
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Tezos blockchain – The first self-amending blockchain
Legacy blockchains have several limitations concerning security, scalability, and more.
These weaknesses associated with blockchains often cause issues and dissatisfaction in
users. Sometimes, it results in the forking or splitting of the blockchain, leading to
disparity in the community.
Tezos was launched to solve such problems existing in legacy blockchain platforms. The
founders of Tezos envisioned it would evolve the blockchain space and promote a DeFi
revolution.
Tezos aims to solve the problems of DeFi, such as transaction costs and smart contract
issues, through its unique infrastructure and mechanisms.
What is Tezos?
Tezos is an open-source blockchain protocol “designed to evolve“ and develop smoothly.
It is essentially a smart contract and decentralized application development platform. The
ecosystem has its own utility token, Tez (XTZ), in addition to a native smart contract
language called Michelson. The platform is secured and managed by Tezos bakers,
similar to m, and they They verify transactions, distribute block rewards and ensure the
network is secure.
Benefits of Tezos blockchain:

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It has a modular architecture
It is powerfully scalable
Block time is one minute per block
Enables 40 transactions per second
Offers regular upgradeability without forking
Future-proof
Low power consumption
History of Tezos
Tezos was conceptualized by the husband and wife duo Arthur Breitman and Kathleen
Breitman, who began the Tezos project in 2014. Arthur Breitman was a former engineer
at Google X and Waymo and later became a quantitative analyst at Morgan Stanley (MS).
His partner, Kathleen Breitman, worked at the hedge fund firm Bridgewater Associates
and R3, a software company.
The whitepaper for Tezos, which outlined the principles behind this network, was
published in 2014 by Arthur by the pseudonym L.M Goodman. In his whitepaper, Arthur
pointed out the flaws of legacy blockchains, especially Bitcoin and put forward his solution
of a self-amending cryptocurrency.
In 2017, Arthur Breitman teamed up with Johann Gevers, a Swiss entrepreneur and
created the Tezos Foundation in Zug to back the project. .
Tezos architecture
The Tezos blockchain has three major protocols that act as the backbone of the
ecosystem, which are:
Network protocol
The network protocol is utilized to finalize blocks and broadcast them across the network.
Simply put, it connects the “gossip” network with the protocol. Whatever the nodes of the
network are required to keep the integrity of the network, like connecting users,
downloading the blockchain state and broadcasting the verified blocks to the network, is
all carried out in the network protocol.
Transaction protocol
The transaction protocol determines the validity of transactions, keeps a record of every
blockchain information and ensures valid transactions in the network.
Consensus protocol

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The consensus protocol is responsible for maintaining a seamless consensus process
happening in the network. Any blockchain modification, upgradation or addition must be
voted upon by stakeholders and has to go through the consensus protocol.
The network shell, also known as the “blockchain protocol,” connects these different
protocols in the Tezos ecosystem.
The consensus mechanism
Tezos validates transactions through the Proof-of-Stake, more precisely, Liquid Proof-of-
Stake consensus mechanism in which participants need to stake their cryptocurrencies to
add new blocks to the blockchain. The method of validating and adding new blocks to the
network is known as baking in Tezos. Unlike other PoS protocols where only people with
most cryptocurrencies can participate, Tezos allows any stakeholder having the required
XTZ tokens (minimum 6000 XTZ) to participate in the consensus process. The
participating validators, also known as bakers, get incentivized by the protocol for their
contribution to the stability and security of the network. Moreover, PoS is comparatively
less expensive and also lowers the barriers to entry for inclusion.
Delegation
The Tezos blockchain gives users the right to delegate their consensus participation to
other users if they are unwilling to engage in the consensus mechanism. If a user does
not possess 6000 XTZ or does not wish to set up the node infrastructure to bake blocks,
they are allowed to delegate or lend their coins to another baker. In turn, the person who
lends or delegates the tokens can get an additional revenue generated from the
delegated tokens in proportion to the baker’s participation.
How secure is Tezos’s consensus mechanism?
Generally, in Proof-of-Stake consensus, participants must deposit a certain amount of
their tokens as security to avoid malicious behavior. The Tezos protocol, too, demands a
security deposit from its participants. However, similar to Proof-of-Work, it depends on the
honest majority to upkeep its security which gets incentivized. Similarly, if the network
finds any fraudulent activities, the bad actors get penalized and can lose their security
deposit. The users are also given the option to delegate their rights.
What languages does Tezos blockchain use?
OCaml
OCaml is a robust general-purpose programming language. It is an easy language to
debug and maintain and is also strong in expressiveness and safety. It was created in
1996 and consists of a large standard library, proving useful for several similar
applications like Python or Perl. Its modular and object-oriented programming constructs
make it suitable for large-scale software engineering.

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Some top projects utilizing OCaml are Docker, Facebook, Wikipedia, Bloomberg and
more. OCaml is the language of Tezos protocol.
Michelson
Michelson is a relatively new language introduced by Arthur Breitman in the Tezos
whitepaper. It is an open-source and functional programming language introduced for
smart contract development in Tezos. It was designed to enable formal verification to
prove the properties of the user’s contracts. One of the major benefits of the language is
that it is introspectable and offers readable bytecode.
Tezos also provides high-level programming languages for smart contract development,
like SmartPy, LIGO, and Morley/Lorentz.
SmartPy – It is a high-level language that facilitates developers to write smart contracts
in Python and then compile them to Michelson.
LIGO – It is a smart contract language for Tezos, offering a robust, static type system and
smooth integration.
Key features
Self-amendment
It permits Tezos to evolve and upgrade itself without forking, thus reducing hard fork
and fraction in the community. This feature helps the protocol improve itself over
time and seamlessly implement future innovations.
On-chain governance
All stakeholders in the Tezos blockchain network can engage in governing the
protocol. The election cycle provides stakeholders with a formal and systematic
approach to establishing agreement on proposed protocol revisions.
Decentralized innovation
Payment to people or groups who improve the protocol might be included in
proposed revisions that stakeholders agree to. This funding method fosters strong
participation and decentralizes the network upkeep.
Institutional grade security
The architecture of Tezos offers the safety and code correctness needed for assets
and other significant use cases at the protocol and application layer. Michelson and
OCaml programming languages of Tezos facilitate formal verification and makes
this possible.

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Smart contracts and formal verification
The smart contracts of Tezos utilize formal verification, enabling them to be
mathematically verified, secure and reliable. It improves the security of the network
and can assist in avoiding bugs.
What issues does Tezos blockchain solve?
Many first-generation blockchain networks like Bitcoin and Ethereum have several
limitations that can be fixed only via important upgrades. In some cases, scaling, security
and other issues can only be fixed by forking the blockchain, resulting in a disrupted and
divided network community. This is where the Tezos blockchain outstrips legacy
blockchains as it gets upgraded through its self-amending network.
The self-amending strategy of Tezos blockchain enables users to vote on any important
network change, which executes itself without requiring any hard forks. This solution
Tezos implements to prevent hard forks is known as the “self-amending crypto ledger.”
Tezos blockchain’s evolution and upgradations so far
As “a blockchain designed to evolve,” Tezos has considered the ongoing advancements
in the blockchain space and the growing demand of web3 users to evolve into the desired
ecosystem that users need. Adhering to the self-amendment and on-chain governance
model of Tezos, the first proposal to upgrade the blockchain was made in May 2019. This
proposal was named “Athens” and suggested reducing the baking threshold from 10,000
XTZ to 8,000 XTZ. Athens also recommended increasing Tezos’s gas limit per block to
enable more intricate transactions to be processed. This proposal was also then
integrated into the blockchain.
Tezos has undergone several upgrades ever since. Let us walk through each upgrade
that happened in the Tezos blockchain.
Babylon, October 2019 – This upgrade proposal aimed to improve and reinforce
vital processes in Tezos’ functionality. It suggested simplifying the staking,
transferring and sharing processes to make them more seamless for users.
Carthage, March 2020 – This proposal emphasized having a more organized and
polished ecosystem and focused on code cleanup, optimization and resolving minor
issues in the chain.
Delphi, September 2020 – Delphi proposed practical solutions to the gas and
storage costs. This suggestion aided in significantly decreasing the issues of Tezos,
as mentioned earlier.
Edo, February 2021 – Edo mainly focused on upgrading Tezos’s governance and
amendment processes. It also added an “adoption” period into the governance
model of Tezos that permits each stakeholder in the network to prepare for any
changes that future proposals might include.

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Florence, May 2021 – Florence doubled the maximum operation size of the
network, put forward more instinctive smart contract writing processes, and refined
the gas economies of Tezos.
Granada, August 2021 – It suggested a solution, liquidity baking, to the liquidity
issues that existed in the Tezos network. Liquidity baking incentivized the liquidity
providers of the ecosystem. Granada also decreased the gas consumption cost and
launched the “Emmy” consensus algorithm.
Hangzhou, December 2021 – It introduced several features like time-lock
encryption, caching, views etc., to smoothen the developer experience while
building new blockchain-based projects.
Ithaca, February 2022 – Although Ithaca upgradation was proposed, it was later
rejected as the majority of the votes did not support this proposal.
Ithaca2, April 2022 – A new version of Ithaca was suggested in April 2022 that
proposed a significant update to the consensus algorithm of Tezos named
“Tenderbake.” It also lowered the minimum number of XTZ required to become a
validator from 8,000 XTZ to 6,000 XTZ and proposed faster finality and seamless
running of applications on Tezos.
Jakarta – Jakarta is the tenth and the latest update suggestion to the Tezos
blockchain. It suggested including a Layer 2 blockchain upscaling solution named
Transactional Optimistic Rollups (TORUs) into the ecosystem.
Conclusion
Tezos is a promising platform offering robust technical innovations through its on-chain
governance and self-amendment model. As a blockchain network designed to evolve, it
has undergone major upgrades to become a technologically advanced and highly flexible
network. It can adapt seamlessly to the growing demand of web3 users. And its capability
to upgrade without a hard fork adds to its charm. It is an ideal ecosystem for developers
to build dApps, smart contracts and other decentralized solutions and services for high-
value use cases.
If you want to know the performance of the Tezos network, its ecosystem score and
ranking, the foundation tools it provides, and more, you can check out the Tezos review
and rating on Scortik.