Layer 1 blockchain
Tezos ticker XTZ
Summary
Tezos layer 1 runs Tenderbake, a Tendermint-derived BFT consensus operated by bakers. Each block level proceeds in rounds: one baker proposes, a stake-weighted committee of 7,000 validator slots preattests and then attests, and the next block carries the two-thirds attestation quorum that certifies its predecessor. Baking power counts staked tez in full and delegated but unstaked tez at one third; a baker needs at least 6,000 tez of baking power. Double baking or double (pre)attesting is slashed from frozen stake, including tez that users staked with that baker. The protocol itself is changed by stake-weighted on-chain votes rather than hard forks; the active protocol at review time was Ushuaia. 25121932
Design
- System
- Layer 1 blockchainPermissionless proof-of-stake base layer with blocks and a BFT-style consensus, matching the package hint. Etherlink, the EVM and Michelson execution layer built as a Tezos Smart Rollup, is described here as a scaling layer of Tezos rather than as a separate profile.
- Settlement family
- Its own design
- Scarce resource
- Stake (proof of stake)
- State model
- Accounts
- Finality
- Economic finality
- Who makes blocks
- Bakers (delegates) are drawn at random in proportion to baking power, with rights computed two cycles (about two days) ahead. For each level and round exactly one baker may propose; if it misses its round, the next round's proposer gets a longer slot. Tezos Commons counted 195 active bakers in late August 2026.
- Fork choice
- No open weight-based chain selection. Nodes keep the candidate with the highest fitness (level, locked round, predecessor round, round), and Tenderbake makes a transaction final once its block has one block on top and a block final once it has two. The newest block can still be replaced by a same-level candidate from a different round. Two conflicting final blocks would need more than one third of attesting power to double-sign, which is slashable.
Qualifications
- On chain governance · Applies. Protocol changes pass through five on-chain periods of about 14 days each, need an 80% supermajority of yea over yea plus nay and an adaptive quorum, and activate without a hard fork; Ushuaia in June 2026 was the 21st upgrade adopted this way. Voting power is stake-weighted, so outcomes follow the distribution of baking stake.
- All bakers attest · Partial. Tallinn lets every baker attest every block once at least half of active bakers use BLS consensus keys. At review time the chain reported no activation level, and Tezos Commons counted 83 of 195 bakers in late August 2026, so a 7,000-slot stake-weighted committee still attests each level.
- Layer 1 throughput · Unknown. No layer 1 throughput figure was recorded; both throughput claims above describe rollups or Etherlink, not layer 1.
- Settlement family · Partial. Recorded as other: Tezos runs its own protocol, Tenderbake consensus operated by bakers with Michelson smart contracts, and amends it through on-chain votes.
Tradeoffs
- Emphasizes
- Security and Decentralization
- Gives up
- Layer 1 execution throughput. The base layer keeps modest node hardware and a BFT committee and pushes high-volume execution to Smart Rollups such as Etherlink, which add a single elected sequencer, upgradeable kernels and a two-week challenge window for withdrawals. Liveness also depends on more than two thirds of attesting power being online.Decentralization here means nodes that run on home hardware and permissionless baking from 6,000 tez; how stake is spread across the roughly 195 active bakers was not measured. On-chain amendment lets a stake-weighted supermajority change any rule, which supporters treat as upgrade safety and critics as concentrated social-layer power; both readings are recorded, not scored. The liveness point is an inference from the two-thirds quorum rule.
- Full node at home
- Practical at home 213141516The Octez v25 release notes suggest 3 CPU cores, 8 GB RAM plus 8 GB swap (or 16 GB RAM), 100 GB SSD and a low-latency connection for a node and baker in rolling history mode; full and archive modes need more disk. Bakers must also run a data-availability node: about 4 cores, 16 GiB RAM and 1 MiB/s download for up to 1% of baking power, rising with stake. Fast bootstrap from a snapshot requires checking the snapshot's block hash against sources you trust.
- Throughput claims
- Theoretical peak: 1,000,000 tx/s 1Theoretical peak; not comparable across chains or with observed load.Aggregate across Smart Rollups, not Tezos layer 1 transactions.The Tezos documentation says this rate is theoretically possible with Smart Rollups; it gives no benchmark, window, hardware or transaction mix. It counts execution on rollups, each with its own operators, sequencers and trust assumptions, not transactions validated by layer 1 nodes. It ignores rollup node hardware, state growth, propagation and the bandwidth limit of the data-availability layer.
- Theoretical peak: 1,300 tx/s 2731Theoretical peak; not comparable across chains or with observed load.Etherlink (layer 2) only; Nomadic Labs' conversion of a 27 million gas per second maximum.Configuration reached during 2025, as stated in an April 2026 postA configured gas ceiling converted to transactions with an unstated gas-per-transaction assumption; it is not observed load. Applies to Etherlink's single sequencer, not to Tezos layer 1 bakers or nodes. Etherlink's kernel-upgrade notes give a lower speed limit, also called the target, of 13.5 million gas per second from kernel 6.0, so the 27 million figure is a ceiling above the stated target. Ignores Etherlink node hardware, state growth and data publication costs.
Scaling layers
- Etherlink (Smart Rollup with EVM and Michelson interfaces) · Rollup, mainnet 71922252627
Optimistic rollup: commitments can be challenged for about 14 days by any rollup node, so one honest node suffices for correctness, and standard withdrawals take about 15 days unless a paid fast-withdrawal service is used. One sequencer, chosen by Tezos baker governance, orders transactions; a delayed inbox on layer 1 forces inclusion after 12 hours or 1,600 layer 1 blocks, whichever is longer. Bakers approve kernel upgrades, including a fast track used for several security fixes in 2026.
Capabilities
| Capability | How it is provided | Notes and sources |
|---|---|---|
| Account abstraction | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Atomic swaps | Unknown | Not yet assessed under the current definitions; there is no protocol swap object. Michelson contracts have SHA-256, BLAKE2b, Keccak and SHA-3 hashing and a block timestamp that the current baker cannot manipulate, so hash-locked, time-locked escrow contracts could be written, but these are building blocks and no deployed or audited swap mechanism was reviewed. Etherlink's cross-interface calls are atomic only inside Etherlink and are not cross-party swaps. 101121 |
| Authenticated data publication | Built into the protocolLimited scope | The Data Availability Layer (DAL): anyone can publish data whose commitment is posted to layer 1, and bakers run DAL nodes and attest that the data is available, so it can be retrieved and checked against the commitment. Scope is limited: the DAL keeps data only for a limited time, it mainly feeds Smart Rollups, and there is no subscription or update mechanism. 814 |
| Light clients | Unknown | Not yet assessed under the current definitions; the Octez client's light mode checks Merkle proofs and requires several independent node endpoints to agree, but it trusts that agreement rather than verifying consensus signatures, so it is not light verification under this row. Wallet adoption was not reviewed. 17 |
| Native staking or delegation | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| On-chain governance | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Parallel execution | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Payment or state channels | Unknown | No payment or state channel network anchored to Tezos was found in the reviewed sources; absence was not exhaustively verified. Etherlink is a rollup, not a channel. |
| Programmable spending | Native (protocol or core-team software) Earlier definition | Smart contracts written in Michelson (or languages that compile to it) hold tez, tickets and storage and enforce spending logic; user accounts can also be native multisignature accounts. 34 |
| Protocol-verified messaging | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Reversible transfers or recovery | Unknown | Not yet assessed under the current definitions; native multisignature accounts (since Seoul) spread control across keys, which is a signature threshold rather than a recovery path, and contracts could encode recovery rules, but no standard or product for sender reclaim, cancellable delayed transfers or recovery was verified, and the protocol does not reverse a confirmed transfer. 3 |
| Rollups | Native (protocol or core-team software) Earlier definition | Smart Rollups have been part of the Tezos protocol since the Mumbai upgrade in March 2023, with refutation games settled on layer 1. Etherlink has run on mainnet since May 2024, and the layer 1 protocol constants name it as the canonical rollup. 671923 |
| Shielded transfers | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Signed partial offers | Unknown | Not yet assessed under this row's current definition. |
Reading these values
- How this feature is provided
- Built into the protocol, core-team software or independent software says where a feature lives and who can change it. These are implementation layers, not quality: core-team software is not closer to the protocol than independent software.
- Structured assessment pending
- The shared review has not assessed this feature for any chain yet (Account abstraction, Native staking or delegation, On-chain governance, Parallel execution, Protocol-verified messaging and Shielded transfers). That does not mean it is absent, and a chain’s profile may already describe it.
- Unknown
- The review has not established this for this chain under the current definition; the note beside it says why. Unknown is not absent and not a low score. A feature reads “Not present” only when a source shows it is absent.
- Earlier definition
- Payment or state channels, Programmable spending and Rollups keep the earlier definition until the next fact-check. There, “Native” does not separate the protocol from core-team software, “Ecosystem software” does not say who publishes it, and “Partial” does not say which layer.
- Reading across rows
- The list of capabilities is incomplete. Do not read these rows as a chain leading or lagging overall.
Ecosystem & custody
| Product type | Status | Notes and sources |
|---|---|---|
| Automated market makers | Established in the ecosystemQuipuSwap (layer 1), Liquidity baking pool (tez/tzBTC, protocol-originated), Curve Finance (Etherlink), Oku Trade (Etherlink), IguanaDEX (Etherlink) | QuipuSwap documents an AMM on Tezos layer 1, though its docs were last updated years ago and current activity was not verified. The protocol created a constant-product tez/tzBTC pool in 2021 whose per-block subsidy bakers can switch off; the toggle average read on 2026-09-27 was above the stop threshold, so the subsidy appeared paused. Etherlink's docs list several decentralized exchanges. Liquidity depth was not measured. 18202935 |
| Issuer-native stablecoins | Established in the ecosystemTether USD₮ (FA2 token on Tezos layer 1) | Tether, the issuer rather than a Tezos team, lists Tezos among its currently supported protocols, with USD₮ as token ID 0 of contract KT1XnTn74bUtxHfDtBmm2bGZAQfhPbvKWR8o. Circulating supply on Tezos was not measured. Etherlink lists USDT and USDC tokens, but Circle's USDC list names neither Tezos nor Etherlink, so those should be treated as bridged, not issuer-native. 283334 |
| Algorithmic stablecoins | Unknown | youves tracker tokens are collateral-backed, soft-pegged synthetic tokens rather than purely algorithmic stablecoins; their current usage, and that of other dollar tokens such as Kolibri's, was not verified. 36 |
| Bridges | First-partyEtherlink Tezos bridge (tez and approved FA tokens), Etherlink EVM bridge, Stargate (Etherlink and other EVM chains), LayerZero OFT (WXTZ) | Etherlink's developers run bridges between Tezos layer 1 and Etherlink and from other EVM chains into Etherlink; Stargate is listed as a third-party route, and WXTZ moves across EVM chains with LayerZero's token standard. Risk: Layer 1 to Etherlink withdrawals depend on the 14-day refutation process and at least one honest rollup node, and bridge logic lives in an upgradeable kernel: 2026 fixes closed an unauthorized FA ticket withdrawal flaw and a deposit double-claim flaw. Third-party routes add LayerZero or Stargate trust: Etherlink warns that if the LayerZero route for WXTZ were compromised, all the XTZ held in the WXTZ contract on Etherlink could be stolen, and it added a limit on bridged amounts and a two-day delay on new route connections as mitigations. 24252728 |
| Block explorers | Established in the ecosystemTzKT, Better Call Dev, Explorus, TzFlow, Etherlink Explorer | The Tezos documentation lists these explorers, plus Baking Bad's tools; Explorus also covers the data-availability layer. Listing is not a quality or completeness check; explorer data is provider-indexed. 9 |
| Hardware wallets | Established in the ecosystemLedger, Trezor (through Briskett) | See custody rows: Ledger lists Tezos in its own wallet app; Trezor supports Tezos only through a third-party wallet app, not Trezor Suite. 3738 |
Hardware-wallet custody
| Device maker | Status | What users can and cannot do |
|---|---|---|
| Ledger | Native supportSame as native: Yes | Can: Send, receive and swap tez in the Ledger Wallet app, according to Ledger's Tezos page Can: Earn rewards by delegating to a baker from the Ledger Wallet app; Ledger's page calls this staking and describes it as delegating Cannot: Sign BLS (tz4) consensus operations fast enough for baking, according to Nomadic Labs' Tallinn announcementLedger's page describes its Tezos staking as delegating to bakers; whether Ledger Wallet also offers the separate stake operation added in 2024, and whether it covers Etherlink accounts, was not verified. 3037 |
| Trezor | Through an intermediaryBriskett (third-party wallet app)Same as native: No | Can: Sign Tezos transactions with a Trezor Safe 3, Safe 5 or Safe 7 through the Briskett wallet app Cannot: Manage Tezos in the Trezor Suite appTrezor's page also lists Etherlink among supported Tezos networks. Staking or delegation through Briskett was not verified. 38 |
Public data
iKnow Blockchain has no public-data lookups for Tezos yet. This is a limit of the service, not a statement about the network.
| Lookup | Status | What it covers and its limits |
|---|---|---|
| Address or account | Not available yet | Public-data lookups for this chain are not built yet. |
| Tokens and assets | Not available yet | Public-data lookups for this chain are not built yet. |
| NFTs | Not available yet | Public-data lookups for this chain are not built yet. |
| Transactions | Not available yet | Public-data lookups for this chain are not built yet. |
Sourced developments
Developments: Review overdue Reviewed Sep 27, 2026; next review was due Oct 7, 2026, 12:00 UTC.
Publication date · newest first
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Quantumnet: an experimental post-quantum Tezos test network
Nomadic Labs, Trilitech and other contributors launched Quantumnet, a test network that combines post-quantum tz5 accounts (ML-DSA-44) with post-quantum approaches to baking-rights selection, aggregated attestations (hash-based signatures with STARK aggregation) and data-availability commitments. It is labelled experimental and not for production use.
- Implementation:experimental test network running
- Release:testnet only
- Activation:not proposed for mainnet
Sources: Tezos Commons on Tezos Spotlight — Introducing Quantumnet (external site) · Nomadic Labs on Tezos Spotlight — 15x Bandwidth, Better Rollup Governance: Ushuaia is Live! (external site)
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Octez EVM node 0.66 released for Etherlink operators; Seoul-era Michelson blocks dropped
Version 0.66 of the Octez EVM node, the node software Etherlink operators run, was published on 11 September 2026. It moves its WebAssembly runtime from Wasmer 3.3.0 to 7.2.1 to fix crashes on macOS ARM64, adds named downloads for the Etherlink 7 kernels ganesha and ganesha-r1, and refuses raw transactions with non-canonical RLP integer encodings at submission instead of leaving them for the kernel to reject. It also fixes several debug and subscription RPCs. Its one breaking change: the node's Michelson runtime no longer decodes or serves blocks tagged with the Seoul (S023) protocol, so Tallinn is now the oldest protocol it supports. No store migration is applied, so operators can downgrade.
- Implementation:implemented in octez-evm-node 0.66
- Release:released 2026-09-11
- Activation:takes effect when each operator installs it; no kernel or network activation
Sources: Tezos project on GitLab (tezos/tezos) — Octez EVM Node Release 0.66 (external site) · Tezos project on GitLab (tezos/tezos) — Octez EVM node changelog (CHANGES_NODE.md at tag octez-evm-node-v0.66) (external site) · Tezos project on GitLab (tezos/tezos) — tezos releases (GitLab Atom feed) (external site)
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Etherlink 7.0 (Ganesha) added a Michelson interface and cross-interface calls
Etherlink's 7.0 kernel, Ganesha, went live on 21 August 2026 after bakers approved it. It added a Michelson runtime next to the EVM on Etherlink and native atomic composability, letting EVM and Michelson contracts call each other in one all-or-nothing transaction. Bakers were asked to reject the first proposal after a vulnerability was found in testing, and a patched kernel then passed through the fast governance track.
- Proposal:approved by Tezos bakers through Etherlink fast governance after a first proposal was rejected
- Implementation:kernel 7.0 deployed
- Release:requires octez-evm-node 0.64 or later
- Activation:live on Etherlink mainnet since 2026-08-21
Sources: Tezos Commons on Tezos Spotlight — Month At A Glance: August 2026 (external site) · Etherlink documentation — Kernel upgrades (external site) · Etherlink documentation — Etherlink's architecture (external site) · Nomadic Labs on Tezos Spotlight — Announcing Ganesha: A 7th Upgrade Proposal for Etherlink Mainnet (external site)
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Octez 25.2 released: security hardening for nodes and data-availability nodes
Octez 25.2, a maintenance release of the Tezos reference node software, was published on 2 September 2026. Its release notes say the node now rejects ill-formed operations before applying them and rejects too deeply nested Micheline values early in parsing. The data-availability (DAL) node now limits the memory and processing it spends on peer-to-peer traffic, and an unresponsive DAL node no longer holds up a baker's proposing and attesting. The release ships bakers for the Tallinn and Ushuaia protocols. With it, the Octez team marked its GitLab release pages as deprecated and moved release announcements to octez.tezos.com/releases.
- Implementation:implemented in Octez 25.2
- Release:released 2026-09-02
- Activation:takes effect when each operator installs it; no network activation
Sources: Octez and Tezos protocol documentation — Version 25 release notes (external site) · Tezos project on GitLab (tezos/tezos) — Octez Release 25.2 - GitLab Releases Deprecated, See octez.tezos.com/releases/ (external site) · Octez (Tezos reference implementation) — Octez releases (external site) · Octez (Tezos reference implementation) — Octez (releases RSS feed) (external site)
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Ushuaia upgrade activated: larger data-availability bandwidth
Ushuaia, the 21st Tezos protocol upgrade, activated at block 13,857,889. It raised Data Availability Layer bandwidth from about 0.66 MB/s to 10 MB/s, made the data attestation delay dynamic (about 2 to 3 blocks instead of 11), and let rollup-specific virtual-machine upgrades activate through the rollup's own governance instead of a full layer 1 amendment cycle. Enshrined liquid staking and post-quantum tz5 accounts shipped disabled, for test networks only.
- Proposal:adopted by on-chain vote
- Implementation:implemented in Octez v25
- Release:Released
- Activation:active on mainnet since 2026-06-30 UTC; two features remain disabled on mainnet
Sources: Nomadic Labs on Tezos Spotlight — 15x Bandwidth, Better Rollup Governance: Ushuaia is Live! (external site) · Tezos documentation (docs.tezos.com) — History of amendments (external site) · Octez and Tezos protocol documentation — Version 25 release notes (external site)
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Tallinn upgrade activated: six-second blocks on Tezos layer 1
Tezos activated its 20th protocol upgrade, Tallinn, on 24 January 2026 at block 11,640,289. It cut the minimum block time from 8 to 6 seconds, bringing two-block finality to about 12 seconds, added a mode in which all bakers attest every block once half of active bakers use BLS consensus keys, and added an address-indexing registry to shrink contract storage.
- Proposal:adopted by on-chain vote
- Implementation:implemented in Octez
- Release:released with supporting Octez versions
- Activation:active on mainnet since 2026-01-24; all-bakers-attest feature awaiting its adoption threshold
Sources: Nomadic Labs on Tezos Spotlight — Faster Blocks, Stronger Security, Improved Storage: Tallinn is Live! (external site) · Tezos documentation (docs.tezos.com) — History of amendments (external site) · Tezos Commons on Tezos Spotlight — Month At A Glance: August 2026 (external site)
Topics your AI can explain
Your AI can explain these topics for Tezos through the connection, with sources.
Known gaps
What this profile's review did not establish:
- How baking stake is spread across the roughly 195 active bakers, and how few of them hold one third or two thirds of attesting power, was not measured.
- The liquidity baking subsidy state comes from one head block's toggle average; bakers can switch it back on, and the pool's current liquidity was not measured.
- QuipuSwap's current activity, Plenty and other layer 1 exchanges, and liquidity depth on all listed exchanges were not verified.
- Usage of collateral-backed or algorithmic dollar tokens on Tezos (youves tracker tokens, Kolibri) was not verified.
- No payment or state channel network anchored to Tezos was found; absence was not exhaustively checked.
- No deployed or audited hash-locked swap contract or cross-chain swap service was reviewed, so the atomic swap entry is unknown even though Michelson has the needed hashing and timestamp primitives.
- No independent rollup risk assessment of Etherlink was found; how many independent rollup nodes post commitments, and the trust model of fast-withdrawal providers, were not reviewed.
- Ledger's page describes Tezos staking as delegation; support for the separate stake operation and for Etherlink accounts was not confirmed, and staking through Briskett with Trezor was not verified.
- Wallet adoption of the Octez light mode was not reviewed.
- The current custody model of tzBTC, the wrapped bitcoin in the liquidity baking pool, was not reviewed from a current source, so it is not listed as a bridge.
Sources
Oldest dated source check: Source checked Sep 27, 2026 Next check due Oct 27, 2026.
- Tezos overview (external site)
- Bakers (external site)
- Accounts and addresses (external site)
- Tokens (external site)
- Governance and self-amendment (external site)
- History of amendments (external site)
- Smart Rollups (external site)
- The Data Availability Layer (external site)
- Block explorers (external site)
- Cryptographic data types (external site)
- Special values (external site)
- The consensus algorithm (Tenderbake), active protocol (external site)
- Version 25 release notes (minimal hardware specifications) (external site)
- The DAL node (system requirements) (external site)
- History modes (external site)
- Snapshots (external site)
- Light mode (external site)
- Liquidity baking (external site)
- Tezos mainnet protocol constants (RPC, read at head on 2026-09-27) (external site)
- Tezos mainnet head block metadata (read at level 15,125,536 on 2026-09-27) (external site)
- Etherlink's architecture (external site)
- Etherlink network architecture and transaction lifecycle (external site)
- Network information (EVM) (external site)
- Bridging tokens (external site)
- Bridging XTZ between Tezos layer 1 and Etherlink EVM (external site)
- How is Etherlink governed? (external site)
- Kernel upgrades (external site)
- Tokens (Etherlink EVM) (external site)
- Exchanges (external site)
- Faster Blocks, Stronger Security, Improved Storage: Tallinn is Live! (external site)
- Tezos X: From Roadmap to Reality (external site)
- Month At A Glance: August 2026 (external site)
- Supported Protocols and Integration Guidelines (external site)
- USDC contract addresses (external site)
- What is QuipuSwap? (external site)
- youves Tracker Token Introduction (external site)
- Tezos Wallet (external site)
- Tezos wallet (external site)
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Funding disclosure
Funding disclosures appear here when an upkeep arrangement exists, in the form “Upkeep funded by [name]; verdicts unaffected.” The funder ledger has not been published yet. Neutrality & funding