Tezos xtz

Tezos is a public, decentralized blockchain whose native asset is tez (XTZ, symbol ꜩ). The official documentation describes a network of globally distributed nodes, with bakers and accusers collaborating to maintain blockchain data and consensus. Blocks contain the previous-block hash, transactions, smart-contract calls, consensus attestations, and governance votes.

Tezos is designed as a programmable settlement layer. Its smart contracts are stateful accounts with a balance, persistent storage, and Michelson code/entrypoints; higher-level languages make Michelson easier to write. Contracts support computations, storage updates, calls to other contracts, views, constants, and Sapling private transactions.

A defining property is self-amendment: an on-chain process lets delegates propose, select, test, vote on, and automatically activate protocol upgrades without a conventional hard fork. The official governance documentation divides this into Proposal, Exploration, Cooldown, Promotion, and Adoption periods, each lasting 14 cycles (about 14 days).

Tezos also serves as a platform for fungible tokens, NFTs, stablecoins, wrapped assets, and applications. Its layer-2 stack includes Smart Rollups and a Data Availability Layer; Etherlink is an EVM-compatible Smart Rollup built on this stack.

Blockchain networks commonly face a coordination problem when their rules need to change: an upgrade can require contentious social coordination, parallel software versions, or a hard fork. Tezos addresses this with protocol-level governance, so an approved amendment can be tested and activated by the chain itself. The design does not eliminate governance risk: voting power is held by delegates and proposals still need quorum and an 80% Yea supermajority in the relevant voting periods.

Layer-1 throughput and on-chain data availability can limit applications as activity grows. Tezos uses Smart Rollups and its Data Availability Layer to move high-rate execution/data workloads above layer 1 while posting data back to layer 1 for verifiability. Users and developers must still evaluate rollup implementations, bridges, contracts, and token issuers: Tezos documentation notes that smart contracts cannot access external APIs, change their code, or catch/respond to errors, and that token contracts can be malicious or flawed.

Tezos uses delegated proof-of-stake terminology centered on bakers. The protocol selects bakers in advance for each block and selects validators to publish pre-attestations and attestations. The selected baker packages pending mempool operations, signs and distributes a block; validators check it and attest in later blocks. If a baker misses its round, a later baker can propose the block.

Delegates stake tez as a security deposit, and protocol rules can slash staked tez when a baker misbehaves, such as proposing or attesting two different blocks at the same level. Baking power is based on a delegate's own and stakers' tez plus delegated tez, with non-staked tez weighted one-third as much as staked tez. The documented minimum baking power is 6,000 tez. Users can stake with a baker for protocol-provided rewards or delegate liquid tez; staking increases baking power fully but locks funds and exposes them to slashing, while delegation increases baking power by 33% and leaves funds liquid.

Operations are validated by nodes and included in linked blocks. Clients communicate with nodes through RPC, while nodes share operations with one another; separating the internet-facing node from the baker helps protect signing keys and permits different baker implementations. Indexers and explorers process chain data to make account, transaction, contract, token, staking, and reward histories searchable.

A contract is originated with parameter and storage types, initial storage, and Michelson instructions; after deployment, users or other contracts call its entrypoints with arguments. Tezos native tez balances are tracked internally in mutez (one-millionth of a tez). Non-native FA1.2/FA2/FA2.1 assets are generally ledgers maintained by smart contracts, while tickets provide a built-in abstraction for limited-quantity fungible values.