Tezos

The September 2014 whitepaper proposed a functional protocol module that could be replaced by stakeholder-approved code, including changes to the amendment process itself. It was an attempt to keep technical evolution inside one ledger rather than force every disagreement into a new chain.

The July 2017 fundraiser later mapped contributions into a recommended genesis allocation. Foundation statistics report 607,489,040.89 tez for participants, 3,156,502.85 for early backers and contractors, and two allocations of 76,330,692.97 for the Tezos Foundation and Dynamic Ledger Solutions. Together they made 763,306,929.69 tez, with the two institutional allocations—20% in total—scheduled to vest in monthly installments over four years. These are the Foundation’s recommended allocation statistics, which it says could change slightly, not an independent replay of final genesis balances. Betanet opened on June 30, 2018; holders could accept that allocation or run the open-source protocol with another genesis.

Athens became the first autonomous amendment in May 2019. The mechanism now runs through five periods: delegates submit and rank protocol hashes, vote in Exploration, use Cooldown to test, vote again in Promotion, then prepare during Adoption before automatic activation. The ballots require a dynamic quorum and more than 80% Yea among decisive votes. Pass ballots count toward quorum but not the Yea-to-Yea-plus-Nay ratio.

Only delegates cast those ballots. A holder who stakes or delegates assigns voting weight to a baker; holding liquid XTZ without delegate status is not a direct vote. Developers can publish code and campaign for it, but a proposal hash still needs baker voting power and nodes able to run the activated result.

XTZ pays fees and supplies the security deposit behind baking. It has no fixed maximum. Paris activated Adaptive Issuance in 2024: instead of treating annual issuance as a permanent percentage, the protocol computes a reward budget from total supply and the share actively staked, nudging that share toward a 50% target within protocol bounds.

That change also sharpened the difference between staking and delegation. A baker needs at least 6,000 tez of baking power. Staked tez is locked, counts fully, earns protocol-distributed rewards and can be slashed with the baker. Delegated tez remains spendable, counts one-third for baking, carries no slashing loss and sends rewards first to the baker, who is not protocol-bound to pass them on.

Both forms count fully toward the baker's governance power. A delegator keeps custody and liquidity but hands a political input to the baker. A staker keeps ownership in the account but accepts an unstaking delay and the baker's consensus risk. Neither choice grants ownership of a baker business or the Foundation treasury.

The Tezos Foundation is a Swiss foundation whose Council and Executive Committee manage its assets, grants and strategy. It explicitly says it is not Tezos and does not operate the network. Its grant program finances core and infrastructure work by independent teams, including Nomadic Labs, Trilitech and Functori.

That separation is real but not weightless. Funders choose which engineering, security and adoption work receives capital; core teams maintain Octez and draft upgrade packages; bakers decide which hash advances. Tezos has no layer-1 administrator key that silently patches the economic protocol, yet agenda setting, client concentration and delegated voting power remain forms of control outside the final ballot.

Tallinn activated a 6-second layer-1 block time on January 24, 2026. Ushuaia followed on June 30 with 10 MB/s Data Availability Layer bandwidth, dynamic DAL confirmation and a route for Etherlink PVM features to activate through rollup governance. Its enshrined liquid staking and quantum-resistant account experiments stayed behind testnet-only flags.

Etherlink is not a synonym for layer 1. Its EVM transactions normally pass through one sequencer account, with a delayed inbox as the censorship-resistance fallback. Separate contracts govern slow kernel releases, fast security releases and the sequencer operator, using Tezos baker voting power.

That distinction mattered in August 2026. Bakers were asked to reject an Etherlink 7.0 slow-governance candidate after testing found a vulnerability; a patched kernel then activated through fast governance on August 21. The live Michelson interface is evidence of a shipped Tezos X component. It does not turn every previewnet or roadmap item into a Mainnet right for XTZ holders.