By registering a whopping 610% gains, Tezos (XTZ) has emerged as the victor.

The digital asset is already up 97% so far in 2020, becoming the tenth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap of $1.74 billion.

Though currently in the red, XTZ went as high as $2.74 today, up 28.74% in the past week and 100% in the past month. Tezos broke a new-time high since its mainnet went live in 2018. But more good things are coming for the digital asset as economist and trader Alex Kruger notes, there is all free space for XTZ now.

This Tezos chart could serve as reminder for what happens when an asset breaks into all-time-highs. Nothing but hot air above (i.e. no resistance). pic.twitter.com/M1c0evRWZ2 — Alex (@classicmacro) February 9, 2020

Outperforming the King of the crypto market

Leading the altcoins rally, XTZ has defeated the A- “excellent” grade asset which is the king of the crypto market, outperforming bitcoin by 152% in the past year. XTZ is also up 253% against Ethereum.

#Tezos surges to a new bull market high, going up by more than 50% in the past five weeks, well ahead of the other #altcoins — even #Bitcoin (#BTC, Rated “A-”), the reigning King of Crypto.#XTZ — Weiss Crypto Ratings (@WeissCrypto) February 7, 2020

This increase in XTZ price however wasn’t a fake one as the volume made a strong comeback as well. On February 9, Tezos saw $79.5 million in real volume which has been just like price, a new ATH. These levels have been 50% higher than the previous volume record of $53.8 million on February 3.

“Adjusting for price, it’s approximately the same amount of tezos units traded on Nov 7, the day after coinbase announced staking on the exchange,” observes analyst Ceteris Paribus.

Nearly 80% of XTZ Supply Staked

Tezos had a record week as apart from price and volume, the network’s on-chain transaction count reached a yearly high as well. “Tezos is currently one of the largest and highest activity PoS networks,” notes crypto data provider TradeBlock.

All these records made by Tezos have been the result of four key success factors including decentralization, bug-free code, flexible governance, and crypto ‘dividends’ paid to XTZ token holders, according to Weiss Ratings.

In recent months, various exchanges listed XTZ pairs and the likes of Coinbase and Binance launched new staking services for the token. “At the time of publication, the XTZ staking reward is ~6% per year and nearly 80% of tokens are being staked,” as per TradeBlock.

This constraint in supply, while demand continues to rise because of the staking rewards has the XTZ price surging.

Next Smart Contract Leader?

“Tezos stands alone as the most decentralized POS crypto on the planet by far. It is one of the key factors why XTZ has become so successful as a smart contract platform in less than two years of operation,” wrote Weiss Ratings on twitter showing special interest in the network.

However, its processing speed which maxes out at 50 transactions per second is the most notable limitation, points out Weiss Ratings. The stocks, cryptocurrencies, ETFs, and financial institutions rating provider says future updates will take care of this issue, however, it found the current proposals “unimpressive and lackluster.”

The POS network, however, remains Weiss ratings’ one of the top five contenders along with Ethereum (ETH) and Cardano (ADA) in the race to become the next smart contract leader.