Tezos Coin Review: Beginners guide

Tezos (XTZ): A self-amending dApp platform

Industry type: Decentralised applications.

What is Tezos? Tezos is a decentralised (dApp) platform that is designed to upgrade itself through community consensus as a necessity for innovation without fragmentation. Tezos’ blockchain is focused on self-evolving flexibility through democratic voting to avoid Ethereum’s hard forking problems when upgrading, and Bitcoin’s immovability when deciding what decisions should be made. Unfortunately, Tezos has a history marred by controversy which will not be explored in-depth in this review. It should be known that the controversy is not associated with Tezos’ technology, core development team, or community, but has involved lawsuits from unhappy investors, accusations of securities fraud, and project leadership stepping down or being replaced.

What gives it value?

It provides a service and platform for dApp developers to build and run their applications on the blockchain.

Essentially, it is similar to Ethereum in function, only it aims to be more flexible and better prepared for future developments.

Its increased flexibility is predominantly derived from the delegated proof of stake (DPOS) protocol, where stakeholders hold the right to vote on key decisions in network developments.

Interesting Technology:

It uses a delegated proof of stake (DPOS) protocol for stakeholders to process transactions, build blocks on the blockchain, and vote on important decisions and future developments for the project.

Block creation on the chain is called “baking” and is done by ‘bakers’. To become a baker, a token holder makes a request and deposits tokens in an account as a bond. This deposit (baked tokens) ensures the baker abides by the rules as well as outlining the percentage of blocks that the baker will build. As a reward, baked tokens earn roughly 5-10% of new tokens annually.

The Tezos protocol uses a specific functional coding language called OCaml. Tezos’ flexibility is in part related to the use of this functional language to enable its protocol to be altered without needing to hard fork the blockchain.

Notable team:

Arthur Breitman is the creator of Tezos. Breitman previously worked as a research engineer for Google X and a quantitative analyst for Goldman Sachs.

Kathleen Breitman is the CEO of Tezos. Breitman previously worked as a senior strategy associate for blockchain consortium R3. She has also worked at Accenture, Bridgewater Associates, and the Wall Street Journal.

Ryan Jespersen is the president of the Tezos T2 foundation. Previously, Jespersen was an ordinary Tezos contributor until scandals unfolded surrounded the previous Tezos foundation, where Jesperson organised petitions, statements, and press releases to represent the voices of the Tezos community. His actions played an important role in Tezos continuation, and for his efforts, he became the president of the new foundation.

Notable partnerships:

IMDEA is a Spanish-based Software Institute that is working with Tezos to improve its smart contracts and cryptographic ledger.

Ocaml labs and Tezos have partnered to promote the use and awareness of Ocaml software, as Ocaml is the language used to code the Tezos blockchain.

French development company Tarides has partnered with Tezos to further develop the Tezos network.

Tezos Review: The Good

It has a functioning Betanet that is available to stakeholders and the public to perform transactions.

It is designed to be more flexible than current dApp platforms such as Ethereum. Specifically, its flexibility is focused on upgrades to be made ‘on the fly’ by community consensus rather than hard forking.

Its protocol is designed to automatically implement upgrades once the Tezos community has a reached a majority vote.

It has a very dedicated community behind it that have banded together and overcome very trying times.

Arguably it has survived a very difficult political and legal season, one in which no other dApp platform besides Ethereum has had to endure. Perhaps lessons have been learnt and experience gained that will help the Tezos project continue in the future.

Tezos Review: The Not So Good

Unfortunately, it has a very problematic history that is mired in controversy with four class action lawsuits filed against the Breitmans and the Tezos foundation which are still unresolved.

Its democratic delegated proof of stake protocol depends upon active voters who need to be well educated on what is best for the network in order for the system to run effectively. Additionally, there is an irony to Tezos solving blockchain governance when its governance issues have been the very thing that has caused controversy.

It has a lot of competition to contend with in terms of decentralised applications platforms.

Future Roadmap:

The proper mainet will be launched at an unspecified date after betanet testing has finished.

CONCLUSION:

In my opinion, Tezos is a dApp platform that doesn’t seem to provide much more than the other numerous and notable dApp platforms that are also competing to be the ‘next Ethereum.’ Unfortunately, it has been at the centre of one of the most controversial sagas in cryptocurrency, and it seems that it will have a lot of hard work ahead of it to clean up its reputation and outperform its competitors. It certainly seems to have a very strong community behind it, one who has stuck together through a political and legal battlefield like no other, and one who may also serve as a priceless asset in pulling Tezos to victory through an uncertain future.

Tezos Price:

The current Tezos price, market cap and charts.

Overseas exchanges:

Etoro: www.etoro.com

HitBTC: HitBTC.com

Where to store this crypto:

Hardware wallet: www.bitgear.com.au

Mobile wallet: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.github.tezbox

Similar coins:

Ethereum (ETH) – The most popular dApp platform.

Ethereum Classic (ETC) – The original dApp platform.

EOS (EOS) – 2nd generation dApp platform.

Cardano (ADA) – 3rd generation dApp platform.

Qtum (QTUM) – Improved dApp platform.

Further information: Whitepaper: https://tezos.com/static/papers/position_paper.pdf

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/tezos/

Website: https://tezos.com/