Tezos (XTZ) Successfully Exercises On-Chain Governance with ‘Athens A’ Protocol Upgrade

“Today the promotional vote period for the Athens A protocol upgrade reached quorum eight days before the deadline. With Athens A, the Tezos community successfully exercised on-chain governance to amend the Tezos protocol- an important moment in the history of Tezos. The new Athens A protocol is set to activate on May 29th.” — Alison Mangiero, President, Tocqueville Group

Summary

The Tezos community successfully exercised on-chain governance to amend the Tezos protocol.

The two Athens proposals will see incremental changes introduced to the Tezos blockchain, without the need for a disruptive hard-fork.

Athens Proposal A increases the gas limit to allow for larger transaction throughput. It also reduces the minimum roll size from 10,000 XTZ to 8,000 XTZ.

During the initial proposal phase, Athens “A” received the greatest number of votes and was promoted to the next period, the exploration phase.

Subsequently, the voting recently passed the exploration phase and is now in its final round of voting, the promotion phase. Activation of the new Athens A protocol is slated for May 29th (EST).

Significance

This is a major milestone for Tezos and the greater cryptocurrency community. While most crypto governance has been off-chain thus far, it goes against the grain of decentralization. On-chain governance offers a better way forward, but most on-chain governance attempts have hit hurdles and realized major setbacks.

This will be the first example of a truly democratic implementation of an amendment on a live blockchain protocol. This innovative governance permits the roll out of system-wide upgrades (hard forks) in an entirely automated and self-governing fashion. It is a significant step forward in the decentralization of the cryptocurrency ecosystem.

Future proposals that are already being discussed include the integration of zero-knowledge cryptography such as zk-SNARKs, which would bring greater privacy to the Tezos blockchain.

XTZ price at the time of Blockfolio Signal: $1.69. View XTZ on Blockfolio.