On March 1st 2021, we announced that we would be acquiring and operating Cryptium’s Tezos baker and their validator nodes on NEAR, Polkadot, and Kusama. This deal enabled the former Cryptium Labs team to focus on their new project Anoma, a private, asset-agnostic bartering network, while allowing their delegators to keep earning staking rewards with a reputable staking provider. Shortly after, we also agreed to take over Figment’s baker to help them focus on their DataHub and Learn projects on Tezos and to allow Figment’s former delegators to continue earning XTZ staking rewards. The acquisition of the Cryptium and Figment bakers mark our first entry into the Tezos ecosystem.
Tezos needs no introduction, it is a self-amending blockchain that launched as one of the world’s first Proof-of-Stake networks in 2018, establishing one of the first ecosystems of node operators. Tezos differentiates itself from other chains through a sophisticated on-chain governance mechanism and formal verification of smart contracts.
Amongst other things, Tezos was the first blockchain that introduced ‘Liquid Staking’. Somewhat ahead of its time, before Decentralised Finance (DeFi) had garnered adoption, delegators on Tezos were and are still now able to earn rewards whilst having the option to undelegate at any time and transfer their assets elsewhere (in comparison to most networks where an ‘unbonding’ period is necessary to undelegate assets). This also allows tokens in smart contracts (e.g. collateral in Kolibri, a Maker-esque stablecoin system on Tezos) to be delegated and earn staking rewards simultaneously! Tezos is no foreigner to introducing blockchain concepts ahead of its time, on-chain governance and an automated upgrade schedule were also foreign concepts until Tezos introduced these. Tezos has established itself time and time again as a secure network with the potential to be one of the most resilient and adaptable Proof-of-Stake networks. Given its reliability, it is no wonder that Tezos is chosen continuously by financial institutions for it’s fork-averseness, staking economics and finance-friendly smart contracts. We see great potential for the future of Tezos and we are glad to finally have the opportunity to run a validating node on this vibrant network.
There are 1,419,320 accounts using Tezos. The 1D transaction average over the past 30D is ~100,000 transactions per day (which is ~365,000,000 transactions per year annualised) and contract calls on Tezos are growing ~120% MoM (since May 2020).
Network activity on Tezos is impressive to say the least. We are glad to be supporting a thriving network that has seen sustained growth since its inception. We are looking forward to actively participating in Tezos governance to foster ecosystem development in the future.
Tezos has had two upgrades in the past three months, namingly Edo 2.0 and Florence. Edo 2.0 targeted the application layer of Tezos by introducing privacy-preserving smart contracts, more composable smart contracts using ‘tickets’ that represent values in relation to addresses (similar to derivatives) and an ‘adoption’ period to create a longer time-buffer between when voting ends for an upgrade and when it is executed on-chain. The Florence upgrade doubled the maximum operation size of smart contracts), optimised gas and changed intra-contract calling to a depth first execution model, all of which enable developers to develop more complex smart contracts with higher certainty the smart contracts will behave as expected.
Tezos Staking FAQ: https://chorus.one/networks/tezos
Staking Guide: Tezos Staking Guide for Beginners by Baking Bad, Ledger Guide to Staking Tezos (Ledger Only)
Wallets: Kukai, Ledger Live
Block Explorers: TzStats, TzKt
Staking Reward Calculator: Staking Rewards
