Tezos

Tezos is a proof-of-stake blockchain designed around on-chain governance and formal verification. It launched in 2018 after one of the largest token sales of its era and a protracted dispute among its founders that delayed the network's release.

The defining feature is self-amendment. Protocol upgrades are proposed, voted on by stakeholders, tested on a temporary fork, and then activated automatically if approved, all through the chain itself. This means Tezos can change its own rules without a contentious hard fork, and it has upgraded its protocol many times since launch, more frequently than most networks.

Formal verification

Tezos was built with formal verification in mind, meaning contracts can be mathematically proven to behave as specified rather than only tested. Its native contract language, Michelson, was designed for this. That property is particularly relevant for applications where a bug would be costly and difficult to remedy, and it has made the chain attractive for regulated and institutional use cases.

Consensus and staking

Consensus is liquid proof of stake. Holders can either run their own validator, known as a baker, or delegate their stake to one without transferring ownership of their tokens. Delegation does not lock the tokens, which distinguishes it from staking systems requiring a bonding period for delegators.

XTZ has no fixed maximum supply. Total supply currently sits at roughly 1.11 billion tokens with about 1.09 billion circulating, and new tokens are issued as baking rewards, so supply grows over time.

Tezos 2.0 is the network's stated next phase, aiming to improve scalability through layer 2 solutions and to support mainstream programming languages alongside its existing tooling.