(BlockBar) The Tezos blockchain has officially been upgraded. Athens A reduces the minimum amount of tokens called rolls required for a user to become a baker on the network from 10,000 XTZ to 8,000 XTZ. It is to be noted that bakers are the equivalent to miners on a proof-of-work blockchain and are tasked with responsibilities such as verifying transactions and creating new blocks.
“The reduction will result in a bigger amount of XTZ staked,” emphasized CMO of Everstake, a-service provider on Tezos, Alexandr Kerya. “Now if a baker has 16k, only 10k is staking while after the upgrade the baker will have 2 rolls engaged in staking. There will be fewer ‘leftovers’ so to speak which is particularly important for small bakers.”
The creator of Tezos Arthur Breitman told:
“The Athens activation demonstrates that cryptocurrencies do not have to choose between being stuck with early technological choices or protecting themselves against interference. Upgrades can be automated, decentralized, and self-funding.”
Breitman said that “participation was a huge success with over 80 percent of the votes cast, twice, in a period of a few months.”
Awa Sun Yin, the founder of the second most popular public baking service on Tezos Cryptium Labs, said that Tezos’ on-chain governance process is “conservative,” which requires high levels of participation and lengthy periods of repetitive voting rounds.
Sun Yin further said: “Thus, we were concerned about voter apathy and voter fatigue. Yet, we managed to surpass quorum requirements in every phase and I am impressed by how closely the community has been relentlessly following through the entire process, actively reminding all bakers to participate.”
Tezos’ on-chain governance process also automatizes the process of testing and ultimately rolling out software upgrades on the blockchain. It is to be noted that governance process mainly for the purposes of gathering community sentiment. In the Tezos network the upgrade is pushed to all bakers at a specified block number rather than requiring users to manually upgrade computer servers called nodes.
Additionally the robustness of this governance process will likely be tested as more polarizing proposals are input into the system.
