Tezos Blockchain Officially Upgraded; The New Upgrade Is Called Athens A

Tezos Blockchain, a smart contracts, and decentralized applications platform has been officially upgraded. The new upgrade, which comes after three months of on-chain voting by token holders, is called Athens A. The upgrade process started in February earlier this year and is the first comprehensive one for Tezos.

The amendment process successfully completed with the validation of block 458753, activating the new #Tezos protocol.

Welcome to Athens. https://t.co/fyYM6Ta5wh pic.twitter.com/WzozPSzhJH

— Tezos (@tezos) May 30, 2019

The upgrade was completed on late Wednesday at 9 pm EST. Athens A upgrade was proposed by a Tezos developer group, Nomadic Lab. The upgrade causes a reduction in the minimum token amounts called rolls from 10,000 TEZOS (XTZ) to 8,000 XTZ, which are required for a user to become on the platform. Bakers are miners of a Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus network, who are responsible for verifying transactions and creating new blocks.

Alexandr Kerya, CMO of the blockchain’s SaaS provider, Everstake, stated that the reduction rolls amount would result in higher staking of XTZ Tokens. He further added,

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.

While commenting on the upgrade, founder of Tezos, Arthur Breitman said,

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.

He also stated that the participation was a huge success as more than 80% of the votes were cast twice in three months. In an official post on Medium, the company stated that the Athens upgrade wasn’t just about proving that the Tezos amendment process can work. The upgrade was also about demonstrating that the network can take the initiative for becoming an open, internet native infrastructure for socio-economic coordination that upgrades itself. According to system-wide upgrades and XTZ price prediction, the platform will offer an efficient way for larger transactions.