Tezos: A Self-Amending Crypto-Ledger Position Paper

The popularization of Bitcoin, a decentralized crypto-currency has inspired the production of several alternative, or “alt”, currencies. Ethereum, CryptoNote, and Zerocash all represent unique contributions to the cryptocurrency space. Although most alt currencies harbor their own source of innovation, they have no means of adopting the innovations of other currencies which may succeed them. We aim to remedy the potential for atrophied evolution in the crypto-currency space by presenting Tezos, a generic and self-amending crypto-ledger. Tezos can instanciate any blockchain based protocol. Its seed protocol specifies a procedure for stakeholders to approve amendments to the protocol, including amendments to the amendment procedure itself. Upgrades to Tezos are staged through a testing environment to allow stakeholders to recall potentially problematic amendments. The philosophy of Tezos is inspired by Peter Suber’s Nomic[1], a game built around a fully introspective set of rules. In this paper, we hope to elucidate the potential benefits of Tezos, our choice to implement as a proof-of-stake system, and our choice to write it