Tezos (XTZ)

Tezos is a ‘decentralized Blockchain that governs itself by establishing a digital commonwealth and facilitates formal verification’, according to its official website. Unlike Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, Tezos does not solely rely on mining of Tezos (XTZ) tokens to process its transactions, rather, it makes use of the proof-of-stake methodology.

The main purpose of launching Tezos was to cause a revolution in the cryptocurrency technology, by redefining the building blocks of the transaction process in order to facilitate an upgrade so that it would be replaced in a modular way. The intention was to create a cryptocurrency that can be governed decentral. The company stated that Tezos’ goal was to become “the last cryptocurrency” in the sense that all the innovative changes of competing technologies could be readily accepted and incorporated in the Tezos Blockchain. For this, Tezos will always be updated and bear the latest version of Blockchain technology (Frankenfield, 2019).

Tezos is a distributed ledger-based on Blockchain technology, just like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Its consensus mechanism is a Proof-of-Work system and it makes use of ‘smart contracts’. There is more to its good qualities as what it does in a rather revolutionary development, is that it takes the concept of smart contracts one step further, by “letting the participants directly control the rules of the network”. The modular architecture of Tezos gives it a competitive edge as flexibility and scalability are two major issues that have halted Bitcoin from growing. The project is far from being finished (Smith, 2018).

Tezos was founded by Arthur Breitman and Kathleen Breitman in 2014. With a team of core developers, the two started working on the technology with their headquarters located in Switzerland. Arthur and his wife control the founding company Dynamic Ledger Solutions (DLS) and own the intellectual property rights of the Tezos technology. The token’s ICO was organized by Tezos Foundation which is headed by Johann Gavers (The Analyst Team, 2018).

Tezos is looked after by the Tezos Foundation. There is a team of advisors and developers who constantly work towards the better development and representation of the cryptocurrency. Among this development team are Arthur Breitman, Kathleen Breitman, and Vincent Bernardoff. The advisors include Andrew Miller, Emin Gun Sirer and Zooko Wilcox.

Tezos network has been developed by Dynamic Ledger Systems (DLS) under the technical leadership of CTO Arthur Breitman. The code is placed under the MIT Open Source License and all development works happen on GitLab. Code development is solid.

Since the recent positive press began to emerge for Tezos, things have been changing for the best and plans are moving toward the right direction, but technical hurdles might break this project’s neck. The crypto revolution might have to wait for a longer time than it anticipated.

Just like Ethereum, Tezos offers a Blockchain platform that allows users to develop their own DApps and software protocols. According to the official website, more than 1000 different developers are working on different projects. Some of the notable projects listed by the official website are Tezos Agora, TZ Hunt, Tezsure and Pocket Network.

Tezos holds a lot of potentials. The modular approach that it suggests, gives a whole new meaning to the development of Blockchain technology. If Tezos manages to get its breakthrough, it could render most cryptocurrencies obsolete.

After Dynamic Ledger Systems (DLS) announced their adamant vision of developing a technology of the sort of Tezos in 2014, the cryptocurrency much to people’s surprise was dormant in the market, but as it turned out, a lot was happening behind the scenes rather than on its marketing. The team spent quite a time developing the ledger system of Tezos and then finally in 2017, DLS butted heads with Tezos Foundation to hold its first-ever Initial Coin Offering (ICO) event.

Tezos Foundation, under Johann Gavers, drew a massive hype and brought a lot of attention to Tezos cryptocurrency in their first ICO which began on 1 July 2017. In a record-breaking event, Tezos managed to raise $232 million which showcased the belief and trust the users put in the technology (Frankenfield, 2019).

However, things went downhill for both Tezos Foundation and DLS soon after their successful ICO launch. It was revealed that Arthur Breitman, a former employee of Morgan Stanley, had not disclosed his involvement in DLS and had built Tezos architecture while still working at Morgan Stanley. He was, for this reason, fined $20,000 by FINRA and suspended from associating himself with any broker-dealer firms (The Analyst Team, 2018).

In a turn of events, a public squabble between the Breitmans, who owned the intellectual rights of Tezos, and Johann Gavers, the head of Tezos Foundation, broke out. Gavers refused to release the funds generated through the ICO to DLS. As a result of the dispute, the launch of the Tezos platform was delayed and it led to mayhem within the Tezos community. After being in the news for the bad reason, Gavers decided to step down from Tezos Foundation. He left the company with a severing amount of $400,000 and a broken image of the Foundation. However, since then, the developments regarding Tezos have streamlined and things are getting back into shape (Mitra, 2019).

Though no official statistics are available, it is believed that Tezos Blockchain will generate a whopping 10 billion Tezos Tokens. This might create inflation issues.

Tezos has recently made its way into the mainstream media and has become the talk of the town in a positive light, because before that, it was not well-represented within its community and in the eyes of the general cryptocurrency users at large. However, this trend is changing and Tezos is beginning to be talked about in better representation in various platforms and forums.

Tezos has finally put down their foot in the market and is building partnerships with notable firms. In a recent development, Tezos Foundation has announced in a public statement that they have signed MoU worth $1 billion with Brazil’s largest investment bank, Banco BTG Pactual and a Dalma Capital, a Dubai based asset management firm (Vitaris, 2019). Other partnerships were built with two research groups.

Tezos is considered to be the latest technology among several cryptocurrencies. As defined in its goal, it aims to become a type of tool that is considered sufficient for everything, by adopting and upgrading its own network to compete with all other cryptocurrencies. If everything works out as planned, it will be able to substitute every other cryptocurrency including Bitcoin and Ethereum.