Tezos activates upgrade dubbed “Athens A”

Tezos has recently activated two separate backward-incompatible changes on the network after three months of on-chain voting by stakeholders. The self-amendment procedure began for the first time back in February and ended on late Wednesday. This resulted in the successful activation of an upgrade proposal, dubbed Athens A. 

Athens A, proposed by a Tezos developer group called Nomadic Labs, brings the following changes:

• Reduce the minimum amount of tokens required for a user to become a baker on the network from 10,000 XTZ to 8,000 XTZ. Similar to miners on a proof-of-work blockchain, bakers handle responsibilities such as verifying transactions and creating new blocks.
• Increase the computation limits on Tezos blocks to allow for larger transaction throughout.

Alexandr Kerya, CMO of Everstake – a staking-as-a-service provider on Tezos, said: 

“The reduction will result in a bigger amount of XTZ staked. 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.”

Tezos creator 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.....Participation was a huge success with over 80 percent of the votes cast, twice, in a period of a few months.”