Peter Zhang
Jan 24, 2026 17:55
Tezos completes its twentieth protocol improve, chopping block time to six seconds and enabling 12-second finality. XTZ trades at $0.59 amid the technical milestone.
Tezos activated its twentieth protocol improve on January 24, 2026, chopping Layer 1 block time from 8 seconds to six seconds and attaining finality in simply 12 seconds. The Tallinn improve went stay at block #11,640,289, marking one other forkless evolution for the self-amending blockchain.
XTZ is buying and selling at $0.59 with a market cap of $618 million, down 1.09% over 24 hours because the technical milestone drew minimal quick worth response.
What Tallinn Truly Modifications
Three core enhancements outline this improve, developed collectively by Nomadic Labs, Trilitech, and Functori.
The 6-second block time delivers quicker transaction affirmation with out elevating {hardware} necessities for validators. This issues for Etherlink, Tezos’ Layer 2 answer, since L2 information publication relies on L1 block inclusion. Quicker blocks imply quicker L2 safety ensures.
The second change entails baker attestations. As soon as 50% of bakers undertake tz4 addresses (utilizing BLS signatures), each baker will attest to each block as an alternative of rotating subsets. This strengthens safety and makes staking rewards extra predictable. The brink measures particular person baker operations, not stake share—so smaller bakers rely equally towards activation.
One catch: present Ledger {hardware} cannot produce tz4 signatures quick sufficient. Bakers desirous to take part will want options just like the Tezos RPi BLS Signer, TezSign, or Signatory.
The Deal with Indexing Registry rounds out the improve, probably chopping storage prices by as much as 100x for large-scale Michelson functions and NFT ledgers. Present apps want updates to learn, however for tasks sustaining intensive deal with ledgers, the effectivity beneficial properties may very well be substantial.
Context and Timing
The improve arrives throughout a combined week for Tezos. Bithumb suspended XTZ providers on the identical day, although the 2 occasions seem unrelated. In the meantime, TenX introduced a $3.25 million strategic partnership simply days earlier on January 20, signaling continued institutional curiosity within the ecosystem.
Tezos’ on-chain governance mannequin—the place protocol modifications are proposed, voted on, and activated with out exhausting forks—has now delivered 20 profitable upgrades since launch. That monitor file of seamless evolution stays the challenge’s core differentiator in opposition to chains that require contentious forks for main modifications.
What Comes Subsequent
The Tallinn improve explicitly helps the Tezos X roadmap, which targets continued efficiency enhancements. The brand new attestation system, as soon as totally activated, opens the door to even quicker block instances in future upgrades.
For bakers, the quick precedence is evaluating tz4 adoption. The 50% threshold may take weeks or months to succeed in relying on how shortly validators migrate their consensus keys. These utilizing Ledger units face a {hardware} choice they did not anticipate.
For builders constructing on Michelson, the Deal with Indexing Registry represents a transparent optimization alternative—although one requiring energetic migration quite than computerized advantages.
Picture supply: Shutterstock
