Current Voting Status
Voting Period
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Time Remaining
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How It Works
Tezos governance follows a structured 5-period voting cycle. Any baker can submit a protocol proposal, and all bakers vote proportionally to their staking power.
1. Proposal
Bakers submit and upvote protocol proposals
2. Exploration
Bakers vote Yay/Nay/Pass on the top proposal
3. Cooldown
Testing period on a temporary test chain
4. Promotion
Final vote to accept or reject
5. Adoption
Nodes update automatically. No hard fork.
Supermajority threshold: 80%. Each period lasts ~5 days (5 cycles). A full governance cycle takes approximately 25 days.
Protocol Upgrade History
Every major Tezos protocol upgrade, from Athens (2019) to the current protocol:
| Protocol | Year | Key Change |
|---|---|---|
| Athens | 2019 | First on-chain upgrade — increased gas limit, reduced roll size to 8,000 ꜩ |
| Babylon | 2019 | New consensus algorithm (Emmy+), improved smart contracts |
| Carthage | 2020 | Gas optimizations, higher gas limits for complex contracts |
| Delphi | 2020 | 75% gas cost reduction — made DeFi viable on Tezos |
| Edo | 2021 | Sapling (privacy), BLS12-381 curves, tickets |
| Florence | 2021 | Depth-first execution, reduced gas consumption |
| Granada | 2021 | Liquidity baking ⚔, Emmy* consensus, reduced block time to 30s |
| Hangzhou | 2021 | Timelock, views, caching, global constants |
| Ithaca | 2022 | Tenderbake consensus ⚔ — deterministic finality, 15s blocks |
| Jakarta | 2022 | Transaction Optimistic Rollups (TORU) ⚔, Tickets improvements |
| Kathmandu | 2022 | Pipelining validation, improved randomness |
| Lima | 2022 | Pipelining refinements, consensus key |
| Mumbai | 2023 | 15-second blocks, Smart Rollups live |
| Nairobi | 2023 | Smart Rollups improvements |
| Oxford | 2024 | Adaptive Issuance foundations (disabled) |
| Paris | 2024 | 10s blocks, DAL live, adaptive issuance activation |
| Paris C | 2024 | DAL activation follow-up |
| Quebec | 2025 | 8-second blocks, Adaptive Maximum ⚔ |
| Rio | 2025 | Daily cycles, DAL rewards |
| Seoul | 2025 | Attestation aggregation, BLS Proof of Possession |
| Tallinn | 2026 | Current protocol — 6-second blocks, All Bakers Attest prep |
⚔ marks protocols with significant governance contention.
Why On-Chain Governance Matters
- No hard forks — The community never splits. One chain, one token, one community.
- Continuous evolution — Tezos has shipped 20+ upgrades since 2018. Block time went from 60s → 30s → 15s → 10s → 6s.
- Decentralized decision-making — Protocol changes require 80% supermajority from bakers.
- Future-proof — Can adopt any new technology (ZK proofs, new signature schemes, L2 scaling) through governance.
- Predictable upgrades — Each governance cycle has clear timelines, not "whenever core devs decide."