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 reaching finality in simply 12 seconds. The Tallinn improve went dwell 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 instant worth response.
What Tallinn Really 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 knowledge publication is dependent upon 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 edge 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 eager to take part will want options just like the Tezos RPi BLS Signer, TezSign, or Signatory.
The Handle Indexing Registry rounds out the improve, probably chopping storage prices by as much as 100x for large-scale Michelson purposes and NFT ledgers. Present apps want updates to profit, however for tasks sustaining in depth handle ledgers, the effectivity good points might be substantial.
Context and Timing
The improve arrives throughout a blended week for Tezos. Bithumb suspended XTZ companies 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 adjustments are proposed, voted on, and activated with out exhausting forks—has now delivered 20 profitable upgrades since launch. That monitor document of seamless evolution stays the undertaking’s core differentiator towards chains that require contentious forks for main adjustments.
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 absolutely activated, opens the door to even quicker block instances in future upgrades.
For bakers, the instant precedence is evaluating tz4 adoption. The 50% threshold might take weeks or months to succeed in relying on how rapidly validators migrate their consensus keys. These utilizing Ledger gadgets face a {hardware} resolution they did not anticipate.
For builders constructing on Michelson, the Handle Indexing Registry represents a transparent optimization alternative—although one requiring lively migration reasonably than computerized advantages.
Picture supply: Shutterstock
