[Recap] Tezos: Layer2 Revolution – Recorded at The Bridge

On November 3rd, 2023, Arthur Breitman, Co-Founder of the Tezos blockchain, joined Nicolas Steschinsky, Head of DeFi at TriliTech, at The Tie's inaugural crypto corporate access event, The Bridge, to discuss Tezos' approach to scalability via enshrined roll-ups and their newly developed data availability solution.

Tezos is a self-governing blockchain platform that was created in 2014. It uses a unique on-chain governance system that allows all network participants to contribute to blockchain consensus and receive block rewards. Tezos also employs a formally verifiable programming language called Michelson, which reduces the risk of vulnerabilities in smart contracts.

The Fireside Chat focused on the following key topics:

Watch the full replay below:

A key distinguishing factor between Tezos and Ethereum or other Alternative Layer-1s is their decision to enshrine roll-ups into their layer-1 protocol. The difference between enshrined roll-ups and some of the layer-2 solutions that we see today like Optimism & Arbitrum is that they are not deployed as smart contracts on the layer-1 blockchain, but instead are part of the core protocol itself.

There are several benefits to having enshrined roll-ups within the protocol:

Data availability is the ability to access and use data when needed. In the context of blockchains, data availability refers to the ability of all participants in the network to access and verify the data that is stored on the blockchain. Data availability is a crucial part of Tezos' vision based on their rollup infrastructure and thus has been highly prioritized in their efforts to continue and chop away at latency and increase throughput of the chain. A live version of their new data availability solution is currently operating on testnet. As Tezos is one of the few smart contract blockchains with fully on-chain governance, for any protocol upgrade to be pushed to mainnet, it would first have to go through a formal vote where the DAO ultimately has the final say on all code changes to the core protocol.

The data availability solution consists of two parts:

DACs are groups of entities that are responsible for storing and distributing data to rollups and other layer-2 solutions. DACs are a good solution for specific cases, but they are not fully decentralized and require some level of trust from the user.

The DAL is a separate, parallel peer-to-peer network that runs alongside the main Tezos network. The DAL is responsible for storing and distributing data to rollups and other layer-2 solutions in a fully decentralized and censorship-resistant way.

The solution is primarily based on the sharding of data, where essentially you take the data, cut it into smaller pieces, and allow each validator to download an amount of data that is proportional to their stake in the network. This data availability solution spreads bandwidth across the entire network, and thus directly contributes to the throughput of the network.

The talk concluded with Arthur touching on what the roadmap looks like for the different teams that are responsible for the core development of the Tezos protocol. He noted that the approach is three-pronged and includes enhancement of the following:

Tezos is committed to making it as easy as possible for developers to build on their platform. This includes supporting mainstream programming languages, such as JavaScript, .NET, and Python, so that developers can use the tools and languages they are already familiar with. Tezos is also working to improve the interoperability between different languages so that developers can easily combine different languages in their smart contracts.

Tezos has already presented the capability of processing 1 million transactions per second at TezDev Paris, but the goal is to achieve even higher throughput through vertical scaling. This means that Tezos will be able to handle a large volume of transactions without compromising on performance or scalability.

Tezos is also working to improve the latency of its platform so that transactions can be finalized in as little as 100 to 200 milliseconds. This will make Tezos a more attractive platform for applications that require fast transaction speeds.

By focusing on these three key priorities, Tezos is making itself a more attractive platform for developers and businesses. Tezos' commitment to developer experience, throughput, and latency will help it achieve its goal of becoming one of the leading layer-1 smart contract blockchains.

Watch the full replay below:

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