Peter Zhang
Jan 24, 2026 17:55
Tezos completes its twentieth protocol improve, reducing 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, reducing Layer 1 block time from 8 seconds to six seconds and attaining finality in simply 12 seconds. The Tallinn improve went reside 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 fast value 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 resolution, since L2 information publication will depend on L1 block inclusion. Sooner 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 a substitute 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 depend equally towards activation.
One catch: present Ledger {hardware} cannot produce tz4 signatures quick sufficient. Bakers eager to take part will want alternate options just like the Tezos RPi BLS Signer, TezSign, or Signatory.
The Handle Indexing Registry rounds out the improve, doubtlessly reducing storage prices by as much as 100x for large-scale Michelson purposes and NFT ledgers. Current apps want updates to learn, however for initiatives sustaining in depth tackle ledgers, the effectivity beneficial properties may very well 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 modifications are proposed, voted on, and activated with out laborious forks—has now delivered 20 profitable upgrades since launch. That observe report 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 fast precedence is evaluating tz4 adoption. The 50% threshold might take weeks or months to achieve relying on how rapidly validators migrate their consensus keys. These utilizing Ledger units 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 quite than computerized advantages.
Picture supply: Shutterstock
