Tezos Upgrades to Tallinn, Block Times Fall to 6 Seconds

Tezos, a layer-1 proof-of-stake blockchain network, implemented its latest protocol upgrade, Tallinn, on Saturday, which reduced block times on the base layer to 6 seconds.

The latest upgrade is the 20th update to the protocol, which reduces block times, slashes storage costs and reduces latency, resulting in faster network finality times, according to an announcement from Tezos.

Tallinn also allows all network validators, known as “bakers”, to attest to every single block, rather than a subset of validators attesting to blocks, which is how validators verified blocks in previous versions of the protocol, Spokespeople for Tezos explained:

The upgrade also introduced an address indexing mechanism that removes “redundant” address data, reducing storage needs for applications running on Tezos.

Spokespeople for Tezos said the address indexing mechanism improves storage efficiency by a factor of 100.

Tezos’ latest upgrade showcases the push for faster and higher-throughput blockchain networks that can handle more transactions per second and reduced settlement times to accommodate a growing number of use cases. 

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Block times have come a long way since the first generation of blockchains

The first generation of blockchain networks, like Bitcoin and Ethereum, had speeds of about seven transactions per second (TPS) and 15-30 TPS, respectively.

The Bitcoin protocol produces blocks about every 10 minutes, which presents a challenge for everyday payments and commercial transactions on the base layer.

The Bitcoin protocol produces blocks about every 10 minutes, on average. Source: Mempool

These slow network speeds have prompted both protocols to scale through layer-2 (L2) networks, which handle transaction execution. 

In the case of Bitcoin, this is done through the Lightning Network, payment channels opened between two or more parties that handle a series of transactions off-chain, posting only the net balance to the base layer once the payment channel is closed.

The Ethereum network relies on an ecosystem of layer-2 networks to scale, and takes a modular approach, separating the execution, consensus and data availability layers.

Monolithic blockchain networks, like Solana, combine all these functions into a single layer, instead of scaling through L2’s.

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