The People Who Started It

The brains behind this operation is Paraxeno Daimonio, also known as Plektani-Art, also known as Christina S., though most of us just call her Para. She has been a constant friend across the community spaces for years, and it is exciting to see her take the leap into organizing a call for a good cause. Art4Life is her first time applying for a grant to bring an idea to life. Born out of a desire to point creative energy at something measurable in the physical world. With Cinzia (cinziagabrielph.eth) co-organizing the logistics and outreach, this vision quickly manifested into reality. The purpose is simple and easy to connect with, which is likely why Teia approved the grant. Now their great intentions can actually translate into an organized call to action.

Sponsored By Teia

Teia is a wonderful platform for open calls thanks to the tooling, but also thanks to the provenance, shared contract, and volunteer-run, DAO-based governance. After successfully sustaining the marketplace and contract originally known as Hicetnunc, and even upgrading many mechanisms within the platform, they have recently received funding from the Tezos Foundation. Make sure to keep an eye on Teia developments and learn more about the grant opportunities they are now offering with newfound funding. Learn more about Teia and the DAO developments here.

With Para’s grant proposal approved, and with Teia now backing the call, the platform’s own tooling gets the opportunity for a stress test. Teia offers custom licensing on its mints, so each contributor keeps real control over how their work can be used. This is one reason why the open call requires entries to be minted and listed through Teia, while using the licensing feature. It protects everyone involved with things like future curation while honoring the artist’s specified rights.

The Teia sponsorship of Art4Life also funds the reciprocity I mentioned at the heart of the open call. What began as 8 honorariums of a total 1500 tez has already grown to ten after a donation from the Tezos Artist Network, meaning more of the artists who answer the call will see their effort recognized directly rather than only in spirit. The winners will be selected in two rounds, one by a jury of peers and another by a community on-chain vote using the Teia DAO token. As I said, there are a lot of cool flexes of Tezos tech sprinkled into this art open call, but it’s all built for a bigger purpose, connecting people and empowering heARTs.

What a Blockchain Cannot Do

For all the things blockchain enables, blood donation and human vitality sit entirely outside its scope. No protocol can produce it, no wallet can hold it, and no amount of tez can buy it. When a living person gives part of themselves to someone they will never meet, with no way to see the vitality it brings that stranger, the act is purely from human empathy. That gap is exactly what makes Art4Life worth paying attention to. The campaign uses a blockchain, a tool most people still associate with markets and extraction, to amplify one of the most ordinary and irreplaceable acts of care one human can offer another, the act of donating blood.

Giving blood is anonymous by design. The donor never learns who received their blood, and there is no return built into the act, no reciprocity, no audience. Sometimes that is how it feels to make art too, but art remains one of the few producable things capable of carrying deep meaning to someone or something unseen. For Art4Life, that capacity is the point, asking a viewer to picture the stranger on the other end of the line and to feel something on their behalf. Giving people an outlet to connect and express empathy is the oldest job art has ever had. It happens to be the same leap a donor makes when they sit in the chair to give blood.

I have written before about how often the Tezos community treats care as a shared responsibility rather than a marketing narrative, and Art4Life reads as another entry in that pattern. I call this social escrow, and you can find an article for reference here. What sets this call apart is how literal the stakes are. The campaign is not raising funds for a cause at a distance or for a specific demographic. It isn’t raising funds at all. Instead, it is pushing for human vitality through creation and awareness, which is a harder and more honest thing to measure.

The Work Already Taking Form

A handful of artworks minted in the first days give a sense of how much depth and diversity the theme can unfold into. I have re-purposed the gem of the week thread below to give further spotlight and examples. This was curated before our Artz Friday space dedicated to Art4Life which you can listen back to, here.

Drops by PixelSushiRobot

“Drops” by PixelSushiRobot seems like a simple pixel heart, until you click and hold one of its blocks and watch the color shift under your cursor. The interaction turns a static symbol into something you customize, and the artist frames that diversity plainly when they say everyone has their own shades of heart. It is a small technical gesture carrying a larger meaning, using the medium’s own logic to argue that no two hearts, and no two donors, look quite alike. You can find the piece on Teia, here.

Vital Flow by Betty Najafi

“Vital Flow” by Betty Najafi takes the opposite route, arriving as a physical acrylic painting before being made digital. The palette reads as medical, with blood moving like it is confined to tubes, surrounded by scrubs in teal and blue. White walls catching the window light. It feels calm rather than cold in this abstract form. Betty turns the procedure most people flinch at into something closer to mesmerizing. The work lives on Teia, here.

Needle & thread by huemansuniverse

“Needle & thread.” by huemansuniverse is a hand-drawn animated illustration that leans on the double meaning in its title, holding the literal needle of donation alongside the threads we weave through other people’s lives. The piece is about keeping an open heart as you move through the world, and the suggestion that those threads can hold someone else up, giving the journey a weight it would not carry alone. A metaphor-rich composition you can see it on Teia, here.

These are just a few of the amazing artworks already minted at the time of writing this article. More work is dropping throughout the call and can be followed using the #Art4LifeTez hashtag on TEIA and social media. Speaking of, TEIA has its own on-chain social messaging system worth trying while you are playing with the platform.

How To Take Part

Taking part is open to any artist, in any medium, at any edition size or price. Here is how to answer the call:

• Create the art. The theme is blood donation awareness. This is open to interpretation. The organizers only ask that you avoid NSFW and flashing-hazard content.
• Mint and list it on Teia using the tag #Art4LifeTez and then make sure to pick a licensing agreement. More on minting requirements here. If it is your first time minting and listing on Teia, the platform FAQ walks through the whole process, and if you don’t have tez for gas, the Teia fountain can send you a little tez to get started. Learn more about the TEIA fountain here.
• Fill out the submission form here, so the organizers can find and consider your piece.
• Use the hashtag #Art4LifeTez on your social posts as well, so the work travels beyond the marketplace.

Submissions close on July 13th at 12pm ET. Selection weighs relevance to the theme, emotional impact, artistic quality, and how clearly the work communicates its message, with 1700 tez in honorariums for selected artists. If you have questions along the way, Para and the Teia team are answering them in multiple avenues including recorded spaces like Artz Friday and in a group chat you can ask to be added to. You can also keep up with the art and sales happening from the call through this Art4Life stats page created by skllzrmy, here. There is also a landing page for the event by TEIA here.

From Inside the Call

I tend to write about these initiatives from inside them rather than from a third party view, and Art4Life is no exception. I minted art for the call too, but I am leaving it unnamed here on purpose to avoid self-promotion. I did, however, learn something worth sharing. Sitting down to make art for this call, got me thinking about the act of giving blood itself, something I have done many times in the past, but realize I could still be doing now. So I am now committed to donating as well, before the call closes.

Sometimes all it takes is one person being a good example to create a chain reaction, and my co-worker Cryptonio posted a picture on social media proving his literal act of donating blood. This event and the art made for it might have already saved a life. That’s greater than any sales metrics, so I will step up it. I’m collecting art minted for the event too, with the sales I make from my entry. I personally collected all the art I featured here already. This is the Tezos way. Pay it forward. Make beautiful things, and maybe give blood if you can.

May delivered a healthy mix of technical progress, ecosystem growth, and community activity across Tezos. Builders gained access to new tools and testing environments, new resources became available for users and developers, and community initiatives continued to find new ways to connect people across the ecosystem. As always, there was no shortage of activity.

Let’s break it all down.

Ecosystem Insights

One of the biggest milestones on the Tezos X roadmap arrived in May with the launch of the Tezos X Previewnet. This first public environment brings EVM and Michelson contracts together on the same ledger with full atomic composability, letting them interact directly within a single transaction. That means a Solidity contract can call a Michelson contract (and vice versa) seamlessly, with all actions either succeeding or failing together with no bridges or extra layers needed. It’s a hands-on look at how Tezos X aims to unify the ecosystem while keeping things efficient and secure.

The Previewnet gives developers the chance to explore the new possibilities this opens up: cross-runtime interactions, combined workflows, and creative application designs that weren’t possible before. It also shows the bigger picture behind Tezos X, where developers can keep using the tools they already know while tapping into a broader design space for their projects.

If you’re a developer, this is your playground. You can deploy contracts, test cross-runtime interactions, and experiment with ideas now, so when Tezos X hits mainnet in the coming months, your projects are ready to take full advantage. Jump in through the Previewnet dashboard here: Tezos X Previewnet.

May also saw the launch of TzEL, an experimental rollup that’s trying to solve one of the trickiest problems in crypto: real privacy that lasts. Most privacy tools today just protect transactions now, but TzEL is thinking decades ahead. The idea is that someone could store encrypted blockchain data today and decrypt it later when quantum computers get powerful enough, TzEL wants to make sure that doesn’t happen.

It’s already live on Tezos as a rollup, mixing post-quantum cryptography with zk-STARK proofs. That means private transactions, encrypted memos, and controlled access, all without needing bridges or extra layers. What’s really exciting is that it’s not just a playground for privacy geeks, it’s showing what Tezos’ infrastructure, like the Data Availability Layer (DAL), can do for applications that other chains can’t easily build.

While TzEL is still mostly for developers and researchers right now, it’s a really interesting look at what blockchain privacy could actually be in the future. Even in this early stage, it shows the kind of innovation Tezos is pushing, and it’s the sort of project that deserves more attention than it’s getting. So if it got you curious, you can check it out at tzel.tezos.com.

Tezos Commons Launches TC Radio and Bluesky Tools

May was a busy month for Tezos Commons as we rolled out new ways for the community to connect, explore, and show off what’s happening on Tezos. Alongside expanding our presence on Bluesky, we launched TC Radio, a dedicated archive for all our Spaces and community calls. Since X automatically removes recordings after around 30 days, a lot of these conversations used to disappear, but now anyone can browse past episodes, listen to discussions they missed, and revisit key talks whenever they want.

On the Bluesky side, we launched some pretty exciting tools that really highlight what the Tezos community is building. Ovoid is a unique interface that showcases Tezos NFTs in a visually stunning way right inside Bluesky, making it easy for creators and collectors to explore and show off their work. Then there’s Tzbsky, which lets users connect their Tezos wallets and display custom badges and labels on their Bluesky profile based on their on-chain activity and achievements. Together, these tools make it simple and fun to explore the ecosystem, find creators, and engage with Tezos content in ways that just weren’t possible before.

At Tezos Commons, the community has always been at the center of what we do because we’re community members ourselves. We’re in the Spaces, the group chats, the discussions, and the day-to-day conversations happening across the ecosystem. That’s why we’re always looking for ways to make it easier for people to connect, discover, and participate. If you try any of these tools, we’d love to hear what you think. Your feedback helps us with what we build next.

News From The Tezos Ecosystem: Quick Bits

Beyond those insights, the ecosystem saw plenty of other noteworthy developments worth a quick look:

• Objkt Updates UI and Profiles
  Objkt introduced several interface updates, including multi-language support, a new About tab, refreshed profile and explore pages, and theme options like Cyberpunk and Win 95. The changes make it easier for creators and collectors to navigate the marketplace and showcase their work.
• Proof Of Palm Returns
  The annual Proof of Palm event brought hundreds of artists together to create and collect palm tree-themed artworks throughout May. By the halfway point alone, more than 400 artists had participated and over 700 artworks had been minted, highlighting the continued strength and creativity of the Tezos art community. Curious readers can still explore the submissions by browsing the #proofofpalm2026 hashtag on X or Objkt.
• Etherlink x Monarch
  Monarch launched on Etherlink, giving users direct access to Morpho Blue lending markets with zero platform fees, advanced risk analytics, and one-click rebalancing. The addition expands the growing DeFi toolkit available on Etherlink and provides users with another option for managing on-chain lending positions.
• Messari Releases State of Tezos Q1 2026 Report
  Messari released its latest State of Tezos report, providing a detailed look at ecosystem performance and developments during the first quarter of 2026. The report covers network activity, staking, stablecoin adoption, DeFi growth, infrastructure progress, and other key metrics, offering readers a comprehensive snapshot of the ecosystem heading into Q2.
• Etherlink 6.3 Security Upgrade Activated
  Etherlink 6.3 was successfully activated in May, patching two security vulnerabilities that had been responsibly disclosed through the bug bounty program. According to the teams involved, neither vulnerability was exploited, and a detailed post-mortem was later published outlining the root causes and fixes.
• Tezos Media Center Goes Live
  The Tezos ecosystem now has a Media Center, a hub for press releases, reports, ecosystem updates, and media resources. It brings these materials together in one place, making it easier for anyone to follow news, explore coverage, and track initiatives across the Tezos community.
• Dune Integrates Etherlink
  Dune added support for Etherlink, bringing Tezos’ EVM-compatible layer to one of the most widely used blockchain analytics platforms. Developers, researchers, and ecosystem participants can now explore Etherlink activity alongside data from other major networks.

Events

All recordings from Tuesday Tezday, Artz Friday, and other Tezos Commons community calls can now be found on radio.tezoscommons.org! During May, we hosted the following spaces:

• Artz Fridays ft. Kyle Flemmer — May 1st
• Tuesday🎙Tezday ft. Germán Delbianco — May 5th
• Artz Fridays Community Call — May 8th
• Tuesday🎙Tezday Community Call — May 11th
• Artz Fridays ft. Anna Zubarev— May 15th
• Tuesday🎙Tezday ft. Yann Régis-Gianas — May 19th
• Artz Fridays ft Fendel de la Créme — May 22nd
• Tuesday🎙Tezday Community Call — May 25th
• Artz Fridays May’s Community Call — May 29th

Besides X spaces, we also published the following TezTalks podcast episodes:

• TezTalks Radio 121 ft. Yann Régis-Gianas: How Ushuaia Prepares Tezos for Shared Applications
• TezTalks Radio 122 ft. Arthur Breitman: Inside TzEL and the Future of Private Payments on Tezos

Stay in the Conversation, Stay in the Know

Tezos Commons hosts a variety of community-oriented events and content. From podcasts, X-spaces, and long-form content, there’s something for everyone.

• TezTalks Live
• TezTalks Radio
• X Spaces
• X Shorts
• Baking Sheet Newsletter
• In-Depth Articles

You can also contact us on X or via email at social@tezoscommons.org.

What a lot of us actually want is closer to a home we help build and govern, a social space that can be upgraded by the people who use it. The initial promise of a third iteration of the internet leaned on that idea, yet most attempts have lacked the decentralized foundation needed to sustain anything resembling a global town square. The truth is, no single protocol or “founder” can save the internet, but protocols, like people, tend to get stronger when they work toward something shared.

Don’t Judge A Book By It’s Cover

Some of the most useful tools online never get a fair look because people judge them by a surface impression and move on before realizing what is underneath. The example I will focus on in this article is Bluesky Social. It is easy to glance at the interface, file it away as another copy of a familiar thing, and never give it a try, the same way you might judge a book by its cover and then never read it. The opportunity has always been in reading past the cover.

Tezos Commons is here to empower the people building on Tezos, and we see real potential for Bluesky to help with that mission. It is powered by the AT Protocol, an open foundation of code that has not been locked behind paywalls or copyrights, and it turns out to have far more in common with Tezos than the surface lets on. The rest of this article is about what we found once we opened the book, and why the Tezos community stands to gain from expanding past the limits that other misaligned social media has set for us.

The Layer You Don’t See

Bluesky is the part most people see. AT Protocol is the part doing the work. The relationship is close to how websites run on HTTP, where the protocol is the quiet backbone and the site is only one expression enabled by it. For Bluesky, that backbone is what makes the whole system modular, open, and extensible, and it is the layer we are most excited to cook with at Tezos Commons.

In AT Protocol, every user runs their own data server, called a Personal Data Server, or PDS. Your posts, your interactions, and your entire social graph live on that server, which means you can pick all of it up and move if you ever need to. You own it in a way that has become rare on the modern internet.

Tezos Commons now hosts its own PDS, so the data created by our interactions is not sitting inside some billionaire’s datacenter, subject to rules that change without warning. This does not mean we are done building on the platforms we already use, but it does mean we can maintain what is built while exploring more decentralized ways to communicate with more people.

Much like Tezos, AT Protocol has no single authority deciding what is acceptable for everyone. Each server or client sets its own terms of service. Anyone can build a labeler, which is an independent moderation service that users choose to subscribe to. Those choices stack into a layered, user-driven experience rather than a one-size-fits-all feed handed down from above. A community that has watched platform after platform flip its stance on NFTs, crypto, AI, and creator rights knows the cost of that instability, where the energy that should go into growing gets spent fighting to stay visible. The answer is a decentralized solution, something foundational that can become more than one thing.

One Protocol, Many Faces

AT Protocol is the structure, and Bluesky is the public face it happens to wear. Most people only ever meet that face, yet for creatives the customization runs much deeper than rearranging tabs or filtering a feed. Tezos has never really had a face of its own in that sense, no single instance that everyone experiences first. It behaves more like AT Protocol does, where the dApps on Tezos are front ends tapping into shared code to deliver a service. That kind of decentralized code access is built for value creation, programmable ownership, and long-term on-chain coordination.

Mainstream social reach can exist now without forcing it to be on-chain. Tezos was built to be an infrastructure for a new kind of internet, not necessarily a social network. What AT Protocol brings to the table is a social layer the Tezos community can explore and build on together. The two protocols are not the same thing, but they are complementary. They run in parallel at different layers of life online. Both protocols are built to evolve.

Tezos handles provenance and governance while AT Protocol can handle how a truly decentralized community reaches outward. The common thread is simply that the user belongs at the center. It’s time for decentralized expansion, without the fragmentation.

Building A Town Square

The expansion to Bluesky starts at the plainest layer, with a clean handle, @tezoscommons.org, and posts that show what makes the Tezos community worth following. Then there are the tools and client implementations that really make the experience one of a kind.

Tzbsky is our new labeler, cited in the bio of our Bluesky profile. Labelers let a community assign badges and add character to a profile, and more usefully, they hand you control over your own feed. For example, if AI work is not for you, a label can filter it out, and the same tooling works just as well for steering clear of AI hate when simply using it as a tool.

In a more literal example, with tzbsky, Tezos users can now show off their on-chain activity in the form of badges. As shown below, with a simple read-only wallet sync, optional tags can be added to showcase that you are a Tezos artist, or that you collect art on Tezos, along with several other fun and unique identifiers.

Lists, feeds, and starter packs extend control and take the friction out of starting a new account from zero, a bit like loading a mod pack instead of building a game world from scratch. Find an initial community through OnlyTez, a list of people actively posting with at least one tzbsky badge. Enjoy a custom feed posting any time an artist mints artwork of cats, “Cats of Tezos”. The possibilities for curation and community building are endless, and the path is free of confusing algos.

Because AT Protocol is open, Bluesky is only one of many front ends, and the same social graph can be viewed through any of them without anyone’s permission. The awesome-bluesky list collects what people have already built. AtmoXP, for instance, reskins the whole experience as a Windows XP desktop. The data underneath doesn’t change, but the ways a user can experience and interact with it are an open sandbox.

ovoid.at is our own experimental client for the Tezos art community, still early and limited in access, where your NFTs present cleanly. For example, 3D and audio works play right in the feed, and one click reaches the rest of an artist’s portfolio. The gallery and the social feed start to share an interface.

The possibilities for front-end clients are exciting. Imagine on-chain games, interactive media, and tools with no real equivalent in traditional social media, now shareable inside a custom feed powered by the same protocol powering Bluesky. Tangled is another preview of that, a code platform that looks like GitHub, logs in through your AT Protocol account, and surfaces the repositories of people you already follow on Bluesky.

Long-form writing, blogs, and full websites are taking shape on the same foundation. The social graph and the creative graph turn out to be the same, and that holds for art, music, and code alike.

Why Now

The last few years have reset what people expect from being online. Ownership stopped being a niche concern, and interoperability stopped being a phrase only developers use. Too many people have lost accounts, communities, and years of creative output because they built on platforms that changed the rules on them overnight.

AT protocol, just like Tezos, reflects something real. A large and growing group of people who went looking for a different kind of internet experience are now building on decentralized foundations. When we look beyond the cover called bluesky, we can tell that something is different.

Our job is not to lecture anyone about which front end is best. Our job is to support the people who build on Tezos and want to grow the network, and that work now reaches well beyond X.

PaulWhoIsAGhost, who has been building alongside us in this space, puts the real need plainly. The value of Bluesky for Tezos is having a place to coordinate.

“Everyone is concerned with social media as an audience facing tool, but what tezos needs right now is an internal communications tool that enables us to put tezos first without worrying about algorithms. We need more integration between our inner social layer and our chain activity. Bluesky enables us to do that where x/twitter punishes us for trying and has costly api fees for anyone trying to build.” — PaulWhoIsAGhost

The point about API fees is direct. X has steadily priced out independent builders, while AT Protocol invites them in. For a community whose strength has always come from its builders, that difference equals more freedom to innovate.

Tezos has been doing the deeper work on the value layer for years, with immutable provenance, programmable ownership, and royalties that genuinely reach artists. We have been building quietly in a space that rewards patience over noise. Now there are blue skies above, a strong foundation at our feet, and it’s time to expand.

Stronger Together

Tezos Commons is on Bluesky, and you can find us here. None of the tools so far should be considered a finished product, but we have a foundation ready for the builders, developers, artists, and moderators of Tezos who are looking for more.

I keep coming back to this as an artist before anything else. I have spent years scattered across platforms that were never built for me. Surrounded by systemic limitations on how I can share my art and the songs I sing. Watching my 3D painting and interactive album minted on Objkt, render through Ovoid, to be fully experienced inside a feed I was already scrolling, was something that got me excited about our expansion to Bluesky.

The space where I show up socially and the space where I show my work can be the same front end now, thanks to a small test case built on AT Protocol. That is the part that has me genuinely fired up. If you are also passionate about building bridges towards decentralization, join us on our journey in building one between AT Protocol and Tezos. It brings the beautiful things we create to light, where more people can find them.

But if your first reaction was confusion after reading terms like “post-quantum,” “zk-STARKs,” “elliptic curves,” “detector keys,” and a bunch of other technical buzzwords… don’t worry, you’re definitely not the only one. That was pretty much my reaction too.

So I spent some time digging deeper to try to understand what TzEL actually is, what problem it’s trying to solve, how it works, and who it’s really for. And honestly, the more I looked into it, the more I realized this was approaching blockchain privacy from a very different angle.

At first glance, it’s easy to compare it to existing privacy systems like Sapling. After all, both involve shielded transactions and private transfers. But the core idea behind TzEL is actually a little different. TzEL is not just trying to make blockchain transactions private today. It’s experimenting with how blockchain privacy could still survive years from now in a world where quantum computing becomes a real threat.

But let’s take it from the start.

The Problem TzEL Is Trying To Solve

When people hear discussions around quantum computing and blockchains, it’s easy to assume this means all blockchain transactions are suddenly at risk of becoming visible in the future. But that’s not really what TzEL is about.

Normal blockchain transactions are already public. You can already inspect wallets, balances, and transaction history on-chain today. The real issue is with blockchain privacy systems themselves. Privacy-focused systems introduce encryption to hide transaction details, balances, memos, recipients, and other sensitive information from public view. And today, that encryption works well.

The problem is that blockchain data is permanent. Even if encrypted transaction data is secure today, it still lives on-chain forever. This creates a long-term problem often referred to as “harvest now, decrypt later.” The idea is fairly simple, someone may not be able to decrypt private transaction data today, but they could potentially collect and store encrypted blockchain data now and wait until quantum computers become powerful enough to break the cryptography protecting it years later.

And that’s really the core idea behind TzEL. Instead of only asking “how do we keep blockchain transactions private today?”, TzEL is exploring how blockchain privacy systems themselves could continue remaining private years from now, even after quantum computing becomes an everyday reality.

So What Exactly Is TzEL?

TzEL is an experimental private transaction rollup running on Tezos testnet and, as far as we know, one of the first live blockchain experiments specifically exploring private transactions designed for a post-quantum future.

Users can shield tez into the rollup, transfer them privately, and later unshield them back to Layer 1. The project also experiments with encrypted memos, viewing keys, detector keys, and delegated proving. Now, some of those terms can sound intimidating at first, but the general idea is actually pretty practical. TzEL is designed around selective disclosure rather than full transparency, meaning users can keep transactions private by default while still having ways to reveal specific information when needed.

What also makes TzEL interesting is that this is not just a cryptography paper or isolated proof-of-concept. The project already includes a working rollup stack, wallets, bridging flows, proving infrastructure, and tooling that developers can experiment with directly on testnet. The broader stack is also being developed openly, including the wallet, prover, and rollup node infrastructure.

Under the hood, TzEL uses a different cryptographic approach than most blockchain privacy systems today. Instead of relying on elliptic-curve cryptography, which is commonly used across much of the blockchain industry, the project experiments with post-quantum cryptography and zk-STARK proofs designed to resist future quantum attacks.

Now, this is the point where things can start getting very technical very quickly, so I don’t want to go too deep into the cryptography side of things in this article. For people interested in digging deeper into the architecture, proof systems, and technical design behind TzEL, I’ll link to the documentation towards the end. The important takeaway here is simply that TzEL is taking a first step toward building private blockchain transactions designed for a post-quantum future from the ground up.

What Made TzEL Possible on Tezos?

Let’s talk about another interesting thing that quickly became obvious. This is the kind of experiment that probably would not fit very naturally on most blockchains today. A big reason for that comes down to proof sizes. The zk-STARK proofs used by TzEL are huge compared to what most blockchain systems normally handle, reaching around 300KB per transaction. And while that may not sound massive at first glance, on-chain data adds up very quickly. On many networks, trying to push that amount of data directly through Layer 1 repeatedly would become difficult, expensive, or simply impractical. That’s where Tezos starts becoming a very interesting environment for something like this.

Instead of forcing all of that heavy proof data directly onto Layer 1, TzEL can take advantage of Tezos’ rollup architecture and the Data Availability Layer (DAL), which was designed specifically to help handle much larger amounts of data more efficiently. And honestly, I think this is one of the more interesting parts of the project overall because it turns some of Tezos’ infrastructure upgrades from “nice theory” into something much more tangible.

Features like rollups and the DAL can sometimes feel abstract when people talk about them. You hear terms like scalability, modular infrastructure, or data availability, but it’s not always easy to picture what those things actually enable in practice. TzEL is a pretty good example of that in action.

It’s not just experimenting with post-quantum privacy itself, but also showing how the infrastructure Tezos has been building over the past few years can open the door for entirely different kinds of blockchain applications and research experiments that would otherwise be much harder or impossible to run.

Still Early, But Worth Exploring

It’s important to stress that TzEL is still experimental research code and not something intended for production use or real value transactions right now. The project is currently a live prototype focused on experimentation, testing, and research around post-quantum privacy systems.

But honestly, that’s also what makes it interesting. A lot of conversations around post-quantum blockchain security stay theoretical. TzEL turns some of those ideas into something developers can actually interact with today. And this is not just a standalone cryptography demo either. The project already includes a working rollup stack, wallets, bridging flows, proving infrastructure, and tooling for experimentation on testnet.

For developers and builders interested in digging deeper, the documentation, whitepaper, tutorials, and source code are all publicly available through the TzEL GitHub repository. You can also learn more through TzEL’s website.

And if you want a deeper breakdown of the thinking behind the project, we recently released a TezTalks interview with Arthur Breitman focused entirely on TzEL, post-quantum privacy, and some of the design decisions behind the project.

Even in its current early form, TzEL offers a pretty interesting glimpse into where long-term blockchain privacy research may be heading, while also giving builders something real they can already start experimenting with today.

We are already seeing what that looks like across the Tezos ecosystem. Newly imagined platforms like mederu.art are redefining what a collecting experience can feel like. HackTez has emerged as a dedicated hub for builders. An entire operating system is being customized for the next season of WTF Gameshow Is This. These are real signs of life, built by people who care about the future of art and technology together.

I only recently tuned into Reveal Protocol, a project in active development running on the Tezos EVM, Etherlink. It feels especially ambitious, taking on some of the most stubborn obstacles facing musicians who want to release their work as NFTs. This is my first look at what they are building, why it matters, and where things are headed.

Music Has a Problem

Music as an art form has struggled to find its footing in web3, and that deserves more attention than it typically gets. The visual arts conversation in this ecosystem has been rich, evolving, and at times genuinely culture-shifting. Music has largely remained on the sidelines, which is strange when you consider how decentralized infrastructure could empower musicians in exactly the same ways it has empowered visual artists: returning ownership, enabling direct community building, and giving creators real economic stakes in their own work.

The structural problem is not unique to web3. Streaming has conditioned listeners to treat music as ambient content, something to play in the background rather than something to hold and value. Streaming pays fractions of a cent per play and returns almost nothing of lasting value to the artist. Platforms are overwhelmed with releases every day, and without a significant production and marketing budget behind you, it is especially easy to feel invisible. Privilege has quietly become the gatekeeper in this climate, and many of the tools that exist to distribute music end up reinforcing the same hierarchies they claim to disrupt.

Something new is taking shape, and it starts from a different premise entirely, one where the community formed around a release becomes part of the outcome. One where there is no middle man between the artist and the listener. One where listeners become collectors the same as viewers do of visual art.

Who Is Building

Reveal Protocol was built by people who understand the music problem from personal experience, and who bring the kind of passion that gives a project its backbone. The founders are good friends of mine. We have collaborated many times through TezTones and various Tezos community events over the years, so my investment in watching this develop is personal.

Bosque Gracias is an art residency based in rural Patagonia, Argentina. Earlier this year, forest fires burned down everything they had built there. What remained were the digital artifacts. The works that had been minted as NFTs were the only remnants of art that had otherwise been reduced to ash. That experience sharpened something for the people involved.

Decentralized infrastructure is not just a distribution tool. It is a form of preservation, of permanence, of ownership that survives what physical spaces cannot. Reveal Protocol grows directly from that understanding, and you can feel it in the choices the protocol makes about who holds what, and why. The team did not wait for perfect conditions. They caught a vibe and started building.

Reveal Protocol is being developed through focused collaboration and the kind of AI-assisted workflow that has quietly changed what small teams can accomplish, the same approach behind mederu and other recent projects emerging from this ecosystem. What makes Bosque Gracias distinct in that process is who is in the room. Artists, musicians, and technically minded collaborators, each carrying a different relationship to the problem they are solving. The decisions about how releases are structured, how listeners are rewarded, and how early participation is recognized are being made by artists, for artists. You can tell from first impression too, the UI is beautiful.

What I Can Tell You So Far

The central idea behind Reveal Protocol is to reframe what it means to put music out into the world. Rather than releasing a track in the traditional sense, an artist uploads the complete work and divides it into individually collectible segments called fragments. Each fragment is inscribed on-chain through Tezos EVM, grounding the release in Tezos infrastructure with the permanence and transparency that implies. However, the song is not considered released until every fragment has been minted, putting the audience in the driver’s seat. It makes a game of the revelation.

The protocol connects directly to the Tezos ecosystem through a legacy bridge to Tezos EVM. Artists bring music they have already released on Tezos into Reveal Protocol, selecting from their existing catalog and bridging those works over to a new playing field. That connection matters because it honors what collectors have already built on Tezos while extending the life and reach of those releases into new territory. Music can also be released directly on the platform, which is important to note for any artists completely new to the Tezos ecosystem.

From there the structure builds outward in layers. Early collectors earn grains, points that accumulate through listening and fragment reveals, marking them as top contributors to a song before it reaches the wider world. Listener communities called scouting armadas can then push tracks further, earning grains tied to royalty pools as they go. Once a song is fully revealed, the artist can then decide to distribute it to mainstream platforms, arriving there with a real community already formed rather than hoping one assembles afterward.

Future versions of the protocol may allow those early participants to be credited on-chain, a formal recognition that they were part of making the release happen. Users can also buy day passes to listen to unlimited music on the platform, with all funds automatically getting distributed to artists and contributors based on what you listen to.

I will cover the full mechanics in depth in a Part Two, including a tutorial. What I can say now is that the architecture feels genuinely different from anything I have seen attempted in the MusicNFT space. The reasoning behind each layer is intentional and coherent. The system treats music the way the Tezos visual art community has learned to treat digital art: as something worth owning, worth participating in, and worth building around. The protocol even enables remixing in an official capacity, much like how web3 often encourages derivative work.

Two songs of mine are already waiting to be revealed. I successfully bridged works I had released on Tezos over to Etherlink, defined their fragments, and now they sit waiting for listeners to reveal, earn grains, and even remix. That is not a promotional statement. It is my commitment to living and experiencing the things I write about. As a hands-on learner, I will keep experimenting and building a deeper understanding so that Part Two can include a proper walkthrough.

Part Two Soon

Reveal Protocol is still finding its full shape, and the best coverage of a project like this is not through a race to summarize. It is a willingness to stay close and report on what it actually becomes with time. That is what I intend to do. My music gets to be the guinea pig.

I encourage any music artists that read this to give it a try for themselves. This is new territory waiting for pioneers to uncover new work flows. If you are part of the Tezos community, or if you have been quietly wondering whether something more intentional is being built for musicians in this space, keep Reveal Protocol on your radar. Follow developments here. You can also follow Bosque Gracias here. Stay tuned for Part Two.

This testnet offers the first opportunity to experiment with applications that can interact across both environments as part of the same flow.

With that now available, developers can start deploying, testing, and seeing what this new model actually makes possible.

Let’s take a closer look at what’s being introduced here, why it matters, and how you can start experimenting with it.

One System, Not a Set of Workarounds

If you look at how most ecosystems are evolving, they tend to solve problems by adding more pieces.

Different environments, different layers, different chains, each doing its own thing. It works, but it also creates fragmentation. Assets live in one place, applications in another, and moving between them becomes part of the experience, often adding extra complexity, and in many cases, additional risk. Tezos X takes a different route.

Tezos X is designed to reduce that friction by bringing those environments closer together from the start. Within Tezos X, a single shared ledger can be addressed through both the EVM and Michelson interfaces. That design enables native atomic composability.

Native atomic composability is what allows contracts across different environments to interact natively within a single transaction so that either all actions succeed or none do, without requiring intermediary steps like bridging or wrapping assets.

For example, imagine a ticketing platform built with Michelson, where tickets are priced in tez. A buyer comes in holding USDC in a MetaMask wallet on the EVM side. Normally, that means extra steps, swapping, bridging, wrapping, and moving assets across boundaries before anything can actually happen.

Here, those boundaries don’t exist within the system. The EVM user can interact directly with the Michelson contract, and the payment and the purchase can happen together, in a single transaction, executed atomically. All-or-nothing. No bridging, no wrapping, no loose ends.

One action, one result. That’s where things start to get interesting when you’re building.

What This Actually Changes for Builders

Up until now, building usually meant committing to one environment. You pick your stack, your tools, your ecosystem, and everything follows from that.

With Tezos X, that trade-off starts to disappear.

If you’re already building with Solidity, you can keep doing exactly that. Same tooling, same workflows, same mental model. But now, you also have access to the Michelson side when it actually makes sense to use it. At the same time, if you’re building with Michelson, you’re no longer operating in a more isolated environment. You can tap directly into EVM-based users, assets, and liquidity without relying on external bridges or separate deployments.

That opens up a different kind of design space.

Some parts of your app can stay EVM-shaped, flexible, familiar, and easy to work with. But for parts where guarantees really matter, like how assets are handled or how certain rules are enforced, you can lean on the Michelson side.

Michelson contracts can be formally verified, meaning their behavior can be mathematically proven to match what they’re supposed to do. While this is something that can be done with EVM contracts too, it’s generally much easier to do in Michelson, as it was built from the start with formal verification in mind and you can even prove properties that are significantly harder to establish in EVM-based systems.

You don’t need to go deep into the theory to see the value, it simply gives you stronger guarantees where it counts. And with AI-assisted tooling putting formal methods within reach of almost any builder, it is becoming far easier to make use of those guarantees in practice. In an industry that keeps getting reminded how expensive smart contract failures can be, those guarantees are becoming much harder to overlook.

So instead of forcing everything into one model, you can start designing applications where both environments work together within the same transaction flow.

What Comes Next

Once you start thinking about it this way, the next step is seeing how it holds up.

This phase is about seeing how these interactions behave in real conditions, what feels intuitive, what breaks, and what needs to change before anything moves further. It’s where assumptions meet actual usage, and where things become clearer once people start building with it. How builders use it, and where it breaks, will shape what moves forward to mainnet.

And that next step isn’t far off. Following this phase, an Etherlink governance proposal is expected around June 2026. If approved by bakers, Tezos X moves to mainnet with both the EVM interface and the Michelson interface live and fully composable from day one.

If you want to get a broader picture of how all of this fits together, the Tezos X roadmap update goes into more detail on the direction of the project and what’s coming next.

Getting Started

At this point, the most useful thing isn’t another explanation, it’s actually using it. The testnet is live, the environment is there, and this is where builders come in.

Try things out, deploy something small, and see how it behaves. Push it a bit, break a few assumptions, and get a feel for how these interactions work when you’re actually building with them. And if something doesn’t work the way you expect, you can share feedback or ask questions in the dedicated Tezos X channel in the Tezos Discord.

If you want to get started, you can find everything you need here:

• Tezos X Previewnet dashboard
• Documentation

This latest upgrade proposal brings a handful of notable changes to the protocol, with most of the focus landing on Tezos X infrastructure, Smart Rollup performance, and the early testing of two features that could become much more relevant down the line.

So, let’s take a high-level look at what Ushuaia brings to the table.

A Stronger Backend for Tezos X

A big part of Ushuaia focuses on strengthening the infrastructure Tezos X is being built around, particularly the Data Availability Layer (DAL) and Smart Rollups.

Without getting too deep into the weeds, the DAL is a core part of Tezos’ scaling design. It is what allows Smart Rollups to publish and access large amounts of data without pushing all of that load directly onto Layer 1, making it possible for Tezos to scale without simply bloating the base chain.

The first major change here is a substantial increase in DAL bandwidth, jumping from roughly 0.66 MB/s to 10 MB/s. That is a sizeable expansion in the amount of data Tezos can make available every second, giving Smart Rollups far more breathing room as the network prepares for heavier rollup usage in the future.

Ushuaia also introduces what the core devs call Dynamic DAL Attestation Lag, which changes how quickly that data can move through the system. Instead of DAL data always waiting through the same rigid delay before becoming usable, that waiting period can now be adjusted depending on how quickly the required attestations come in. In short, data does not have to sit around longer than necessary before Smart Rollups can make use of it.

And the backend tuning does not stop there. Ushuaia also includes upgrades to the WASM PVM, which you can think of as the internal workspace where Smart Rollups do their processing behind the scenes.

Ushuaia makes that workspace more efficient when it comes to loading data and preparing storage before tasks are executed, helping rollups run more smoothly as the network continues building toward heavier scaling usage.

Taken together, these changes are all part of Tezos getting its scaling foundation into place. But Ushuaia doesn’t stop at backend improvements. It also introduces two separate feature-flagged additions that give the community an early look at what may be coming further down the line.

Tezos Liquid Staking Takes Its First Step Into Testing

Beyond the infrastructure upgrades, Ushuaia also includes one of the more talked-about additions in recent weeks: Enshrined Liquid Staking.

This is the proposed native Liquid Staking Token model on Tezos (sTEZ**)**, which would eventually allow users to stake their tez while also receiving a liquid tokenized representation of that position that can still be moved or used across DeFi, rollups, etc. In other words, it opens the door for users to keep earning staking rewards without having their capital sit completely idle.

The feature is included behind a feature flag, which allows it to be tested and evaluated on testnets, but it will not automatically activate on mainnet at this stage. This step allows the community to experiment with the system on testnets and prepare for possible future activation once testing is complete.

If you want to learn more about how Tezos’ proposed Liquid Staking Token works, I go into it in more detail here: Understanding Tezos’ Proposed Liquid Staking Token (sTEZ).

Preparing for Quantum-Resistant Accounts

The other feature-flagged addition in Ushuaia is Post-Quantum User Keys, which are new types of accounts designed to resist future quantum computing attacks.

Put simply, these keys use cryptography that could stay secure even if powerful quantum computers exist down the line. You can think of them like stronger locks on a door, they make it much harder for a future technology to break in and compromise your funds.

Like the Liquid Staking feature, Post-Quantum User Keys are included behind a feature flag, which means they are currently for testing and experimentation only, and will not automatically activate on mainnet.

This is an early step in preparing Tezos for the next era of account security, giving developers and the community a chance to explore how these keys behave and integrate before wider adoption.

It’s worth mentioning that there was another feature suggested for Ushuaia that didn’t make it into the proposal. The reason? Community feedback during the heads-up process on Tezos Agora. Almost all features in this proposal went through that same loop, which clearly shows why this feedback loop is so important, the community’s input directly affects what features make it into the proposal.

Ushuaia is an important step forward for Tezos, bringing a range of features and refinements that will make the network’s foundations much stronger and prepare it for the future. As always, I’ve tried to keep this at a high level, so if you’re interested in more details about the individual features, check the announcement on the Nomadic Labs blog.

You can also follow the proposal’s progress through governance on Tezos Agora. The proposal is now live, so bakers can vote, and users should make sure their chosen baker is aware.

After all, governance is one of our strongest tools. Let’s put it to work!

When first introduced in 2024, the ‘Tezos X’ roadmap described an ambitious vision for Tezos:

A next-generation blockchain architecture with multiple tool stacks running as a single system, starting with EVM and Michelson. High performance, full composability, and broad interoperability.

Fast forward to 2026: the prerequisites are in place, priorities have been sharpened by market signals, and we are happy to announce that the architecture enabling EVM and Michelson to run together as one system is about to ship – starting with a testnet in April.

This blog post covers:

• A recap of Tezos X

• What’s coming (and when)

• Milestones reached

• How priorities changed

Tezos X, a recap

Tezos X is a new execution layer for Tezos. It’s where transactions run and smart contracts live – designed to remove friction for users and expand what builders can ship.

For users, Tezos X offers experiences that simply work. Imagine an artist listing an NFT priced in tez on a marketplace written in Michelson (Tezos’ native smart-contract language). A buyer wants to pay in USDC, held by an EVM smart contract. On Tezos X, both contracts share the same chain and the same ledger, so the swap and the purchase settle atomically in a single transaction. No bridge, no wrapped tokens.

For builders, Tezos X offers new designs and frictionless development. A Michelson contract can call an EVM contract (and vice versa) inside one transaction, letting a single app tap user bases and liquidity that used to be siloed. Contracts deployed on the Michelson runtime can also be formally verified – mathematically proven to behave as specified – for extra assurance in audit and in production. EVM developers bring existing Solidity contracts and tooling directly. Michelson developers keep working as they do today – no rewrite needed.

Under the hood, Tezos X is an enshrined, non-custodial rollup: a fast execution layer that settles back to Tezos Layer 1 for security, built into the Tezos protocol itself, with users always in control of their assets and free to exit.

What’s coming now

The execution layer will initially offer two interfaces:

• EVM (Etherlink)

• Michelson (available on the Tezlink Shadownet testnet)

It will be introduced as an Etherlink upgrade proposal that adds a Michelson interface, effectively evolving Etherlink into the execution layer.

This approach makes the execution layer instantly EVM-compatible, while the Michelson interface brings compatibility with Tezos’ Layer 1. The architecture enables additional interfaces in the future (for example JavaScript), and more will come.

The planned launch of Tezos X was also covered by Tezos co-founder Arthur Breitman in a keynote at the TezDev conference in March 2026. It’s recommended viewing for a high-level update on current protocol and ecosystem developments.

A frictionless path for existing Tezos apps

The Michelson interface offers a way for existing Tezos applications built on Layer 1 to get the benefit of Tezos X.

• The vast majority of Michelson contracts can be redeployed as-is and work out of the box.

• Developers can keep using the wallets, connectivity libraries, explorers, and other tools they already rely on, thanks to each interface’s interoperability with its origin ecosystem.

• Etherlink tools for Layer 1 interoperability (bridges, fast withdrawals) will be extended to include the Michelson interface.

Layer 1 itself continues to evolve toward a lean, fast consensus layer, supporting the existing ecosystem and with XTZ and FA tokens easily transferable to and from the execution layer.

The timeline

The expected near-term timeline is the following:

May 2026: Testing. A new testnet launches with Michelson and EVM interfaces on a single shared ledger. This is the first chance to test native atomic cross-interface calls between Michelson and EVM contracts in practice. Developers will be encouraged to deploy, test, and break things.

June 2026: Etherlink governance vote. After testnet validation, an Etherlink upgrade proposal is submitted to bakers. If approved, Tezos X becomes a reality on mainnet, starting with Michelson and EVM interfaces – live and fully composable.

H2 2026: RISC-V migration. The rollup engine migrates from WASM to RISC-V, enabling more runtimes, JIT compilation, and more predictable gas accounting. Critically, it makes adding new interfaces significantly faster, opening the door to mainstream programming languages later.

Milestones reached

The launch of Tezos X on mainnet builds on numerous improvements and innovations introduced since 2024.

Layer 1 has been continuously optimized for speed, efficiency, security, and decentralization. Block time has been reduced to now 6 seconds, while the staking UX and economics have been improved and fine-tuned. In short, Layer 1 is rapidly becoming a fast, lean consensus layer for Tezos X.

The Data Availability Layer (DAL) has been launched, putting a check mark next to a major milestone on the roadmap. The DAL ensures that Tezos has the bandwidth required for publishing millions of transactions per second, while security and integrity remains guaranteed by Layer 1. The bandwidth is continuously being improved – an upgrade to 10 MB/s is part of the upcoming Ushuaia protocol proposal.

The launch of Etherlink was another key milestone. Besides the added EVM interface for Tezos, Etherlink, Smart Rollup technology offers execution scalability far beyond what can be achieved on Layer 1, while still being non-custodial and governed by Tezos bakers. Etherlink has in many ways been a prototype for Tezos X, with much of the innovation implemented here first.

Priorities: what moved up, what moved down

Though the roadmap and vision have been broadly stable since 2024, priorities have been adjusted in response to market signals.

Some work has moved up on the agenda – and some things have been added – due to necessity or demand, while other items remain on the agenda but are no longer part of the near-term path.

Note that any property mentioned for Etherlink will carry over into the unified execution layer, should the upgrade proposal be adopted.

What moved up

• Throughput: During 2025, Etherlink’s maximal throughput was increased almost 14x to 27 Mgas/s (~1300 TPS), with experiments showing further potential for significant increases.

• Latency: Work on latency has already enabled 10–20x faster confirmations than originally envisioned, from “subsecond” to milliseconds. Etherlink now offers instant confirmations via a sequencer, enabling 50ms latency today and further reductions in the future.

• MEV protection: The instant confirmations provided by the sequencer also offer guarantees about transaction order and the result of the next block, effectively providing MEV protection.

• BLS signatures: This signature scheme was introduced to enable signature aggregation, supporting Layer 1 optimization and DAL integration, and bringing protocol-native multisig functionality.

What moved down (for now)

• JavaScript interface: The absence of strong demand at this stage means that enabling a JavaScript interface (Jstz) in Mainnet is no longer a near-term priority. An important milestone, the RISC-V migration—required to support additional runtimes such as JavaScript—is targeted for H2 2026, as mentioned above.

• Blind sequencer: The current sequencer is decentrally governed by Tezos bakers, holds sequencing power only, and can be replaced by vote. On-chain settlement adds censorship-resistant finality in seconds. Our market analysis indicates that, at this stage, the ultra-low latency achievable with this approach is a stronger value driver for network participants than alternative architectures with higher latency.

• Data Availability Sampling: Sampling enables higher scalability by establishing security about available data without requiring an honest majority of nodes to download everything. However, at 10 MB/s bandwidth, the DAL supports plenty of throughput for the near future, and sampling is therefore not a near-term priority.

Finally, an initially envisioned automatic upgrade of Layer 1 apps to the execution layer has been dropped. Instead, app maintainers can move ad hoc, supported by tooling to make the process smooth.

From “canonical rollup” to “execution layer”

Some readers may have noticed that “execution layer” has replaced previous talk of a “canonical rollup”.

While “canonical rollup” partly captures the role Tezos X has in the Tezos architecture in a technical sense, the term “canonical” is not an intuitive descriptor for most people. Also, “rollup” carries Ethereum L2 connotations that don’t match what Tezos X represents:

• Ethereum’s L2 landscape is fragmented into largely independent and custodial chains with varying security assumptions, offering limited integration with Ethereum’s Layer 1 and each other.

• Tezos X is a unified, single-chain experience for both developers and end users, enshrined in the protocol. No new tokens or controlling entities are involved. The system remains entirely non-custodial.

We believe that “execution layer” better reflects the tightly integrated nature of the architecture, and it sums up the role well: the natural home for applications on Tezos.

Beyond blocks and chains

If the Tezos X roadmap laid out an ambitious path for Tezos, this update marks the point where that path becomes reality.

It is an opportunity for developers and entrepreneurs to think bigger, draw on the best of the EVM and Michelson worlds, and deploy the next generation of Tezos-powered applications and products.

We look forward to supporting builders in exploring the new possibilities through documentation, tutorials, tools, sparring, and other help that makes the path to great products as frictionless as possible.

The long-term belief hasn’t changed. Blockchains should fade into the background. People should use applications that happen to be powered by Tezos, not “use a blockchain” as a primary act. A seamless experience resting on uncompromising security.

Tezos X is what makes it practical: a fast, multi-language, highly composable execution layer secured by a battle-tested, self-amending, and censorship-resistant Layer 1.

Between delegation and staking, it feels like the bases are covered. One offers flexibility and liquidity, the other offers higher rewards in exchange for locking funds. Both serve clear purposes, and so far, they’ve been working well.

But now, a new approach is being proposed. A couple of months ago, a concept called the “Enshrined Liquid Staking” was introduced on Tezos Agora as another potential option around staking. So naturally, a few questions come up.

What exactly is it? How would it work? And maybe most importantly, do we even need it? Here’s how I’ve come to understand it.

The Limits of Delegation and Staking

What Tezos offers today works well within its own environment. Delegation and staking both do what they’re supposed to do, and for a long time, that’s been enough. But things start to shift once you move beyond that.

If you decide to take your tez into DeFi, or move it to environments like Etherlink (upcoming Tezos X), that connection breaks. Your tez is no longer part of the staking flow. It’s active elsewhere, but at the same time, it’s not earning staking rewards, and it’s no longer contributing to securing the network.

This isn’t unique to Tezos. Across other ecosystems, similar patterns have led to the rise of third-party liquid staking solutions, tokens that represent staked assets while still being usable elsewhere. Things like stETH on Ethereum follow this idea, allowing users to stay exposed to staking while still participating in DeFi. Tezos has already seen early versions of this approach as well, with solutions like stXTZ aiming to bridge that gap.

But as useful as these solutions are, they also introduce a new set of considerations.

Adding extra layers to staking

Once you introduce a third-party liquid version of staked assets, the way staking works starts to shift.

Instead of interacting directly with the protocol, users rely on an additional layer that handles staking on their behalf. Depending on the design, that layer can involve smart contracts, operators, or specific coordination mechanisms that sit between the user and the network. That changes a few things.

At the network level, stake is what secures Tezos and what gives participants influence in governance. If more and more of that stake is routed through the same liquid staking systems, it can start to concentrate in fewer places. Not because it’s designed that way, but because liquidity naturally pulls users toward the same solution. Over time, that concentration can matter. It can influence how stake is distributed across bakers, and potentially who ends up having more say in the network.

There’s also the question of trust. Even when systems are transparent, users are no longer interacting only with the protocol, they are relying on how that system is built and maintained. Smart contracts reduce the need for intermediaries, but they don’t remove risk entirely. Bugs, upgrades, or admin keys can all affect how that system behaves over time.

None of this makes liquid staking tokens a bad approach. It solves a real need, and it’s already widely used across the industry. But it does introduce an extra layer between users and the protocol, and that layer comes with tradeoffs that need to be understood.

A Different Approach: Protocol-Level Liquid Staking

source: Mathias Bourgoin’s presentation at TezDev

So what if that extra layer didn’t sit outside the protocol, but inside it? That’s the idea behind the proposed canonical LST on Tezos.

Instead of relying on external systems to manage staking, the mechanism is built directly into the protocol itself. There’s no separate operator, no admin keys, and no third-party contract managing the process. From a user perspective, the interaction stays familiar, but the logic behind it is handled directly by the protocol. The rules are defined at that level and follow the same governance process as everything else on Tezos.

From a user perspective, the flow is straightforward. You deposit tez and receive a liquid token in return (sTEZ). That token represents your share of the underlying stake and can be held, transferred, or used elsewhere, just like any other standard token.

At the same time, this doesn’t mean the system is “hands-off.” There are still mechanisms in place to manage how stake is distributed, how risk is handled, and how the system avoids the kind of concentration we discussed earlier. The difference is that all of this is defined at the protocol level, rather than being handled by an external layer.

So how does that actually work in practice?

How It’s Designed to Work

Source: Canonical LST Whitepaper

At a high level, the idea is simple. You deposit tez into the system and receive a liquid token in return, commonly referred to as sTEZ. That token represents your share of the underlying stake and can be held, transferred, or used elsewhere, just like any other token. From there, the system follows an accrual model.

Instead of distributing rewards as separate payouts, rewards are reflected in the value of the token itself over time. In simple terms, one sTEZ gradually becomes worth more tez as rewards accumulate. The same applies in the opposite direction, where if slashing occurs, that value can decrease as well. When you want to exit, you redeem your sTEZ. The system initiates an unbonding process, similar to unstaking today, and once that period is complete, you receive your tez back.

Behind the scenes, the protocol takes care of how stake is distributed across bakers. But unlike traditional delegation or staking, bakers actively choose to participate in this system. They register and define specific parameters, such as how much of their capacity they allocate to this form of staking and the fee applied to it.

The main difference is that users are no longer the ones deciding where their stake goes. Instead, the protocol handles the allocation itself, spreading it across participating bakers while respecting those parameters and keeping things within limits designed to avoid concentration and maintain a more balanced distribution.

One important detail is that this stake does not carry governance rights. Even though it contributes to securing the network, it doesn’t participate in voting. That separation is intentional, as it avoids concentrating governance power through a liquid token that could otherwise scale quickly across the ecosystem.

So where does this leave us? This isn’t meant to replace delegation or staking. Those are still the core ways people participate in Tezos today. This just adds another option, one that brings liquid staking into the protocol itself, without relying on external solutions and the tradeoffs that come with them.

If it works as intended, it could lead to more tez being staked while still remaining usable elsewhere. That would probably increase the overall staking ratio over time, which in turn can reduce issuance. It might also make it easier for newer bakers to get external stake, which feels really helpful when you are starting out. Keep in mind, this is just how I’ve come to understand things based on what’s been shared so far.

The canonical LST is part of the Ushuaia proposal. If it passes, it won’t be fully active right away. Instead, it would be introduced behind a feature flag, allowing it to be tested in controlled environments like testnets and refined over time. Activation would only come later, in the next (V) proposal, once the system has been evaluated in practice.

There are still parameters and details that need to be finalized, and these are already being discussed on Tezos Agora. If you’re interested in digging deeper, check out the TezDev presentation from Mathias Bourgoin, the whitepaper, and the discussion on Tezos Agora. And if you have an opinion on this, don’t just keep it to yourself, jump into the Agora thread and be part of the conversation.

We’re talking about assets that sit at the core of everything, energy, infrastructure, and manufacturing, yet the way they’re traded still reflects a much older system. In practice, it’s slower, more restricted, and less transparent than you’d assume. It works, but it hasn’t really moved forward with everything else.

There’s now an attempt to rethink that structure. Not by changing the metals themselves, but by rebuilding the infrastructure around them, how they’re accessed, how they’re traded, and how ownership is represented.

From Uranium to Something Broader

Over the past year, uranium.io has come up more than once.

Not as a one-off experiment, but as one of the clearer examples of what this model can actually look like when applied to a real market.

Uranium isn’t exactly easy to deal with. It’s regulated, restricted, and for the most part sits behind institutional walls. Getting exposure has always been limited, not because there’s no demand, but because the infrastructure around it was never built for broad participation.

What uranium.io showed is that this can be approached differently. That you can open up access, keep a real connection to the underlying physical asset, and still make the whole thing usable without going through the usual layers.

So the obvious question becomes: what happens if you try to apply that same approach beyond uranium?

That’s where metals.io comes in.

What

Metals.io takes the same approach we saw with uranium and applies it across a wider set of metals.

Instead of dealing with each market separately, everything sits within a single system. You’ve got access to gold, uranium, and a group of more niche but important materials, all through the same environment.

The experience itself is pretty straightforward. You’re not dealing with large minimums or waiting around for settlement. Access is continuous, ownership can be fractional, and transactions settle onchain rather than over days.

One detail worth noting is that not everything is structured the same way. Gold and uranium are available individually, while the newer additions come as a basket.

What matters more is how the exposure is structured. This isn’t about tracking prices through derivatives or indirect proxies. The model is built around real, physically backed assets, with systems in place to verify that backing, while the infrastructure handles custody, compliance, and pricing in the background.

From the outside, it feels simple. But that simplicity is coming from a system that’s doing a lot of the heavy lifting underneath.

The New Additions

The expansion itself is one part of it. The mix of metals is the other.

I’ll be honest, I hadn’t even heard of most of these before.

Hafnium, rhenium, indium, neodymium, praseodymium. I can barely pronounce half of them, and I’d guess most people are in the same position. These aren’t the kind of metals that come up unless you’re already deep into specific industries.

But once you look into them a bit, you start to see where they fit. They show up in semiconductors, EVs, advanced manufacturing, and defense. Not in a visible way, but somewhere in the background of a lot of the systems we rely on, and that comes with real, ongoing demand.

And that’s probably what makes them interesting here.

Not because they’re new, but because they’ve always felt out of reach. You wouldn’t really know where to start, or how to get direct exposure to them in the first place.

Gold sits on the other end. It’s already accessible and widely understood, so it’s not really solving the same problem here. But it makes sense to have it alongside everything else. If you’re looking at metals, you’re probably looking at gold too, and it shouldn’t mean going somewhere else for it.

So it’s not just about adding more metals. It’s about bringing very different types of markets under the same framework, some that were hard to access, and others that were already accessible but not exactly efficient.

And once that happens, this is where things actually start to change, not in the metals themselves, but in how you get to them.

Access becomes more direct, settlement becomes instant, and pricing starts to become more visible. That might not sound like much, but in markets that have historically been slow, opaque, and restricted, it adds up quickly.

Some of these markets don’t even have clean price discovery today. Prices can depend on who you’re dealing with, or how the trade is structured. Bringing that activity onchain doesn’t solve everything, but it does start to standardize and expose it.

Even from the current interface, it’s clear more metals are on the way, silver, palladium, nickel, and cobalt. If that continues, this starts to look less like a single product and more like a growing layer for accessing the entire metals market, for both institutions and retail users.

Not just in making a few assets easier to reach, but in gradually rebuilding how these markets operate, moving from closed systems to something more open.

It’s still early, but it’s a lot easier to understand once you actually see it.