Tezos Upgrade — PROTO 003

Tezos is about to upgrade to the 3rd protocol iteration, which improves the network and gets things ready for the first voting period. This upgrade achieves the following:

1. Adds some additional RPC API endpoints for voting support to allow 3rd party developers to build cool new user interfaces
2. Fixes network SPAM issues with a fee overhaul
3. Fixes a few other bugs

You can read full details here.

TezBox — Updating to PROTO 003

To ensure maximum availability and functionality, we have completed our updates to align TezBox with PROTO 003, as well as updating all of our backend nodes (TezRPC nodes) and tezos libraries (eztz.js). We will be rolling out the following platform updates as follows:

1. Web Wallet — update will be rolled out a few blocks before the upgrade (block 204762), and is functionally compatible with both the old and new protocol.
2. Desktop Wallets /Browser Extensions— updates will be rolled out in the next few hours to GitHub/Chrome Store, and posted to Twitter. Feel free to download/install these updates and have them ready. You can run it prior to the upgrade, but the newer version uses the updated fee model (read below).

Fee changes

The biggest changes that affect TezBox are the fees — it is now very unlikely that 0 fee transactions will get baked, so we have adjusted our fees, gas and storage limits to reflect the changes. Here is a quick overview of the new fees:

1. Transactions will now cost a minimum 1420μꜩ (0.001420ꜩ) in fees for basic transactions — you will need to adjust accordingly if you are sending to a smart contract
2. Sending to an empty tz* account (implicit) will incur an additional burn fee of 0.257ꜩ (similar to the origination burn of a KT1 account)
3. Origination will incur a minimum fee of 1400μꜩ (0.001400ꜩ) as well as the existing 0.257ꜩ origination burn.
4. Revealing your public key will incur a fixed fee of 1150μꜩ (0.001150ꜩ)— this will occur when you inject your first operation (transaction or origination in the case of TezBox). This is only paid for your main tz1 account.

These are based on the current defaults that bakers will be set to use with the new PROTO 003, but feel free to set a higher fee if you wish. We have thus removed the No Fee option, and updated our Low/Medium/High fee options. You can still set a custom fee as well.

Note: When dealing with smart contracts, use the following formula:

min_fee = 100μꜩ + (storage_limit x 1μꜩ) + (gas_limit x 0.1μꜩ)

Other changes

We’ve also merged a few of the other changes we have been working on:

1. Avatar/blockies will now match TzScan
2. Errors should now display correctly (and provide more information)
3. Tweaked messaging and added links to purchase hardware wallets
4. Fixes compatibility issues with Zeronet
5. Added new proto to protos array
6. Small UI fixes
7. Small bugs occurring behind the scenes

Please enjoy the update, and remember to update your tezos nodes if you haven’t already!