Tezos — Amendable and Formally Verifiable by Design — Advanced Cryptoledger Technology
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Introduction — Welcome to Tezos
Tezos was developed by ex-Morgan Stanley analyst Arthur Breitman and released in 2018. As a cryptocurrency, Tezos faced several problems during its infancy, but finally garnered an ICO worth of 230 million USD.
Now, this is not sponsored content, nor are we doing any advertising. But we have noticed some features that the Tezos cryptoledger (XTZ ‘tez’ cryptocurrency) has which sets it in a class of its own. Simply speaking, some of the features in Tezos are missing from many DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology) stacks.
And there are several reasons to include them! Among those reasons are amendability, practicality, accuracy, and mission-critical system features. Indeed, the Michelson smart contract language has given me a point to ponder — so many DLT technologies exist, which do not have — yet desperately need — this feature!
Now this is a meet-your-need article. We have divided the entire article into modular self-contained articles that you could read individually to understand certain points. We know that senior management executives are busy — remarkably busy. So, we have structured this piece of writing in such a way that it answers all your questions in the least possible time. You can follow the Table of Contents to the topics you need to know, or skim through the entire article. Either way, if you want to understand Tezos, look no further — you have come to the right place!
The Cryptocurrency Fork
A little background is necessary here. Why would you need a DLT platform that is amendable? Because of the cryptocurrency concept of a hard fork.
We quote from the Wikipedia Entry for Blockchain:
In blockchain, a fork is defined variously as:
“what happens when a blockchain diverges into two potential paths forward”
“a change in protocol” or
a situation that “occurs when two or more blocks have the same block height”
Forks are related to the fact that different parties need to use common rules to maintain the history of the blockchain. When parties are not in agreement, alternative chains may emerge. While most forks are short-lived some are permanent. Short-lived forks are due to the difficulty of reaching fast consensus in a distributed system. Whereas permanent forks (in the sense of protocol changes) have been used to add new features to a blockchain, to reverse the effects of hacking, or catastrophic bugs on a blockchain as was the case with the bitcoin fork on 6 August 2010 or the fork between Ethereum and Ethereum Classic.
Hard forks
A hard fork is a rule change such that the software validating according to the old rules will see the blocks produced according to the new rules as invalid. In case of a hard fork, all nodes meant to work in accordance with the new rules need to upgrade their software.
If one group of nodes continues to use the old software while the other nodes use the new software, a permanent split can occur. For example, Ethereum has hard-forked to “make whole” the investors in The DAO, which had been hacked by exploiting a vulnerability in its code. In this case, the fork resulted in a split creating Ethereum and Ethereum Classic chains.
In 2014 the Nxt community was asked to consider a hard fork that would have led to a rollback of the blockchain records to mitigate the effects of a theft of 50 million NXT from a major cryptocurrency exchange. The hard fork proposal was rejected, and some of the funds were recovered after negotiations and ransom payment.
Alternatively, to prevent a permanent split, a majority of nodes using the new software may return to the old rules, as was the case of bitcoin split on 12 March 2013.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_(blockchain)
There have been multiple instances of cases where changes to the underlying protocols that govern cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, such as the split between Ethereum and Ethereum Classic, have caused a huge amount of financial loss, wrong policies, ineffectual recoveries, and many more such problems through hard forks. So, we have a real problem on our hands — cryptocurrencies are not just unstable and volatile in nature, they are also unreliable and prone to changes in infrastructure that can happen anytime, anywhere. And that too from reasons as variable as hacking (see this link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_DAO_(organization)) to differences between implementations (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin — new features were required).
A change-resistant cryptocurrency and cryptoledger was the need of the hour. That became the root cause of the birth of Tezos.
Tezos — The Change-Resistant Cryptocurrency
So, how can you create a cryptocurrency that allows change? By designing for it. Tezos was designed to be a self-amending, self-governing cryptocurrency. To resist the phenomenon of redundancy on the Internet, we quote from the white paper of Tezos:
Tezos can instantiate any blockchain based ledger. The operations of a regular blockchain are implemented as a purely functional module abstracted into a shell responsible for network operations. Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc. can all be represented within Tezos by implementing the proper interface to the network layer. Most importantly, Tezos supports meta upgrades: the protocols can evolve by amending their own code. To achieve this, Tezos begins with a seed protocol defining a procedure for stakeholders to approve amendments to the protocol, including amendments to the voting procedure itself.
Tezos is implemented in OCaml, a powerful functional programming language offering speed, an unambiguous syntax and semantic, and an ecosystem making Tezos a good candidate for formal proofs of correctness.
Meta-upgrades! Changes to the way things are changed! A remarkably interesting idea. For one, this would ensure to all stakeholders (developers, miners/bakers (hold on, will explain), investors, startups) that this cryptocurrency will not be subject to forks. Even more, being self-governed, the current owners of Tezos can choose the best possible protocol that the ecosystem needs.
The white paper goes on to clarify:
A blockchain protocol can be decomposed into three distinct protocols:
1. The network protocol discovers blocks and broadcasts transactions.
2. The transaction protocol specifies what makes a transaction valid.
3. The consensus protocol forms consensus around a unique chain.
· Tezos implements a generic network shell.
· This shell is agnostic to the transaction protocol and to the consensus protocol.
This allows various mechanisms to be swapped in and out at will, leading to a perfectly decoupled design.
Another quote, this time from the Wikipedia entry for Tezos:
In 2017, the Tezos Foundation, a Switzerland based non-profit, raised $232 million in a fundraiser and became one of the biggest ICOs of the 2017 cryptocurrency boom.
At Tezos, all stakeholders can participate in managing the protocol. The selection cycle offers a formal and systematic procedure for stakeholders to agree on proposed protocol changes. By combining this in-chain mechanism with self-change, Tezos can change this initial selection process to adopt better management mechanisms as soon as it is realized.
The core change allows Tezos to take it to the next level without having to “fork” it into two different block chains.
Design
The primary protocol of Tezos utilizes proof of stake (PoS) and supports Turing complete smart contracts in a domain specific language called Michelson. In Tezos’ PoS model, users can lend money to validators to earn partial staking rewards without validating blocks directly, not to be confused with being a validator. Validating transactions in Tezos is known as baking and validators are known as bakers.
The Tezos protocol allows itself to be amended by a staged process performed by committing operations to the stored blockchain to submit proposals (intended code changes) and to vote on those changes. If a proposal receives enough votes the protocol updates itself to incorporate the code changes.
Truly remarkable. Just for completeness, we will discuss Proof-of-Stake and Turing-complete smart contracts. These are some of the key features of Tezos that distinguish it from the vast collection of cryptocurrencies out there, each vaunting itself as the next big solution to the world economy’s needs.
But first — some information about the consensus algorithm for Tezos. After all, if we invest in a cryptocurrency, we should be aware about the mining process (in this case — baking process — a completely arbitrary choice of terminology).
Consensus Algorithm
Tezos uses a chain-based PoS algorithm for consensus, which many people call Liquid Proof-of-Stake. To understand this PoS algorithm, we will break it up into three main sections:
Block Creation (Baking)
Block creation is the way that the blockchain makes progress. In Tezos, participants who create blocks are called bakers. Bakers contribute their computing power to the network to validate transactions. For doing so, they are rewarded by the protocol in the form of newly minted XTZ (16 XTZ per block).
To be considered a baker, a participant needs to own at least 10,000 XTZ (1 roll). The more rolls someone has, the higher their chance of being given the rights to bake the next block. If there are 10 rolls activated at some point in time, and a baker owns 2/10 of those rolls, they have a 20% chance of being given the rights to create the next block
To bake, you will need to put up a security deposit (your “Proof of Stake”) of 512 XTZ per block created. This deposit is locked up for 5 cycles (~14 days). This deposit can be slashed if the baker double bakes (the “Nothing-at-Stake Problem”).
Delegating
If someone does not have 10,000 XTZ or does not want to set up computing infrastructure to bake blocks, they can delegate their coins to a baker. Delegating lets coin holders “lend” their coins to a baker. As a result, the baker has a higher probability of being selected, and the baker in turn shares the additional revenue with the coin holder. Importantly, this process does not actually transfer ownership of coins. The baker cannot spend the XTZ delegated to them, and bakers cannot run away with other people’s money.
Fork Choice Rule
The last key thing to understand about the Tezos consensus algorithm is how the protocol decides which chain fork is the “correct” one. Bitcoin’s fork choice rule is simple — the longest chain is the canonical one. Tezos picks the canonical chain based instead on the number of bakers that endorsed the block. It has been mentioned above that bakers are given baking rights to create blocks, but that bakers are also given the second responsibility of endorsing blocks. At every block height, 32 random rolls are selected to endorse a block, and the block with the most endorsements is treated as the canonical one.
When a baker endorses a block which eventually becomes the canonical block, he gets some reward of XTZ. Hence, bakers are incentivized to endorse the block which they believe other bakers will also endorse, a.k.a. high priority blocks. Like baking, endorsing blocks require bakers to stake 64 XTZ per endorsement. This prevents the Nothing-at-Stake Problem.
Summary
The Tezos PoS protocol uses a chain-based PoS algorithm, whereby endorsements are used to rank chains and to decide which is the canonical one. Bakers (people who own 10,000 XTZ) are given the responsibility of creating and endorsing blocks. They are required to stake some of their own capital in order to incentivize honest behavior.
Proof-of-Stake
You would know what mining is in blockchain, and how having the greatest computational power helps in a distributed ‘agreement’ (also called a consensus) in which the next block to be added to the blockchain is selected. Bitcoin uses Proof-of-Work (PoW) to validate its own transactions. This is a winner-take-all lottery system that practically wastes the work of 99% of the participating nodes.
Proof of Stake is an interesting concept that not only avoids the wasted energy but also has its own subtleties. In particular, a naïvely implemented PoS consensus system will allow miners to double-spend their tokens and thus defraud the network and the ecosystem. But well-implemented, a PoS consensus system will guarantee that it is difficult to cheat the system because the amount of mining power a participating node has is proportional to the number of coins/tokens that a node holds.
From https://blockgeeks.com/guides/proof-of-work-vs-proof-of-stake/
‘Baking is to Tezos what mining is to Bitcoin.’ — Tezos Wiki
Self-Governance
Tezos runs what is known as an on-chain governance system. In other words, Tezos governs itself by design and is perfectly decoupled in that any of the three cryptoledger protocols (network, transaction and consensus) can be swapped in and out. To quote:
Tezos is a self-amending blockchain network which uses an on-chain process to propose, select, test, and activate protocol upgrades without the need to hard fork.
This enables Tezos to improve itself over time via a structured, yet decentralized process while preserving a high level of consensus. Tezos also allows stakeholders to upgrade the amendment process itself.
The Four Stages of Tezos Governance
The amendment process can be broken into four discrete periods:
1. Proposal Period
2. Exploration Period
3. Testing Period
4. Promotion Period
Each of these four periods lasts eight baking cycles, comprising almost exactly three months from proposal to activation.
From https://medium.com/@tezosukraine/tezos-governance
Thus, Tezos governs itself by design. This is a seminal innovation that should be recommended for all cryptocurrencies. The reason for that is that there is only one constant in the finance world — change. The governing process can be regulated by the Tezos Foundation, the governing council, or even the stakeholders if a majority of them have the same modification in mind. The modularity and the decoupling between the components of Tezos makes it a uniquely powerful force in the cryptocurrency market.
Smart Contracts
Turing-complete smart contracts? To attempt to demystify Turing-complete for you, we quote from the following Wikipedia entry:
In computability theory, a system of data-manipulation rules (such as a computer’s instruction set, a programming language, or a cellular automaton) is said to be Turing-complete or computationally universal if it can be used to simulate any Turing machine. This means that this system is able to recognize or decide other data-manipulation rule sets. Turing completeness is used as a way to express the power of such a data-manipulation rule set. Virtually all programming languages today are Turing-complete. The concept is named after English mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing.
To put it in plain English, a Turing machine is an abstraction of a computer pruned down to its bare essentials. Defining Turing machines is beyond the scope of our discussion, but I can tell you that Turing machines can be used to perform any computation, that is, it is universal in computational scope. Given the right instructions, a Turing machine can perform any computation we can think of.
Thus, if a language is Turing-complete, it can express practically every type of computation that there is. If smart contracts in Tezos are Turing-complete, then they can perform any computation that a modern computer can do. And that is all you need to know. For those of you interested in finding out more about the theory of computation and Turing machines I recommend the following links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computability_theory & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_completeness
Michelson
A little trivia — The Michelson-Morley experiment was conducted in 1887 to prove the existence of a universal medium called the ether. Keeping that in mind, the formally verifiable language used by Tezos to define smart contracts has been called Michelson and the software tool with which it is used is called Morley.
What does formal verification mean? We quote from the following link to explain the standard definition, then we explain it in English accessible to everyone, including the non-technical readers.
In the context of hardware and software systems, formal verification is the act of proving or disproving the correctness of intended algorithms underlying a system with respect to a certain formal specification or property, using formal methods of mathematics.
Formal verification can be helpful in proving the correctness of systems such as: cryptographic protocols, combinational circuits, digital circuits with internal memory, and software expressed as source code.
The verification of these systems is done by providing a formal proof on an abstract mathematical model of the system, the correspondence between the mathematical model and the nature of the system being otherwise known by construction. Examples of mathematical objects often used to model systems are: finite state machines, labelled transition systems, Petri nets, vector addition systems, timed automata, hybrid automata, process algebra, formal semantics of programming languages such as operational semantics, denotational semantics, axiomatic semantics and Hoare logic.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_verification
What does all that mean? Well, formal verification means that you first specify mathematically the conditions that the program modelled by a mathematical object should satisfy. Then we create a program from that specification that can be mathematically proved to be 100% correct under all situations.
That is, we create a program that can be mathematically proven to be error-free. How cool is that? The process is so laborious and time-consuming that formal verification is performed only for software on systems that are mission-critical. Examples could include the embedded software systems on medical equipment hardware, military weapons, airplane subsystems, and the software present on the systems of the International Space Shuttle.
Some of the methodologies used in formal verification are given in the image below:
From https://www.synopsys.com/verification/static-and-formal-verification/vc-formal.html
And some more below:
Again: from https://www.synopsys.com/verification/static-and-formal-verification/vc-formal.html
A detailed discussion of the internal working of Michelson is not relevant to our purposes, so we do not include it here. You can rest assured that the strongest possible guarantees are made against attackers and against bugs.
Mission-Critical Smart Contracts
You would think that this formal verification would be present in every smart contract, right? After all, one single contract could deal with hundreds of millions of dollars (in theory). And you do not want to take chances on such huge amounts of money. Well, guess what? Many popular platforms like Ethereum do not have formal verification as a feature.
You can excuse this from the earlier generation of cryptocurrencies — they were exploring a new sector. But even among smart contract platforms today, the formal verification feature is rare. And what happens when you do not have formally secure contracts? Free access for hackers. The story of the DAO hack is an interesting tale of what can happen when hackers access back doors in cryptocurrency software. A short summary is given below.
The DAO Hack
The DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) launched in 2016, with its tokens trading on the biggest exchanges like Poloniex and Kraken.
On Sat, 11 Jun 2016 17:42:37 -0400 Emin G Sirer wrote
“Hi guys, I’m pretty sure I know how to empty out The DAO.”
After a few additional hours of poking around the code, Gün zoomed in on the specific issue that would make history.
On Sun, 12 Jun 2016 13:34:09 -0400 Emin Gün Sirer wrote
“I still think that splitDAO may have a vulnerability. It violates the withdraw pattern by not zeroing the balances[] field until after the call. So I think it may be possible to have it move rewardTokens to a splitting DAO multiple times. This is happening on lines 640 to 666 (hah!) of DAO.sol. Am I wrong?”
Phillip, his student, replied, “Don’t think so.” citing timing issues, and an inability to trigger a recursive send from inside either splitDAO or createTokenProxy.
Being sick with a cold at the time, Gün went to bed trusting the expertise of his best student. Other security experts, notably Peter Vessenes (former Bitcoin foundation chairman) drew attention to the bug publicly, but it was too late.
5 days later…
On June 17, a hacker exploited this exact loophole and proceeded to drain 3.6 million ether from The DAO in a few hours, which represented about 30% of the total ether The DAO held. The piece of code that was meant to allow investors to withdraw any profit from their investments was revealed as one of the biggest backdoors in history.
To protect the remaining 70% of the funds, a white hat group of hackers was formed. Dubbed the “Robin Hood group”, it was led by Alex Van de Sade — lead developer of Ethereum Wallet and Griff Green — a well-connected Ethereum evangelist and crypto expert. Other identities of the white-hat group have not been confirmed.
Together, they devised a sensible operational plan with questionable legality. The plan was to exploit the same vulnerability as the hacker had used and “steal” the remaining DAO funds in order to protect those funds from the black hat attacker and distribute them to the rightful owners later. The plan was circumvented by the black hat hacker as he exploited what’s called “the stalking attack” to perpetually follow the splits the Robin Hood group made, preventing them from withdrawing the remaining funds to safety.
Meanwhile…
Vitalik Buterin (the co-founder of Ethereum) started proposing to the community, options for dealing with this attack at a higher level.
According to the rules of the Ethereum blockchain, once a smart contract is deployed, it cannot be changed. More precisely, no single individual or small group of individuals can make changes. One would have to convince the majority of the computer nodes that comprise the Ethereum network (16,000+ as of this writing) — to adopt an upgrade that would “fix” The DAO problem by creating what’s called a “hard fork”. In this case, the “hard fork” would be a reinterpretation of history. In the forked version of history, the attack would have never taken place.
On July 20th — Green Light for the Hard Fork
The decision to proceed with the hard fork was met with strong reactions and caused an ideological split within the Ethereum community. Those loyal to the rules of immutability and non-intervention by humans preferred to stay on the original chain, while those who believed that an ideological stand in the face of adversity was too extreme for the young network, opted for the hard fork.
The vast majority voted to fork the blockchain and apply a fix to The DAO. On July 20th, the hard fork occurred with block 1,920,000 containing the fix to The DAO, which allowed everyone who invested in The DAO to retrieve their funds.
The original unmodified chain that was expected to die off unexpectedly gained supporters and became a valid second chain of ethereum, named Ethereum Classic with a valuable digital currency of its own, giving the attacker $67.4 million of Ethereum Classic, symbol ETC.
The attacker remains anonymous to this day.
From https://blog.b9lab.com/the-dao-hack-in-eight-minutes-
A steal of 60 million USD and no one knows who the culprit was! For a system that advertised itself to be ultra-secure, the cryptocurrency sector has seen too many hacker cyber-crimes to count. The speculative nature of the token and the widely fluctuating costs of mining/baking blocks adds to the volatility of the entire system.
Simply put, no system can be 100% secure. It is impossible to create a platform that has no hacking vulnerabilities. With cyber-crime, it is a question of detection and response. Cyber-crime with cryptocurrency is difficult to eliminate. It is more an active defense system than a passive firewall between the platform and the attacker.
The Open Platform Advantage
Finally, the feature that creates trust — the Tezos platform and all the associated infrastructure is entirely open source. This makes things easier for cyber-security monitoring. Furthermore, since whoever is interested can look at the source code and identify possible back doors, open source software is commonly associated with high levels of security.
The open source policy also decreases transaction fees and makes attack vectors visible very quickly. Many of the possible attacks in a cryptocurrency are rendered null and void when the platform is open source. That is basically because it has a huge number of code reviewers (the entire general public developer community). Those who find bugs are rewarded with bounties (cash prizes), and so the white-hat hacker community has a good incentive to find as many bugs and security threats as possible.
Disadvantages of Tezos
This article would not be complete without a look at the cons of Tezos. We have seen its features and the internal mechanisms, now we proceed to the few possible disadvantages of choosing Tezos, according to some detractors in the cryptocurrency sector.
Possible Cons of Tezos
· The primary pitfall associated with Tezos is a delay in token issuance, causing several users to miss out on their rewards without being informed.
· Although investors and delegators can spend on XTZ tokens, they are sticking to other popular coins such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc. There is a lack of commercial support with Tezos.
· Presently, blockchain developers consider Tezos as an immature network as it is difficult to predict what its transaction fees and speeds will be once the platform becomes more widespread.
· Due to the delay in token issuance and other reasons, Tezos has dealt with behind-the-scenes drama and other conflicts which acts as a barrier in its popularity.
So, as you can see, Tezos still faces several problems in its initial phase. This has not stopped companies from using Tezos, as its future-proof protocol and its formal verification system is one-of-a-kind. Every disadvantage listed here will cease to exist when Tezos becomes widely used. The wide applications of Tezos is thus just a matter of time.
dApps Running on Tezos
The www.tezosprojects.com lists more than 23 dapps running live in production. Some details about the more prominent among them are given below:
tzBTC
tzBTC brings the liquidity and battle-tested brand of Bitcoin (BTC) into the Tezos ecosystem, enabling BTC-backed use-cases on Tezos. Developers on Tezos can use tzBTC to enable novel financial applications on the Tezos blockchain.
Coase
A digital collectible card game which uses a blockchain-powered marketplace by Kathleen Breitman (Co-Founder of Tezos).
Envited
Work group for virtual proof of validation of Autonomous Driving functions. Workgroup members include automotive manufacturers such as Audi, BMW, Daimler and Porsche.
Gendarmerie Nationale
The National Gendarmerie (Center for Combating Cybercrime) has implemented the first “smart contract” in the world coded by a government authority. This smart contract is coded on the Tezos blockchain.
BTG
Banco BTG Pactual S.A. (BTG Pactual), the largest investment bank in Latin America, plans to conduct a deal pipeline of over $1 bn security token offerings (STO) onto the Tezos blockchain.
Equisafe
Equisafe is building an all-in-one Digital Investment Banking Infrastructure with the mission to make accessible investment opportunities at scale.
Alliance Investments
Alliance Investments intends to tokenize at least $25 million of the value of River Plaza. The River Plaza STO will be digitized using tZERO’s tokenization technology and Megalodon’s advisory services and issued on the Tezos Blockchain.
From https://tezosprojects.com/?page=dapp
And the number of companies building and investing on the Tezos platform has been increasing sharply over the last one year due to the long-term stability promised by the self-amendment mechanism.
Price Prediction for 2025
The overwhelming majority among cryptocurrency price predictors place XTZ at 20 USD per coin or more in 2025. Some rather bullish pundits have even gone as far as to present a 100 USD per token valuation by that date. That, of course, would be subject to the general trend of Bitcoin and of the cryptocurrency market in general.
The video for the bullish price predictions is on YouTube at the following link:
One of the major reasons that this analyst is so bullish on Tezos is the upcoming STO (Security Token Offering) that is about to take place. Over 3 billion USD worth of STO will be loaded onto the Tezos blockchain soon. And Tezos is the ideal choice for a blockchain for STOs. In fact, several projects that were planned for Ethereum are now set to adopt Tezos instead.
The Many Companies Planning STOs on Tezos
Tezos is the dominant platform in the market for STOs. The Tezos blockchain has the right parameters to provide complete system surveillance to security tokens. The use of Michelson makes Tezos the ideal choice for high value STOs. To quote:
High-Value, High-Complexity
Recently, we have seen a security token management and issuance platform transition over from Ethereum to Tezos. The reason:
“The fundamental limitation that makes Ethereum a painful choice for security tokens can be expressed as the friction between transactions and asset ownership. Ethereum is a very powerful platform that is fundamentally optimized for one use case: transfer a crypto-asset from point A to point B. The behavior of security tokens, on the other hand, is fundamentally dictated by dynamics related to asset ownership that have little to do with transaction mechanics.”
This move comes in line with the exact culture Tezos is emulating in prioritizing and developing the STO space. Tezos is deliberately focusing and cultivating the security token issuance landscape, bringing the necessary tools and infrastructure to make Tezos a warm home for the securities market.
With a formal means, decided upon with token holder voting by which the protocol can be amended and upgraded — features such as scalability and transactions per second (TPS) can be increased through porting existing enhancements onto the protocol. Additionally, other features such as formal verification and secure custody make Tezos an attractive platform to conduct an STO on. The value proposition present for conducting an STO on Tezos lies within its high-value, high-complexity.
Current Planned STO’s and Infrastructure
Currently, over 3 Billion USD in STO’s are slated to take place on the Tezos protocol. Infrastructure around the STO landscape is being developed and security token issuance platforms such as TokenSoft will be utilized in an upcoming STO — Silicon Valley Coin.
Elevated Returns and Securitize —
Are seeking to conduct and deploy up to $1 billion worth of real-estate STO’s on the Tezos protocol. Expected launch of the first deal of $77M real-estate backed security tokens is slated for April.
BTG Pactual and Dalma Capital —
Are seeking to use the Tezos blockchain for conducting up to $1 billion worth of STO’s.
tZERO and Alliance Investments —
Have announced their plans to tokenize the first of their total $643 million worth of STO’s on Tezos with the River Plaza located in the UK.
Fundament Group —
Has announced a strategic partnership with the Tezos Foundation to develop digital securities infrastructure.
Equisafe —
Will develop the NyX Standard, “a set of smart contracts on Tezos blockhain, audited by institutions and open sourced on an MIT license”. Launch of the NyX Standard is slated for this year.
Vertalo —
A security token management and issuance platform has transitioned from Ethereum to Tezos.
Andra Capital and TokenSoft —
Utilizing TokenSoft’s security token issuance platform, Andra Capital is seeking to raise up to $1 billion in it’s Silicon Valley Coin STO which represents interest in the Andra Capital Open-Ended Fund. The fund is currently valued at $500 million.
From https://medium.com/tezoscommons/tezos-continues-advancing-forward-in-the-sto-space
Conclusion — the Sleeping Giant
So now we think you’ll understand — why a video on YouTube released last April calls Tezos the sleeping giant. The next boom rush is destined to be Security Tokens and the phenomenon that is DeFi. Rest assured that Tezos will have an active role to play in the market. To put it simply — there is no safer and more secure solution. Formal verification will give a lot of security token owners a lot of peace. At least your tokens can not be hacked or exploited! Of course, this will also depend upon the future changes and amendments made to Tezos. But right now, we are all in agreement here — Tezos is the best blockchain solution for Security Tokens currently available, right now and also for the foreseeable future.
References
3. https://bakechain.github.io/
4. https://tezos.com/static/white_paper-2dc8c02267a8fb86bd67a108199441bf.pdf
7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_(blockchain)
8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_DAO_(organization)
10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_completeness
11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_verification
12. https://medium.com/tezos/amending-tezos-b77949d97e1e
13. https://www.coindesk.com/understanding-dao-hack-journalists
14. https://blog.b9lab.com/the-dao-hack-in-eight-minutes-94919018692d
15. https://www.blockchain-council.org/blockchain/what-is-tezos-pros-and-cons/
16. https://tezosprojects.com/?page=dapp
17. https://medium.com/tezoscommons/tezos-continues-advancing-forward-in-the-sto-space-8725af8cfdca
18. https://medium.com/@tezosukraine/tezos-governance-e2e8d2e3a223
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