ZUG, SWITZERLAND-- June 28, 2023 -- Tezos, a pioneering blockchain for Proof-of-Stake consensus and on-chain governance, has activated its fourteenth core protocol upgrade: Nairobi. The Nairobi upgrade will make it faster and easier to run applications on the Tezos blockchain by introducing several updates and improvements to the Tezos protocol.

These include enhancements to Smart Rollups, Tezos’ industry leading scaling solution. Smart Rollups can now be upgraded in sync with the protocol, using Tezos’ pioneering on-chain governance. Smart Rollups give developers a more reliable, secure, and decentralized scaling solution than any other blockchain solution. In addition, the upgrade resulted in an eightfold increase in transactions per second (TPS) while decreasing the cost per transaction.

“The Nairobi upgrade demonstrates once again the strength of the Tezos community, and further establishes Tezos’ lead in scaling,” said Arthur Breitman, co-founder of Tezos. “Serious applications require serious technology, and Tezos’ resiliency, adaptability, and substance stands in contrast to loose industry standards.”

8X TPS increase with enhanced gas model
Powering even more transactions with tailored costs for different cryptographic curves

The Nairobi upgrade will enable up to 8x more operations to be completed per second while decreasing the cost per transaction for most operations. In contrast to the previous flat-rate, one-size-fits-all model for gas costs for signature verification, the new model is fairer to the users, making authentication costs fit better with computational resources required.

Reach consensus quicker
Swift pre-attestation propagation

The Nairobi upgrade speeds up the whole chain by fine tuning the consensus mechanism, allowing for reliable operations at lower latencies. The upgrade also contributes to keeping hardware requirements low for participating in consensus, which benefits decentralization while simultaneously increasing consensus rewards for Tezos “bakers”.

Upgrade to Smart Rollups
Seamless Layer 2 experience

Nairobi enables Smart Rollups to evolve in sync with the Tezos layer 1 protocol. This allows Rollups to prepare for and instantly take advantage of the capabilities provided by future protocol upgrades. Smart Rollups on Tezos are enshrined in Layer 1 rather than deployed as smart contracts, making them more efficient, reliable, and decentralized than other Layer 2 solutions such as Arbitrum or Optimism.

Evolution driven by the community

As with every Tezos upgrade, Nairobi has been validated and approved by the community through the Tezos blockchain's on-chain governance process. The activation of Nairobi marks the culmination of a months-long collaboration between developer teams and the broader Tezos community.

Developers from Nomadic Labs, Marigold, TriliTech, Oxhead Alpha, Tarides, DaiLambda, and Functori have contributed to this update, which unveils a new era of scalability and opens the door for exciting new applications to be deployed on the Tezos blockchain.