The Tezos initial coin offering (ICO) made USD $232 million in only two weeks. An ICO is the cryptocurrency version of the initial public offering (IPO) in the stock market. It was one of the most successful ICO from the exceedingly short heyday of ICOs.
Tezos Coins are Tezzies
Ethereum and Blockchain describe both coins and the infrastructure upon which they are built. This is known as their blockchains. Tezos refers to a decentralized blockchain as an alternative to the Ethernet blockchain, with an associated coin called an XTZ. And in case you don’t know, “XTZ” is pronounced either tez or tezzie.
Liquid Proof of Stake
An important innovation that differentiated Tezos from Ethereum is that it abandoned the Proof of Work (PoW) model. Typically, it used brute computing power and lots of energy to mine increasingly harder and harder to secure cryptocoins. Thus, the Tezos system replaces miners with “validators,” who stake their Tezo tokens (also called coins).
So, people staking Tezos with tokens become actual stakeholders who can eventually earn voting rights. And there are rewards for becoming a Tezos stakeholder, including earning around a 6% annual return on their stakes.
Tezos is a Digital Commonwealth
Tezos grows and changes according to the stakeholders’ democratic decisions. As a result, Tezos is considered a digital commonwealth. Everyone who has a stake has a voice (though some stakeholders have a bigger, louder, voice than others). This is referred to as on-chain governance.
A Future of Security Token Offerings
The future of tokens and coins is in the security token offering (STO), the replacement for the ICO. A requirements in creating the future of cryptocurrency is secure tokens. One of the benefits of this is that Tezos’ digital ledger offers smart contracts, upgradeability, and custody. That means it’s uniquely stable as a platform over a long lifespan.
Right now, we are in a world where cryptocurrency equates to volatility and code hard and soft-forking. So, the stability, and democracy of Tezos could be just the foundation that future STOs and Secure Tokens would need to attract investors.
Blockchains Maketh the Cryptocoins
While tokens and coins get almost all the attention when it comes to cryptocurrencies, the true revolutionary game-changer is the technology behind the coins, the blockchain. Blockchains can be used for much more than just mining or staking coins and tokens, popular 21st-century money-making assets. They can be used to decentralize and secure any number of business and organizational projects. Blockchains can also be the building blocks for decentralized online applications as well, called dApps. Using a blockchain and a dApp, you can even start and run an autonomous company, called a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), leveraging smart contracts.
A Tezos Upgrade Path
Unlike Bitcoin or Ethereum, Tezos can be upgraded and updated safely without needing to be forked. Forking is when a codebase is duplicated, updated, upgraded, and then run separately, without being reintegrated into the source codebase (or, blockchain, in this instance). Being more modular, secure, and dynamic, the Tezos blockchain is more durable over the long term without vulnerabilities to code corruption or degradation. Technically, a blockchain can be referred to as a digital ledger and the Tezos ledger is self-amending.
The Great Tezos Experiment
Tezos lives in the future. It was developed as a strong evolution to the original blockchain models and their associated unsustainable proof of work (PoW) model, approaching a revolution. However, it’s still considered an experiment in self-governing and in digital democracy. That said, out of all the various tokens and coins in the crypto exchange, tezzies might be the way for you to go the next time you consider tezos to USD.
