Tezos is a smart contract platform and its token is called XTZ. The ambition of its creators is for Tezos to be able to adopt the innovations of its competitors, adapting to their needs so that they don’t need to look elsewhere. The Tezos ledger system promises to be able to amend itself, which should enable the platform to be self-upgrading (with stakeholder permission of course), doing away with the need for traditional hard forks.
Tezos also proposes a democratic model of governance. This has been christened “on-chain governance” and it’s intended to integrate with Tezos’s self-correcting ledger. Tezos’s authors implemented a voting system which lets users vote on proposed changes to the platform. It was hoped that the introduction of voting would defuse disputes and discourage factions from forming.
Tezos lets any developer propose upgrades (for which they’re rewarded) which can then be voted on by coin holders. Devs don’t need to be formally employed and they can offer to work on whatever aspects of the system they find most appealing. Competing Devs with opposing views need not be a source of friction thanks to the Tezos platform’s on-chain governance system which will democratically resolve disputes.
Tezos’s ambitions as a permission-free smart contracts development platform is a major differentiator between it and its competitors. Its on-chain governance system works in parallel with its own implementation of the delegated proof of stake (dPOS) approach to consensus which it refers to as “Liquid Proof of Stake” (LPOS). It allows Tezos to retain all the advantages of regular dPOS offers while avoiding compromises on security and decentralization.
