Tezos: A Self-Amending Crypto-Ledger

http://www.tezos.com/position_paper.pdf

Abstract
The popularization of Bitcoin, a decentralized, trustless, crypto-currency has inspired the production of several alternative, or \alt", currencies. Ethereum, CryptoNote, and Zerocash all represent unique contributions to the crypto-currency space. Although most alt currencies harbor their own source of innovation, they have no means of adopting the innovations of other currencies which may succeed them. We aim to remedy the po- tential for atrophied evolution in the crypto-currency space by presenting Tezos, a generic and self-amending crypto-ledger. Tezos can instanciate any blockchain based protocol. Its seed protocol species a procedure for stakeholders to approve amendments to the proto- col, including amendments to the amendment procedure itself. Upgrades to Tezos are staged through a testing environment to allow stakeholders to recall potentially problematic amendments. The philosophy of Tezos is inspired by Peter Suber's Nomic[1], a game built around a fully introspective set of rules. In this paper, we hope to elucidate the potential benets of Tezos, our choice to implement as a proof-of-stake system, and our choice to write it in OCaml.