Tezos 

XTZ Price

What is Tezos (XTZ) coin?

Tezos is an open-source, self-amending Layer 1 blockchain founded by Arthur and Kathleen Breitman, live on mainnet since 2018. XTZ (tez) is the native coin, used to pay fees, earn baking and delegation rewards, and vote on governance. Tezos's defining feature is on-chain governance — stakeholders approve protocol amendments, and the network has shipped 20 upgrades without a hard fork.

Is Tezos proof-of-stake and how does baking work?

Yes — Tezos is a proof-of-stake blockchain. Block production and validation on Tezos is called baking, and the validators are called bakers. XTZ holders delegate balances to bakers to earn rewards. Staked and delegated funds secure the network, and delegated balances stay liquid — Tezos delegation does not lock tokens.

How does Tezos's on-chain governance work?

Tezos stakeholders vote on-chain to approve protocol amendments, letting the network upgrade itself without hard forks. Twenty upgrades have shipped. Seoul activated on September 19, 2025, adding protocol-native multisig accounts. Ushuaia activated on June 30, 2026, raising data-availability bandwidth 15x and improving rollup governance.

What makes Tezos different from Ethereum?

Tezos changes its protocol through on-chain stakeholder votes, while Ethereum upgrades follow an off-chain process of proposals and client releases. Tezos smart contracts run on Michelson, a formally verifiable language built for static analysis. Both are proof-of-stake Layer 1 networks — the governance mechanism is the structural difference.

Does Tezos have a max supply?

No — Tezos has no maximum supply cap. New tez is minted continuously as baking rewards, producing roughly 4–5% annual inflation, with emission parameters adjustable through on-chain governance. Genesis supply was 763,306,929.69 XTZ, and because emission is uncapped the total keeps climbing — see DropsTab for the current figure.

What does Tezos's supply schedule mean for holders?

Tezos's uncapped emission makes its supply permanently inflationary — non-staked balances dilute by roughly 4–5% per year. Unlock risk, however, is gone: the only vesting in Tezos history covered 20% of genesis supply (76,330,692.97 XTZ each to the Tezos Foundation and DLS), released monthly over four years from the 2018 genesis and since completed. No future team or investor unlock dates are published.

Who backed Tezos and how much did it raise?

Per DropsTab fundraising data, Tezos raised $232M in its July 2017 ICO — 65,681 BTC and 361,122 ETH from 30,317 wallets, a record-setting raise for its time. An earlier February 2017 round is recorded at $10M, led by Polychain Capital (Tier 1) with Boost VC and BitScale Capital. The contemporaneous source describes that $10M as the size of Polychain's digital currency fund, not a confirmed Tezos-specific raise.

What did the 2017 Tezos ICO distribute?

The July 2017 Tezos ICO sold 607,489,040 XTZ — about 79.6% of genesis supply — at roughly $0.38–0.47 per tez. Fundraiser participants received a highly dispersed public allocation across 30,317 wallets. The Tezos Foundation, seeded from ICO proceeds, oversees ecosystem funding. The foundation and Dynamic Ledger Solutions each held 20% of genesis supply in vesting contracts, released over four years and since completed.

Where can you buy and trade XTZ?

Per DropsTab data, XTZ trades across 50+ spot markets on centralized exchanges — including Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, OKX, and Upbit — with fiat pairs in USD, EUR, KRW, TRY, GBP, and IDR alongside BTC and stablecoin markets. Multiple futures venues run XTZ perpetuals. On-chain liquidity is a caveat: tracked DEX markets are PancakeSwap (v2) pairs against a BSC-wrapped XTZ token, not the native coin, so native XTZ trades mainly on centralized and Tezos-native decentralized venues.