Governance and validation on Tezos

Tezos uses a Liquid Proof of Stake consensus mechanism, where validators are called Bakers. In addition to validating transactions, bakers represent the staked tokens of delegators (stakers) when participating in network governance by voting on protocol upgrades. This approach ensures security, stability, and correctness, while allowing Tezos to upgrade seamlessly.

Tezos evolves using on-chain governance

Tezos has a proven, decentralized governance process that enables seamless upgrades and prevents the need for hard forks. Community members propose upgrades for the network and validators vote on which proposals they would like to see explored. The most popular proposal goes through a multi-step voting and adoption process, shown below.

Start a Node, become a baker

Check out these resources for starting a node.

Forklog

A tutorial on baking from the team at Tezos Ukraine.

XTZ-Shots

A repository of Tezos snapshots.

Bake Buddy

An easy-to-use baking software guide from Bake Buddy.

Kiln

Baking software maintained by a collection of Tezos ecosystem teams.

Nomadic Labs

Documentation for running a persistent baking node.

Open Tezos

Create and deploy your own node with this Open Tezos guide.

Join the Tezos baking community

Baking Slack chat

For anything baking-related, there is a dedicated Baking Slack channel.

Baking Telegram chat

Community group for Tezos node setup, delegating, proposal voting, and all other baking-related conversations.

BakeBuddy Telegram group

Support chat room for both novice and advanced users of the BakeBuddy software.

Delegating on Tezos

What is delegating?

In a process called staking, owners of tez (XTZ) can delegate their tokens to a baker and receive rewards for supporting the security of the network and participating in governance. With the unique Liquid Proof of Stake mechanism on Tezos, token owners maintain control and flexibility over staked tokens because they are not locked at any point during the delegation process.

Buying Tezos tokens

Tez (XTZ) is the native token of the Tezos network. Tez is available on most major cryptocurrency exchanges under the symbol XTZ. Below are some of the most popular exchanges where you can buy tez.