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Oxford: Tezos’ 15th protocol upgrade, introduced collaboratively by seven development teams, focuses on issuance and new staking mechanics

Following the successful activation of the Nairobi protocol on June 24, seven teams — Nomadic Labs, Marigold, TriliTech, Oxhead Alpha, Tarides, DaiLambda, and Functori — have collaboratively unveiled the latest protocol proposal for Tezos, named ‘Oxford’.

Named after the world’s second-oldest university, this proposal comes with a myriad of changes aimed at refining the staking economics and other functional areas of the Tezos blockchain.

Key Features of the Oxford Proposal

  1. Adaptive Issuance: A change in tez issuance dynamics in the Tezos economic protocol. The emission of tez would be adjusted based on the ratio of staked tez over the total supply. This adjustment ensures that the staked funds ratio consistently gravitates towards a protocol-defined target.

  2. New Staking Mechanism: Introducing the role of a ‘staker’, this mechanism will allow tez holders to contribute to a baker’s security deposit without transferring custody of their funds. The introduction of stakers is designed to optimize the security and economics of the protocol.

  3. Refinements to PoS Penalties and Rewards: This includes making slashing penalties proportional to funds at stake and introducing tools that make the management of staked funds simpler.

  4. Reintroduction of Timelocks: Addressing past security concerns, cryptographic Timelocks have been re-enabled. They play a crucial role in minimizing the risk of certain types of value extraction from transaction sequences in the blockchain.

  5. Improvements to Smart Rollups: This will facilitate simpler deployment for developers working with Smart Rollups on Tezos.

The proposal ensures that major changes, such as the Adaptive Issuance and the new Staking mechanism, will not be immediately activated if adopted. Instead, bakers will have the opportunity to express their position through a separate vote.

Community’s Role in Activation

While the protocol proposal introduces numerous changes, it emphasizes that their implementation is subject to community consensus. If the Oxford proposal garners approval, the community will have a continuous signaling vote to decide on activating specific features.

This approach ensures that the Tezos community can assess and discuss the adoption of each feature independently, without affecting the overall protocol amendment process. To guarantee a significant consensus, the activation of these guarded features requires an 80% approval rate from the community.

Tezos Evolution

With the introduction of the Oxford proposal, Tezos demonstrates its continuous commitment to evolve and adapt according to the needs of its community and the broader blockchain landscape. For those willing to participate in consensus after this upgrade, it will be essential to upgrade to Octez v18.0 or later.

The release candidate for Octez v18.0 is slated for publication soon, followed by the launch of a dedicated protocol test network, Oxfordnet, to allow community testing.

Tweets Highlighted:

Nomadic Labs tweeted their enthusiasm for the 15th protocol upgrade proposal, acknowledging the collaborative efforts of seven prominent teams.

Nomadic Labs also shared an overview of other notable changes in the Oxford proposal, emphasizing refinements to PoS penalties and rewards, the reintroduction of safer Timelocks, and further improvements to Smart Rollups.

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