On September 23 2022 20:36:44 UTC, the Tezos blockchain successfully upgraded by activating the Kathmandu proposal at block #2,736,129.
This 11th Tezos protocol upgrade was jointly developed by Nomadic Labs, Marigold, TriliTech, Oxhead Alpha, Tarides, DaiLambda, Functori, Tweag, and G.-B. Fefe (an anonymous contributor).
Kathmandu’s main features are:
- Smart contract optimistic rollups: the next generation of optimistic rollups for Tezos begin their journey towards future integration in Tezos. At this stage, they are available at the bleeding edge Mondaynet and Dailynet test networks to ensure the community has sufficient time to build integration, tooling and applications.
- Pipelined validation of manager operations: increasing throughput for Tezos’ Mainnet, without compromising the network’s safety. The contributions of this ongoing project to Kathmandu reduce the need to fully execute time-expensive operations (like smart contract calls), before they reach a baker, resulting in a faster propagation of new blocks and operations across the network.
- Improved randomness: integration of Verifiable Delay Functions into the protocol’s random seed generation, reinforcing the security of the rights allocation mechanism.
- Tailored governance support for permanent testnets: changes brought by Kathmandu will reduce the need for user-activated upgrades in Ghostnet. The Oxhead Alpha team will be able to centrally, and automatically, upgrade this test network after a protocol proposal is elected in the Promotion period on Tezos Mainnet.
- Event logging in Michelson smart contracts: this new feature will enable DApp developers to send publicly visible on-chain messages in order to trigger effects in off-chain applications.
- A new operation for increasing paid storage of a smart contract.
For more details, see our Kathmandu preview post.
A deeper technical description can be found in the protocol proposal’s technical documentation, and a complete list of changes is provided in Kathmandu’s changelog.
Building solid foundations for the Future… now
As the Tezos network evolves, and new exciting features boost adoption, broad testing becomes increasingly important. Therefore, it is paramount to have as many bakers, builders and users as possible in our public test networks.
By running nodes, producing blocks, and deploying apps and infrastructure as early as possible, the community can gain significant foresight into the integration of new features. In addition, protocol developers can learn valuable insights from feedback, and adjust the design and implementation of features while protocols are still being developed.
In particular, extensive testing of next-generation optimistic rollups, currently available on Mondaynet and Dailynet, is of paramount importance, as these form the backbone of Tezos’ scaling strategy.
Read more about Tezos testnets here, and don’t hesitate to reach out in the Tezos Developer Slack or in the Tezos Discord if you need help getting started.