Tezos
- Ticker
- XTZ
- Category
- Smart-contract platform
- Risk profile
- Volatile
What it is
A smart-contract network built so that changes to its own protocol are proposed, voted on and installed by the chain itself, rather than agreed off-chain and shipped as a fork.
Why this risk level
- Amendments run through fixed on-chain periods — proposal, exploration, testing, promotion — so an upgrade either passes the vote or does not happen, and the chain does not split into two versions
- Consensus is proof-of-stake: holders may run a validator or delegate their stake to one without transferring ownership of the coins, and validators face penalties for signing conflicting blocks
- XTZ pays transaction fees, is the asset that is staked or delegated, and is the unit that voting weight is measured in — governance rights come from stake rather than from a separate token
A plain-English risk overview for education, not investment advice. Risk profiles describe the asset's own characteristics, not a price forecast — always do your own research before buying.
Other coin guides
Aave AAVEVolatileA decentralised lending protocol where deposits sit in shared pools and borrowers take overcollateralised loans against assets they lock, with interest rates set by how much of a pool is in use.Algorand ALGOVolatileA smart-contract network whose consensus draws a fresh random committee for every block and finalises it on the spot, so the chain never reorganises and confirmations are not a waiting game.Aptos APTVolatileA proof-of-stake layer-1 launched in October 2022 by engineers from Meta's abandoned Diem project, built around the Move programming language and an execution engine that processes independent transactions in parallel rather than one after another.Arbitrum ARBVolatileAn optimistic rollup that executes transactions off the Ethereum main chain and posts the results back to it, so users pay Ethereum-level security costs only once per batch.Avalanche AVAXVolatileA proof-of-stake smart-contract platform designed around fast transaction finality and the ability for projects to run their own separate, application-specific chains.Bitcoin BTCEstablishedThe original cryptocurrency and still the largest by market value, with over fifteen years of continuous operation and no successful attack on its core network.