Tezos Activates Tallinn Upgrade, Cutting Block Times to 6 Seconds in Major Performance Boost
Tezos has rolled out Tallinn, its newest protocol upgrade, delivering one of the network’s most significant speed improvements to date. Activated on Saturday, the upgrade reduces base-layer block times to six seconds, marking a substantial leap in throughput and overall network responsiveness.
Tallinn is Tezos’ 20th major upgrade since its 2018 launch, all implemented through its on-chain governance system and without requiring a disruptive network fork. According to the Tezos team, the update enhances performance across several dimensions, including block production, storage efficiency and transaction finality.
Faster Blocks, Lower Latency
A central feature of Tallinn is the reduction in block time, which enables transactions to settle more quickly and decreases latency across the network. The upgrade also introduces a major change to validator participation: every baker (validator) can now attest to every block, rather than only a rotating subset as in previous versions.
This shift is powered by BLS aggregated signatures, a cryptographic technique that bundles hundreds of validator signatures into a single proof. The result is a lighter load on nodes and an architecture that can support even shorter block times in the future.
Storage Efficiency Improved 100x
Beyond consensus improvements, Tallinn introduces an address indexing system designed to eliminate redundant data stored by applications. Tezos representatives say this change boosts storage efficiency by a factor of 100, significantly lowering resource requirements for developers and on-chain applications.
These optimizations align with Tezos’ broader push to serve increasingly high-throughput use cases, from payments to decentralized applications and enterprise-scale deployments.
A Broader Trend Toward Faster Blockchains
Tallinn arrives as blockchain networks race to support faster settlement and higher transaction volumes. Early blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum process around 7 transactions per second and 15–30 TPS, respectively, with Bitcoin producing one block roughly every 10 minutes, a pace unsuitable for everyday commerce.
To overcome these constraints, both networks now rely heavily on layer-2 solutions. Bitcoin uses the Lightning Network, allowing users to transact off-chain and settle only the net result on the main chain. Ethereum has embraced a modular approach, delegating execution to an ecosystem of L2 rollups while focusing the base layer on security and data availability.
By contrast, monolithic chains like Solana integrate execution, consensus and data availability at the base layer to maximize speed, a model Tezos appears to be inching toward as it continues to compress block times and streamline core functionality.
A Step Toward Higher Throughput
With its latest upgrade, Tezos reinforces its reputation as one of the most frequently and seamlessly evolving blockchains in the industry. By improving speed, lowering storage requirements and enhancing validator participation, Tallinn positions the network for more demanding applications and sets the stage for further performance gains in future updates.
