Tezos

In development since 2014, Tezos is an older platform that supports decentralized applications, smart contracts and novel financial instruments, such as NFTs, which can be thought of as a modern variation on trading cards that are tied to digital assets. The platform supports a dynamically upgradable protocol and modular software clients that enable it to adapt to new uses. It supports a PoS consensus mechanism that improves efficiency compared to Bitcoin and the original Ethereum implementation. An on-chain upgrade mechanism allows developers to add new features without forking, which would require spinning up a new blockchain and migrating users over. The Tezos community has been upgrading the platform at a rapid clip with enhancements that improved performance and increased the size limit on smart contracts. It has also developed tools to help automate the process of weaving NFTs into enterprise supply chains.

The latest update proposal, called the Oxford protocol, promises several new enhancements. Adaptive issuance adjusts the creation of new currency in balance with the total supply. An improved PoS mechanism creates new roles for nodes. The update also reintroduces a new version of timelocks (which was previously removed), to improve security and smart rollups to speed up the transaction rate.