Tezos: A Self-Amending Crypto-Ledger Position Paper L.M Goodman C97F A4A2 BAA6 0620 9DFA E274 2302 04F4 09F0 586D August 3, 2014 “Laissez faire les propri´etaires.” —Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Abstract The popularization of Bitcoin, a decentralized crypto-currency has in- spired the production of several alternative, or “alt”, currencies. Ethereum, CryptoNote,andZerocashallrepresentuniquecontributionstothecrypto- currency space. Although most alt currencies harbor their own source of innovation, they have no means of adopting the innovations of other cur- rencies which may succeed them. We aim to remedy the potential for atrophied evolution in the crypto-currency space by presenting Tezos, a generic and self-amending crypto-ledger. Tezos can instanciate any blockchain based protocol. Its seed protocol specifies a procedure for stakeholders to approve amendments to the proto- col, including amendments to the amendment procedure itself. Upgrades to Tezos are staged through a testing environment to allow stakeholders to recall potentially problematic amendments. Thephilosophy of Tezos is inspired by Peter Suber’s Nomic[1], a game built around a fully introspective set of rules. In this paper, we hope to elucidate the potential benefits of Tezos, our choice to implement as a proof-of-stake system, and our choice to write it in OCaml. 1