The Tezos Foundation: Helping safeguard the blockchain with a globally resilient network
About Tezos Foundation
The Tezos Foundation is a Swiss foundation created to support the long-term success of the Tezos blockchain, an open-source, energy-efficient, proof-of-stake blockchain. With user governance and environment sustainability at its core, the Tezos blockchain is designed to power the Web3 revolution.
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Contact usThe Tezos Foundation used Google Cloud to set up a resilient secure online copy of the Tezos blockchain in all continents of the world very quickly using the standard Google Cloud SDK tools.
Google Cloud results
- Creates new archive nodes in each continent, with over 1TB data, in under two hours
- Creates complete snapshot service in under three days with Cloud SDK command-line tools
- Builds demonstration to show Tezos blockchain can process 1 million transactions a second, with Compute Engine
Global infrastructure with big data stores set up quickly
With its distributed ledger technology supporting a decentralized, immutable record of ownership, blockchain is steadily transforming sectors as diverse as finance, pharmaceuticals, art, food, and travel. But as blockchain technology becomes more prevalent, more questions will be asked about its security and resilience.
Tezos is an open-source blockchain that can be used to execute peer-to-peer transactions and serve as a platform for deploying smart contracts. It offers an environmentally sustainable blockchain, with fewer barriers to participation. Meanwhile, its on-chain governance model gives validators (known as 'bakers' in the Tezos ecosystem) control in how the network is run. The Tezos blockchain has been used by Manchester United and McLaren to distribute digital collectibles for their sporting events. As the usage of the Tezos blockchain grew, the Tezos Foundation wanted to diversify its service providers so it turned to Google Cloud.
Future-proofing the network with new archive nodes
Archive nodes provide a complete record of every transaction ever made and every intermediate ledger state on the blockchain. In addition to that, they make it easier to conduct exploratory data analysis on the blockchain.
The Tezos Foundation decided to set up its own archive nodes on Google Cloud infrastructure capable of handling the large volumes of data involved, and to run one in each of the world's continents.
"Google Cloud allowed us to get archive nodes across the world very quickly," explains Chris Pinnock, Head of Information Technology at the Tezos Foundation. "We are able to use Filestore to move terabytes of data and bring up nodes using that data in under two hours. Moreover, we were able to add monitoring immediately using Google Cloud's uptime checks."
With nodes now running on Compute Engine in continents across the world, the Tezos Foundation has ensured that even if one of its archive nodes were to go down, it would quickly be able to recover it from one of the others. And because the Tezos Foundation is able to use Google Cloud dashboards to understand how carbon intensive each datacenter is, it is able to choose exactly where to run its nodes to have the smallest carbon footprint.
"Google Cloud allowed us to get archive nodes across the world very quickly. We are able to use Filestore to move terabytes of data and bring up nodes using that data in under two hours. Moreover, we were able to add monitoring immediately using Google Cloud's uptime checks."
—Chris Pinnock, Head of Information Technology, Tezos FoundationBuilding a comprehensive ecosystem with intuitive command-line tools
Another useful feature to run an effective blockchain is a snapshot service, which enables new nodes joining the network to take a snapshot of the network's data so that they can quickly sync up with the blockchain. The Tezos Foundation decided to provide its own, and set about building one using Cloud SDK.
"I was able to build a snapshot service in three days, from beginning to end, all from my desk, running gcloud commands," says Pinnock. "The Cloud SDK command line tools allow you to script everything very easily."
"I was able to build a snapshot service in three days, from beginning to end, all from my desk, running gcloud commands. The Cloud SDK command line tools allow you to script everything very easily."
—Chris Pinnock, Head of Information Technology, Tezos FoundationThe fast track to powerful Web3 architecture
To increase the bandwidth and improve the performance of the Tezos blockchain, engineering teams working on the protocol have devised a scaling solution called Smart Rollups. The rollup technology allows transactions to be processed off-chain and submitted securely to Layer 1 later on. This takes the load off the main chain and increases performance. This innovation lets anyone deploy a Layer 2 solution that enables a massive increase in transaction throughput while inheriting the security guarantees offered by Tezos Layer 1.
Keen to understand just how quickly the Tezos blockchain could process transactions, developer teams set about building a demonstration, using Compute Engine, to bring up thousands of nodes and thousands of rollup nodes in under 15 minutes. They then sent transactions through the test network to show that the blockchain was capable of processing up to one million transactions a second, a breakthrough achievement for a blockchain.
This technology is being used in the forthcoming Etherlink product. Etherlink provides compatibility with Ethereum based smart contracts and Ethereum programming languages, which can then be built on Tezos.
A sustainable blockchain for the long term
Tezos ecosystem developers are now working to enhance the interoperability of the chain by building Etherlink, while improving its speed and performance to enable the kind of everyday use that will support mass adoption.
Contributors from all over the world are also working on Tezos 2.0, the next-generation of the protocol. In addition to Smart Rollups, this vision for the future of Tezos includes a Data Availability Layer to increase Tezos' throughput. "We believe that it will make a huge difference in our Tezos 2.0 architecture going forward. Much of the work is in ensuring high availability of data across the globe," says Chris.
As they continue to advance and grow the Tezos ecosystem, builders continue to make use of Google Cloud solutions.
"Google Cloud has a strong Web3 road map including dedicated blockchain SaaS offerings," says Pinnock. "We would love to use Blockchain Node Engine, which would mean we could direct our users to Google Cloud, instead of running services ourselves. It would make the Tezos ecosystem more self sufficient, which is key to the future of the blockchain."
"Google Cloud has a strong Web3 road map. We would love to use Blockchain Node Engine, which would mean we could direct our users to Google Cloud, instead of running services ourselves. It would make the Tezos ecosystem more self sufficient, which is key to the future of the blockchain."
—Chris Pinnock, Head of Information Technology, Tezos FoundationTell us your challenge. We're here to help.
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About Tezos Foundation
The Tezos Foundation is a Swiss foundation created to support the long-term success of the Tezos blockchain, an open-source, energy-efficient, proof-of-stake blockchain. With user governance and environment sustainability at its core, the Tezos blockchain is designed to power the Web3 revolution.