Tezos completes Tallinn upgrade, cutting app storage costs by up to 100x

Tezos has successfully activated its Tallinn protocol upgrade following a decentralized, on-chain governance process involving bakers and community members.

Developed by Nomadic Labs, Trilitech, and Functori, the 20th upgrade shortens block times, strengthens network security by expanding validator participation, and introduces an address indexing system that considerably reduces storage costs for developers.

As noted by the team, the 20th upgrade reduces layer 1 block times to six seconds, improves finality, and strengthens security through universal validator attestations using BLS signatures.

“Adapting to market demand 20 times over 7 years without network disruptions, and in a fully decentralized way, is undeniable proof of Tezos’ reliability and future-proof design,” said Yann Régis-Gianas, Head of Engineering at Nomadic Labs, which contributed to the upgrade alongside Trilitech and Functori.

The Tallinn upgrade introduces major performance and efficiency gains for the Tezos blockchain.

In addition to faster block production, the update adds an Address Indexing Registry that can reduce application storage requirements by up to 100x, lowering costs and increasing throughput for enterprise apps, NFT platforms, and large ledgers built with Michelson.

“Based on inputs from Tezos builders, our development team is excited to be able to offer such drastic improvements for enterprise-scale apps, large NFT ledgers, and other setups storing many addresses,” said Yann Régis-Gianas, Head of Engineering at Nomadic Labs.

Activated through Tezos’ on-chain governance process, Tallinn enhances both scalability and decentralization without network disruption.

The upgrade also strengthens Tezos’ role as a settlement layer for Etherlink, its EVM-compatible layer 2, which now benefits from L1 finality in two blocks, or 12 seconds.