Paris, France—30 June, 2026—The Tezos protocol has been successfully upgraded, with no fork or disruption to the network, following an on-chain governance process which saw broad participation from bakers (validators) and other community members. The activation marks another step along the Tezos X roadmap, advancing Tezos’ scalability and laying the groundwork for a greatly improved staking experience as well as post-quantum security. Developed by Nomadic Labs, Trilitech, and Functori, Ushuaia is Tezos’ 21st protocol upgrade – proposed, adopted, and seamlessly activated through on-chain governance by network stakeholders.
Yann Régis-Gianas, Head of Engineering at Nomadic Labs, said, “With Ushuaia, Tezos Layer 1 does exactly what a modern settlement layer should do: increase data availability for the applications arriving with Tezos X, while preparing the cryptographic migration path long before quantum risk becomes urgent. It is a pragmatic upgrade: more capacity today, and safer foundations for tomorrow.”
Following the activation of the Ushuaia upgrade on mainnet, Data Availability Layer (DAL) bandwidth has increased to 10MB/s, opening the door for applications on Tezos to move 15x more data than before. Tezos can now support hundreds of thousands of transactions per second without data publication becoming a bottleneck, making it well suited for games, high-frequency DeFi, and other data-intensive applications. Rather than being a hardware-driven leap, the increase comes from a combination of software optimizations and updated protocol parameters. Security remains unchanged; the same attestation thresholds, rewards, and redundancy factors apply, meaning decentralization isn't being traded for throughput. Ushuaia also makes DAL attestation dynamic, so operations like fast withdrawals on Etherlink (Tezos EVM), are now confirmed noticeably faster.
The Ushuaia protocol code also includes further features that have not been activated on mainnet, but are now available on testnet for community assessment and feedback ahead of potential activation in a later protocol upgrade. These include the introduction of quantum-resistant user keys via the NIST-standardized ML-DSA-44 post-quantum signature scheme. While this feature remains on testnet for now, its introduction marks an early first step towards quantum readiness, well before any real threat materializes. Also coming to testnet with Ushuaia is enshrined liquid staking, a mechanism enabling users to deposit XTZ into a protocol-recognized contract and receive sTEZ, an FA2.1 token that increases in value relative to XTZ, as staking rewards accrue. It lets users keep funds liquid while participating in staking, without relying on centralized third-parties. The accrual model also simplifies accounting and DeFi integration. The feature is still being developed in cooperation with the broader Tezos community, and mainnet activation is being targeted for a future protocol upgrade.
Arthur Breitman, co-founder of Tezos, said, “Among other improvements, Ushuaia marks the first step in a timely transition to post quantum cryptography, a change every blockchain will need to undergo.”
21 successful upgrades later, Tezos continues to demonstrate its unique ability to evolve continuously and implement new features that better serve the needs of the builders and individuals developing on the network, laying the groundwork for the needs of future users without compromising on decentralization. More information about the changes now live on mainnet, as well as those which are feature-flagged for future updates, can be found on the official Nomadic Labs blog.