Protocol Alpha

This page documents the changes brought by protocol Alpha with respect to Paris (see Protocol naming).

For changes brought by Paris with respect to Oxford, see Protocol Paris.

The code can be found in directory src/proto_alpha of the master branch of Octez.

Operation receipts

  • To better differentiate Deposits coming from ‘rewards from bakers own stakes’ from ‘the edge bakers may take from their stakers rewards’, the balance updates field has been specialized. The field {“staker”:{“baker”: <delegate_pkh>}} is now split into {“staker”:{“baker_own_stake”: <delegate_pkh>}} and {“staker”:{“baker_edge”: <delegate_pkh>}}. (MR !12258)

8s Blocks Time (MR !)

Blocks time have been reduced from 10 seconds to 8 seconds. That is, a block can be produced with a delay of 8 seconds with respect to the previous block, if both blocks have round 0. This change comes with updating many related protocol parameters in order to match the reduced blocks time. In particular, the following quantities are kept the same:

  • the minimal time period of a cycle (namely, 2 days, 20 hours, and 16 minutes),

  • the length of the nonce revelation period (namely, around 2 hours and 8 minutes)

  • the number of nonce commitments per cycle (namely, 128),

  • the number of stake snapshots per cycle (namely, 16),

  • the maximum rewards per minute (namely 80 tez), and therefore roughly the same issuance,

  • the minimal “time to live” of an operation (namely, 1 hour),

  • the block gas limit per minute (namely, 10400000 gas),

  • the ratio between the liquidity baking subsidy and the maximum rewards per block (namely, 1/16).

Changes to protocol parameters

Parameter (unit)

Old (oxford) value

New value

minimal_block_delay (seconds)

10

8

delay_increment_per_round (seconds)

5

4

blocks_per_cycle (blocks)

24576

30720

blocks_per_commitment (blocks)

192

240

nonce_revelation_threshold (blocks)

768

960

max_operations_time_to_live (blocks)

360

450

hard_gas_limit_per_block (gas unit)

1733333

1386666