Tezos Tallinn Upgrade Cuts Block Time to 6 Seconds

Tezos has pushed through one of its most meaningful performance upgrades in years, cutting Layer-1 block time down to six seconds while tightening validator security and reducing storage costs for on-chain applications.

The protocol upgrade, called Tallinn, is Tezos’ 20th on-chain upgrade since the network launched in 2018. It was developed by Nomadic Labs, Trilitech, and Functori, and activated through Tezos’ on-chain governance process with participation from bakers (validators) and community members.

What changed with the Tallinn upgrade?

Tallinn hits three major areas: speed, security, and storage efficiency.

First, speed. The most visible change is that Tezos Layer-1 now produces blocks every six seconds, reducing latency and speeding finality on what Tezos describes as its censorship-resistant settlement layer. For users, shorter block times typically translate into faster confirmations and a smoother app experience—especially for activity that still settles directly on L1.

Second, stronger attestations. Tallinn allows all bakers to attest to every block instead of only a subset. That may sound like an implementation detail, but it has real consequences: broader attestations can strengthen security assumptions and make rewards more predictable for validators, reducing “lumpy” outcomes that sometimes appear when participation is uneven.

Third, cheaper app storage. Tallinn introduces an Address Indexing Registry designed to eliminate redundant address data for apps using the Michelson runtime. Tezos says this can improve storage efficiency by up to 100x, potentially lowering costs for smart contracts and increasing throughput for systems that store large volumes of addresses.

Investor Takeaway

Why 6-second blocks matter for Tezos and Etherlink

The Tallinn upgrade also strengthens Tezos’ story across layers. Tezos has been positioning Etherlink—its EVM-compatible Layer-2—as the “fast lane” for high-throughput use cases, with transaction confirmations in under 50 milliseconds.

But L2 performance still depends on L1 settlement credibility. With Tezos now finalizing in two blocks (around 12 seconds), Etherlink’s quick confirmations are backed by faster and more predictable L1 finality. That matters for trading-like activity and consumer apps where users want instant UX, but the system still needs strong settlement guarantees behind the scenes.

This is one of the key battlegrounds in smart contract platforms right now. The most competitive ecosystems are the ones that can deliver both: high-speed execution and dependable, censorship-resistant settlement.

All-baker attestations and BLS signatures: security with less overhead

Tallinn’s attestation upgrade is enabled by BLS cryptographic signatures, which can aggregate hundreds of signatures into a single one per block. The purpose is efficiency: more bakers can attest without bloating the chain with excessive signature data.

By reducing the load on nodes, Tezos is making it easier to scale participation without raising hardware requirements too aggressively. That supports decentralization goals while also leaving room for further performance upgrades, including additional block time reductions in the future.

For staking economics, all-baker attestations can also reduce uncertainty. When validation and attestation participation is more consistent across the network, staking rewards tend to become easier to forecast—a subtle but meaningful improvement for long-term validators.

Investor Takeaway

The bigger picture: 20 upgrades without forks or downtime

Tezos is also using Tallinn to reinforce its identity: a chain that evolves through governance rather than disruption. Nomadic Labs’ Head of Engineering Yann Régis-Gianas framed the network’s ability to adapt “20 times over 7 years” without downtime as proof of reliability and future-proof design.

That positioning targets a specific audience: builders and institutions that care less about hype cycles and more about upgrade safety, stability, and predictability.

Tallinn fits that narrative. It’s a forkless activation that upgrades core performance while keeping decentralization and governance at the center of the network’s model. And with storage efficiency upgrades designed for enterprise-scale apps and large NFT ledgers, Tezos is leaning into use cases where long-term costs and infrastructure reliability matter more than meme momentum.

In short: Tallinn is a meaningful step forward for Tezos as a settlement layer, and it tightens the network’s pitch to developers—faster blocks, better security mechanics, and a sharp drop in storage overhead for apps that keep large address datasets on-chain.