Tezos Successfully Activates Rio Upgrade, Enhancing Staking Flexibility and Layer 2 Scalability

The upgrade was approved through the network’s on-chain governance process, with participation from validators and community members

Tezos has activated its 18th protocol upgrade, named Rio, marking another milestone in the blockchain's X roadmap.

The upgrade, which was approved through the network's on-chain governance process with participation from validators and community members, aims to enhance staking flexibility, support growth on Layer 2, and strengthen the network's validator framework.

A key change introduced with Rio is a reduction in the Tezos (XTZ) cycle length. According to protocol developers, this change, which was previously announced in March, reduces the cycle length from approximately three days to just one.

This shorter cycle time has a direct impact on users, as it determines the unstaking wait time when moving funds from staking to other network activities, such as interacting with decentralized applications.

With the Rio upgrade, users can expect a significantly shorter unstaking period, improving the overall user experience across Web3 services by making staking more accessible and responsive. Future upgrades may further reduce unstaking wait times.

Moreover, Rio advances the adoption of the Tezos Data Availability Layer (DAL), which was first introduced on mainnet with the Paris upgrade in 2024.

The DAL is designed to improve scalability by enabling a massive increase in the volume of transaction data that can be published on-chain—up to 4,000 times the original capacity—all while reducing costs for rollup-based applications like Etherlink.

With Rio, the protocol now allocates 10% of baking rewards to bakers participating in DAL, creating a direct incentive to support L2 scaling.

In a move to enhance network reliability, Rio introduces stricter inactivity thresholds for bakers. Under the new rules, bakers who remain unresponsive for more than two days will be marked inactive and temporarily lose their consensus rights.

This measure is intended to reduce the risk of slowdowns and increase the network's overall resilience.

The upgrade was collaboratively developed by Nomadic Labs, Trilitech, and Functori, and is part of Tezos' ongoing approach to self-amending upgrades and community-led governance.

As the cryptocurrency industry continues to evolve, protocol upgrades play a crucial role in adapting to new trends and optimizing performance.