Tezos Unveils Rio Upgrade, Enhancing Staking Flexibility and Layer 2 Rewards

Tezos has achieved a significant milestone with the successful implementation of Rio, marking its 18th protocol upgrade and a further advancement in the Tezos X roadmap.

The upgrade received endorsement through the network’s on-chain governance process, which involved both validators and community participants, focusing on enhancing staking flexibility, promoting growth on Layer 2, and strengthening the network’s validator framework.

A key highlight of the Rio upgrade is the shortening of Tezos’ (XTZ) cycle length—from approximately three days to just one, as mentioned in a communication shared with crypto.news.

This change significantly reduces the waiting time for users transferring funds between staking and other network activities, such as engaging with decentralized applications.

The reduced cycle time is expected to improve the user experience across Web3 services by making staking more accessible and quicker. Future upgrades may further shorten unstaking wait times, according to protocol developers.

DAL and Scalability

Rio also supports the adoption of the Tezos Data Availability Layer (DAL), first introduced on the mainnet with the Paris upgrade in 2024.

The DAL aims to boost scalability by allowing up to 4,000 times more transaction data to be published on-chain, while also reducing costs for rollup-based applications, like Etherlink.

With the rollout of Rio, the protocol allocates 10% of baking rewards to bakers involved in DAL, offering a direct incentive to enhance L2 scaling.

To improve network reliability, Rio establishes stricter inactivity thresholds for bakers. Under these new rules, bakers who remain unresponsive for more than two days will be designated as inactive and temporarily lose their consensus rights.

This initiative aims to reduce the risk of slowdowns and boost the overall resilience of the network.

The upgrade was collaboratively developed by Nomadic Labs, Trilitech, and Functori, reflecting Tezos’ continuous commitment to self-amending upgrades and community-led governance.