The $1 Billion Tezos Blockchain Is Officially Launching Monday

The "Experimental" phase for the Tezos blockchain is over.

On Monday morning, the Tezos Foundation will officially announce that the protocol will no longer be in a beta period, and instead be a full mainnet, launched and run by its community.

Tezos launched a mainnet, or live blockchain version of its software at the end of June, and since then its xtz tokens have been tradeable.

While the blockchain was being used as intended throughout that time - with the number of network participants and staked tokens on the rise - technically the blockchain was in beta and could be paused for maintenance at any time.

The problem was addressed, and the blockchain has been running smoothly since.

When it first launched, only the Tezos Foundation validated transactions on the network, but on July 20 the foundation opened up to third-party validators.

The previous president of the foundation, Johann Gevers, stepped down in February, after a tenure in which many viewed him as stifling the launch of a protocol that set a record for the largest initial coin offering of all time up that point - $232 million in July 2017.

Since Jesperson took over, along with a completely new board, the foundation has partnered with major auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers; actively funded academics, community members and entrepreneurs with interest in contributing to the ecosystem and set up the first set of validation nodes on which to launch the network.

The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies.

CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.