Tezos [XZT] moves to Mainnet launch; the sleeping giant of 2017 awakens

Tezos [XZT] has defied investors’ expectations and is slated to launch the Mainnet of its “self-amending” blockchain. The ICO for the product, however, launched in July of 2017, raising over $232 million in funds, making it the largest ICO at the time.

The product has been in beta until now, with no major changes to be seen when the Mainnet is launched as they are both on the same blockchain. The Tezos protocol was tested, and no bugs or vulnerabilities were found. All the account balances for existing wallets have been merged to the Mainnet, leaving users with a seamless shifting experience.

It is currently at #16 by overall market capitalization, moving to the position from #19 where it was situated after the betanet launch. Prior to that, the coin was around the #1500 to the #1300 mark, as the tokens were not distributed to the investors.

The last year marked a dark time for Tezos investors, as they did not hear from the team for a very long time. Indeed, many events occurred between the ICO and now, including events such as the Foundation calling investments “non-refundable donations”.

It is important to note that the investors did not receive the tokens for the funds they invested until the middle of 2018, where the team fought through problems including governance issues of the blockchain caused by the co-founders and 4 class-action lawsuits.

Prominent venture capitalist Tim Draper invested $6 million in the ICO, which raised over 65000 Bitcoin [BTC] and 361000 Ethereum [ETH] in an uncapped sale. They faced 4 class-action lawsuits when the product was not released to the public.

The charges ranged from selling an unregistered security, misinterpretation of use and collected funds, misrepresentation of when the network would be launched, and claims of false advertising and deceptive trade practices.

The Foundation was facing flak from within as well, dealing with multiple issues concerning the governance of the Tezos Foundation. One of the Co-Founders of Tezos Foundation, Kathleen Breitman, threatened to release the code of the project over disagreements with the board of directors.

The team awoke from its long silence in June of this year, where it asked investors to retroactively provide Know Your Customer [KYC] and Anti-Money Laundering [AML] regulations in June of this year. This led to a general outrage by the community over the regulations.

On 30th June, a proposal was submitted for a genesis block. This began the development process towards a Tezos betanet, which included allocations for contributions in the 2017 ICO. This quickly drove the adoption of the network, as more network validators came on board.

After the launch of the betanet, the Tezos Foundation moved its focus towards providing support to the advancement of Tezos protocol, ecosystem, and community.

They also brought on PricewaterhouseCoopers [PwC], one of the “big four” accounting firms in the world, as an independent external financial auditor. This marked Tezos as the first large-scale blockchain operation to hire a firm of their caliber.

They also announced grants to build new technology on top of the Tezos blockchain, going on to fund Research and Development at Inria and Cornell Universities. They have also backed regional groups for the support of Tezos in Korea, Japan, and the United States.

In a blog post detailing the last 6 months of the Tezos journey, Ryan Jesperson, the President of Tezos Foundation, stated:

“For much of the last six months, we have been focused on redressing the situation that the Foundation fell into shortly after the fundraiser. There was a tremendous amount of work to do so that the Foundation could succeed in its mandate.”