For work and play, I take part in the Tezos ecosystem. Tezos is a proof-of-stake blockchain with on-chain governance. This means that it requires significantly less compute than proof-of-work blockchains (such as the one Bitcoin uses) and it’s less likely to breakup into other projects (fork) because the community gets to vote on the direction.

So you want to get involved with Tezos? Do you want to:

  • Just invest and use a cryptocurrency
  • Run a node, to keep a copy of the blockchain and add to the resilience of the chain.
  • Run a “validator” to add blocks to the blockchain (for Tezos we call validators, “bakers”)?

Or all three? Below we have some suggestions.

General user/investor

If you want to investing in the Tezos coin or buying NFTs, you can start by:

  • Buying coins at an exchange such as Coinbase or Binance. If you hold your coins there, you will have a custodian account where you are at the mercy of the exchange.
  • Using a software wallet such as Temple. Be careful storing your keys on an online computer.
  • Investing in a Hardware Security Module, such as a Ledger and using it as an offline non-custodian wallet. This is probably the most secure way of holding funds as a “home user” of cryptocurrency.
  • You can buy NFTs at objkt.com and you can buy them with a credit card. This is a great way to get into Tezos.

Interested in running a node or a baker

You will need to download Octez (the reference Tezos blockchain software) and run it. The good news is it runs on small systems such as Raspberry Pi 5 (16GB, 64-bit OS, fast SSD drive needed), Linux machines, Macs and even Windows using Windows Subsystem for Linux.

I maintain packages of Octez for Linux platforms (available for download and via APT).

And I have some articles to get started: