The Hangzhou proposal features several major improvements to the protocol, as well as numerous minor improvements. Below, we present some of the most interesting and important changes:
Timelock
Timelock encryption makes it possible for smart contract authors to include strong countermeasures against Block Producer Extractable Value (referred to as “MEV” on proof-of-work chains).
Views
Views are a new kind of entrypoints for smart contracts, which make internal state information more easily accessible to other smart contracts.
Cache
Caching provides faster access to regularly accessed data and lowers the associated gas cost. It does so by splitting state storage between a “hot” storage, kept in RAM, and a “cold” storage, kept on disk. Caching directly increases the throughput of Tezos and can be built upon to further improve the performance of various parts of the protocol.
Global Table of Constants
The global table of constants can be used by smart contract developers to register Michelson expressions as “constants” and reference them in contracts. This allows developers to create larger and more complex contracts than they otherwise could. It will also serve as the foundation for smart contracts libraries in Tezos.
Context Flattening
Context flattening is a rewriting of the protocol’s database internals. It optimizes storage use, and will also enable future optimisations in order to speed up the processing of blocks and operations.
Liquidity baking
Hangzhou includes a small increase to the liquidity baking sunset level. Without this, the subsidy would halt during the lifespan of this protocol.
We invite you to look at the changelog for a full description of the contents of the proposal.
