Welcome to the Octez and Protocol Documentation!

This documentation describes an implementation of the Tezos blockchain consisting of the Octez toolsuite and the Tezos protocol, for technical users of various kinds, including Tezos application developers, bakers, and Octez/protocol developers.

Note

For documentation of the whole Tezos ecosystem, including software beyond the Octez & protocol platform, such as smart contracts languages, developer tools, or web3 libraries, see https://docs.tezos.com. Training material about the Tezos ecosystem, consisting of learning modules with exercises, can be found at https://opentezos.com.

To start browsing the Octez & Protocol documentation, directly pick any topics in the menu on the left, or click one of the guided paths below:

Discover Octez & the Tezos protocol

Never heard of Octez? Let’s get acquainted!

Octez & the Tezos protocol are an implementation of the Tezos blockchain , a distributed consensus platform with meta-consensus capability.

This means that, unlike other blockchains like Bitcoin or Ethereum, Tezos comes to consensus not only about the state of its ledger, but also about how the protocol and the nodes should adapt and upgrade.

This is a fundamental design choice, allowing Tezos to be seamlessly upgradable and continuously evolving. Due to this feature, Tezos is built to last, and always stay at the leading edge of blockchain technology.

To learn more about Tezos, see <https://tezos.com>.

To learn more about how Octez & the protocol fit into Tezos and its ecosystem, see Octez & Protocol overview.

Getting started with Octez

Newcomer to Octez? Start participating in Tezos using Octez!

Start participating in Tezos by following the Introduction section in the documentation menu.

These tutorials explain:

• how to get the latest release of Octez (a complete, open-source implementation of Tezos) in various forms,

• how to start using Octez to join Tezos,

• different ways to participate to the network,

and more.

Using Octez

Already a user? Here is everything you need to know!

If you already installed Octez and can participate in the Tezos blockchain, the most useful resources are grouped in the User manual section in the documentation menu. These pages:

• present the key concepts and mechanisms for setting up Octez, including Setting up the client, Setting up the node, for different production or testing configurations;

• empowers you to take advantage of Octez’ basic and more advanced features, such as Key Management, Built-in multisig contracts, Logging features, and much more.

If you intend to participate to Tezos not just as a user, but rather as a baker, you should also check more specialized documentation such as the Baking section on Open Tezos.

Understanding Octez & the protocol

Want to know how it works? It’s no secret, let us explain!

If you want to know more about the technology underlying Octez and the Tezos protocol, the Reference manual section in the documentation present their rationale, main design principles, and some high-level implementation principles:

• Page Octez software architecture explains how the architecture of the Octez implementation instantiates the high-level architectural principles of any Tezos implementation, consisting in a “shell” and a “protocol” .

• Page Octez Shell details some major subsystems of The Octez Shell.

• Page Octez Protocol explains the design principles and the salient features of the Tezos protocol. In fact, these pages are versioned for several Tezos protocols, current or upcoming, such as: the active protocol, a protocol proposal under development, and possibly some protocol(s) that are currently candidate(s) for future adoption.

• Other pages are related to the important Smart Rollups feature, and present tools such as the Smart rollup node and the Data Availability Layer.

Developer reference

Are you a Tezos developer? Find here some useful reference pages!

If you are a developer on the Tezos platform, you must know the Tezos Developer Portal or Open Tezos, giving accessible and pedagogical expositions on how to write smart contracts or Dapps.

This website complements those resources with reference documentation, mostly in section Developer reference, including:

• Principles of the RPC interface such as the JSON/RPC interface

• RPC references such as Shell RPCs - Reference, RPCs - OpenAPI reference, or RPC Errors

• A complete reference of Michelson: the language of Smart Contracts in Tezos

• Guidelines for writing smart contracts in Michelson, such as Michelson Anti-Patterns.

Contributing to Octez & the protocol

Are you a platform developer? Here are the nuts and bolts!

One major focus of this website is on resources for platform developers, that is, contributors to Octez (Octez developers) and contributors to the Tezos protocol (protocol developers).

Platform developers can find a rich set of explanations, tutorials, and howtos, mainly in the Contributing section, including:

• a tutorial on the various forms of contributing (How to contribute to Octez), and guidelines such as Documentation and coding guidelines

• programming tutorials covering various libraries and frameworks specific to the Octez OCaml implementation, such as using Generalized Algebraic Data Types (GADTs), using The Error Monad, using The clic library, Using The Event Logging Framework, etc.

• howtos for specific maintenance tasks such as Adding a new instruction to Michelson language, Adding a new protocol environment, or How to Freeze Protocols

• a whole subsection on the various testing frameworks for Octez, explaining how to use them and how to add different kinds of tests

• presentations of various tools for platform developers, such as support for Profiling the Octez node and Benchmarking with Snoop

• a subsection on architecture details providing detailed explanations of the internal structure and design of key components in the Octez codebase.

Platform developers are also provided reference materials for internal APIs of Octez, such as:

• The API of OCaml libraries and modules reference

• The P2P message format reference

• The Merkle Proof Encoding Formats reference.