Tezos, led by the husband-wife team of Arthur and Kathleen Breitman, raised the equivalent of $232 million in an initial coin offering in 2017. At the time, the sale of the XTZ tokens was the largest ICO to date, raising more than 10 times the initially targeted $20 million. The blockchain was one of the first to use a “proof of stake” consensus mechanism, a system that’s becoming increasingly popular compared with the “proof of work” mechanism used by the Bitcoin blockchain. Holders of XTZ can commit their tokens in exchange for the ability to validate blocks, winning rewards for doing so in a process known as “baking.” Participants who stake at least 8,000 of the tokens on the network get voting rights, allowing them to weigh in on the governance of the project.