Bakers are validators in the Tezos blockchain network, responsible for securing the network, validating transactions, and maintaining the integrity of the ledger through a process called "baking"1234+1.
Key Roles and Responsibilities
Block Validation and Production: Bakers create (“bake”) new blocks, sign, and publish them to the Tezos blockchain. They ensure that all transactions in a block are valid and prevent issues like double-spending12.
Consensus Participation: Tezos uses a Liquid Proof-of-Stake (LPoS) mechanism. Bakers are chosen to validate and add new blocks based on their staked XTZ ("tez") holdings—the more they stake (including delegations), the higher their chance of being selected2345.
Security Collateral: To participate, bakers must stake a minimum of 6,000 XTZ, also referred to as a "roll." They must also post a security deposit (~8.25% of delegated XTZ). Dishonest behavior can result in loss of this deposit through "slashing"234.
Earning Rewards: Bakers receive new XTZ (block rewards) and a portion of transaction fees for their services. Rewards can also be shared with delegators—those who delegate their XTZ to a baker345.
Governance Participation: Bakers play a central role in Tezos’s on-chain governance—they propose and vote on protocol upgrades, representing both their own and their delegators’ stake in governance decisions26.
This participation ensures continuous network upgrades without disruptive hard forks.
Decentralization and Delegation
Regular users can delegate their XTZ to bakers if they do not want to operate their own baking node. This allows anyone to participate in staking and governance indirectly235.
Bakers' voting power and block selection chances scale with the total amount staked (own + delegated), reinforcing their representative role in the network’s governance26.
The Tezos baker network is geographically diverse, with both large institutional bakers (such as Coinbase and Kraken) and many independent or community-run bakers distributed globally789.
Additional Context
Tezos’s approach seeks to balance decentralization with efficiency; still, the top few bakers (including major exchanges) control a significant share of staked tokens79.
Tezos’s energy use is low relative to Proof-of-Work chains, making baking on Tezos energy-efficient10.