What is Zilliqa (ZIL)
Zilliqa is a cryptocurrency platform that is designed to make blockchain blistering, durable, and more efficient. It is a new blockchain project made to scale in an open distributed network. Not bound by permissions, and it is highly secured.
To emphasize, Zilliqa introduces a new functional and effective language [called Scilla] for the creation of smart contracts that enable formal verification of security mechanisms and properties in an automated fashion.
What is responsible for the capacity to scale in an unprecedented form is the infusion of sharding technology. To explain, it is the breaking into fragments [i.e., several smaller components] –networks that allow the blockchain to process transactions in parallel. The result of this, however, is that Zilliqa transactions are able to increase exponentially as mining networks widen.
Zilliqa is structured to challenge traditional centralized payment systems such as MasterCard and Visa.
With 10,000 nodes in network size, do you know that Zilliqa will herald a throughput, which is equivalent to the average transaction rate of MasterCard and Visa? And to top it, Zilliqa offers an advantage for a reduced fee for merchants.
Brief History of Zilliqa Blockchain
The platform’s name is obviously playing around the word Silica, which in effect implies Silicon offering a high-throughput consensus system. Zilliqa originates from Singapore. It was founded by a team of researchers from the popular National University of Singapore. Sitting at the top of this group of researchers includes Xinshu Dong, Amrit Kumar, Prateek Saxena, and Yaoqi Jia. All are occupying the positions of CEO, Head of Research, Chief Scientific Advisor, and Head of Technology, respectively. Others include Prateek Saxena (Chief Scientific Advisor), Juzar Motiwalla (Chief Strategist), Max Kantelia (Chief Evangelist), etc.
Some of the brand’s milestone:
- The team announced on the 12th of October that testnet version 0.5 had peaked 2,488 transactions per second throughput. And for the first time –on the 1st of December –the testnet [v1.0] was made available to the public. It later became an open-sourced code in January 2018.
- By 2017, Zilliqa was reported to have raised about twenty million U.s dollars [$20M] in private funding. And another two million dollars [$2M] during the one-week ICO for the company’s “Zil Token.”
- Zilliqa competes with the other smart contracts processing platforms, namely NEO [$NEO] Stellar [$XLM] and Ethereum [$ETH].
The primary motivation for the team of researchers from NUS for building this project was to develop a platform that could scale up the processing of smart contracts without impending on the core blockchain principles.
When we bring Zilliqa side by side to other smart contract processing cryptographic ledgers such as EOS or NEO, we found that Zilliqa does not depend on DPoS [Delegated proof of stake] for her transaction throughput. Take note that DPoS is able to permit rapid scaling; however, it centralizes network; structuring it in a way that puts many in an unsafe blockchain environment.
The main thing for Zilliqa really is developing a network that is not only scalable but functional and effective. Introducing the sharding technology, the company is able to achieve this whilst also adhering to blockchain guidelines and security principles.
Seeing the company’s roadmap update, it’s apparent that it can only get better as the team continues to work on several network enhancement and distributed apps, including an application for digital advertisement, global media, etc. Developers are engaged to develop applications on the company’s testnet. In the midst of all this, with Zilliqa achieving its goal to develop a successful, scalable blockchain, its aim to provide an efficient and highly secured smart contract processing remains unchangeable.
Zilliqa Technology
Zilliqa is exemplified with its scaling ability. It is designed to scale in many directions. Zilliqa rides upon its network sharding system. The shard tech helps to divide network nodes, which makes it possible for it to process transactions in parallel. This activity -however -is accompanied by sharding protocol: The protocol ensures that transactions are validated and accepted without having to disclose the sharding arrangement. There is a framework proposed by Zilliqa for a novel computational sharding. The framework allows applications that are computation-intensive to run effectively over the network. Below, we outline some of the main features of Zilliqa.
Sharding:
This is a concept adopted by Zilliqa in a quest to break the network of blockchain nodes into different subunits, known as Shards.
Account-based Transactional Sharding:
The account-based design employed by Zilliqa permits transactions to be sharded in accordance with the account it is coming from. Thereby ensuring that issues of double payment or replay are avoided.
Optimized BFT [Byzantine fault tolerance]:
Zilliqa has been able to achieve –from its consensus protocol –result blocks that are definitive. The choice for BFT prevents the regular experience of long confirmation times as presented in certain rules in existing cryptocurrencies.
Some of the features and activities of Zilliqa blockchain includes:
- Directory Service Committee: The DSC is made up of nodes that account for a great percentage of the network.
- Shard tech processes transactions individually.
- Zilliqa blockchain is a-synchronously channeled back through the network.
- Zilliqa has onboard two special security features.
- It uses special semantics along with Scilla to offer highly effective security properties and superior development experience.
Perspectives and Takeaways
Zilliqa focuses on companies such as digital advertising, gaming, and finance, having figured in the enormous potential these sectors hold. In the long run, the most revealing indicator for the success of the Zilliqa blockchain will be the upward rise in the number of its active users. Zilliqa blockchain infrastructure is designed to meet the needs of gaming platforms, for instance, to not only have the capacity to abode increasing numbers of users but more important is its ability to process transactions smoothly; in an efficient and secured manner.
Zilliqa is a blockchain platform designed to enable high-throughput and secured smart contract programming and verification. Rubicon Project –one of the world’s largest advertising exchanges; it helps websites and apps to thrive by offering expertise and other necessary tools to sell ads easily and securely. Zilliqa’s smart contracts would see to it that additional spending, which is usually incurred by Ad fraud combined with ineffectual processes, is significantly reduced. This means that advertisers would only need to pay for validated impressions.
Zilliqa’s Future
As represented on the company’s roadmap, the mission of this blockchain that has come to challenge the status quo will continue on its quest to expand the scaling ability of the blockchain. In addition to this will be how to ensure that all dApps which are currently running on the platform gain 100x to 1000x more in comparison to other blockchain outlets existing today. Let’s outline some of the research concepts and ideas that can be explored.
- Privacy and Intellectual Property Protection
- A Secure and efficient State Sharding
- Cross-chain support
- Streamlining the Storage System
- Secure and efficient Proof-of-Stake [PoS]
Zilliqa Website
For firsthand information, go to the official website.
Zilliqa Blockchain Explorer
Zilliqa Block explorer is available here.
Zilliqa Reddit
Join Zilliqa on Reddit for a community discussion and feedback.
Zilliqa Twitter
Check out Zilliqa page on Twitter
How to store and manage ZIL
Zilliqa is supported by many ‘wallet service’ providers, including Atomic wallet. Atomic Wallet functions as a decentralized wallet outlet for custody -free, cross-chain, immutable, and transparent & open-source cryptocurrency trading. In the wallet’s decentralized atomic swap exchange is where the trading takes place.
Atomic wallet lets you manage and exchange ZIL; the wallet application literally offers you everything that you need. The private keys on each coin are highly secured and generated from mnemonic seed and it offers users the privilege of having full control over their money.
Final Thoughts
Zilliqa’s testnet has matched the transaction speeds of Visa –giving the company an edge over existing platforms such as Ethereum and Bitcoin.
In the light of Roadmap 2020: Zilliqa 3.0 project, without doubt, would be interesting to watch as we look at how the free market reacts to it.
