What is Zilliqa (ZIL)?

  • 2022-11-18

Zilliqa is an open-source blockchain that aims to solve the scalability and throughput problems plaguing various cryptocurrencies. To accomplish these goals, Zilliqa uses sharding, which divides the system into nodes that conduct operations in parallel to increase transaction throughput and provide a sustainable and secure platform.

Zilliqa token creators boast that its blockchain successfully addresses scalability concerns by relying solely on sharding. According to the token's white paper, the Zilliqa blockchain can process transactions at a rate that is around a thousand times stronger than Ethereum's.

Given that Zilliqa price is a high-throughput, permissionless blockchain network, it may be used to host DApps and run Smart Contracts without the scalability and cost issues that plague other, more established blockchain networks.

How Does Zilliqa Work?

Zilliqa's reliance on sharding technology to address congestion is fundamental to its design. However, what exactly is sharding, and how does it function? Sharding, in its simplest definition, is separating a network into smaller, more manageable groups of nodes. When miners are asked to validate a transaction, they can do so simultaneously. In other words, unlike most other cryptocurrencies, where processing times increase linearly with network size, shards can process transactions independently of one another. In a sharded network, the more shards there are, the more transactions each bit can handle at once, and hence the faster the network can process transactions as a whole.

The difficulty of agreeing on how to verify transactions is a potential issue with sharding. Some tokens, like Bitcoin, use a consensus process in which at least half of the nodes must agree on a transaction before it can be confirmed. The Zilliqa network eliminates this time-consuming step by employing a hybrid consensus mechanism that processes transactions more quickly and with less computational power than methods used by legacy blockchain systems like Bitcoin and Ethereum. This is achieved by shifting the responsibility for checking data to the cluster level so that individual nodes need not handle large data chunks. Zilliqa's second layer, comprised of nodes, verifies the accuracy of the first by acting as a courier service committee that brings together individual building components. Therefore, the DS committee has access to the entire blockchain and can verify the validity of the verification.

Is There Anything Special About Zilliqa?

Zilliqa's creators claim their product is the first public blockchain to utilize a sharded architecture fully. Furthermore, they claim that Zilliqa can compete with conventional centralized payment methods like VISA and Mastercard due to its high throughput and transaction rates.

As a result of its sharded architecture and hybrid consensus process, Zilliqa has the potential to become the decentralized cryptocurrency of choice for developers who seek a solution for large-scale organizations in the financial sector, gaming, marketing, and other industries.

Along with these characteristics, Zilliqa is coded in a custom language called Scilla, which is meant to enhance the network's overall security automatically.

Zilliqa's worth

Besides acting as a medium of trade and a store of value, Zilliqa tokens (ZIL) can also be staked for a return on investment. Zilliqa holders who commit some of their shares can vote on how the Zilliqa ecosystem is run, with the weight of each voter's vote according to the amount of zilliqa staked.

Because there is a fixed number of tokens in circulation, the value of ZIL can't fall due to unrestrained inflation.

Approximately How Many Zilliqa Coins Are Currently in Flow?

There are presently 15,032,795,975 ZIL in circulation out of the total quantity of ZIL.

Before launching, Zilliqa created 60% of the entire supply and allocated a portion of it as follows: 10% was set aside for Anquan Capital, 12% was set aside for Zilliqa Research, and 5% was set aside for present and prospective Zilliqa employees. Mining will produce the residual 40% of zilliqa price.

After ten years after the blockchain's inception, the Zilliqa development team predicts that all the currencies will be mined and the mining incentives will have dwindled to nothing.

Differential Data

The Zilliqa team has teamed with Chainlink to facilitate the integration of oracles, increasing the network's access to real-world data. With the help of these oracles, intelligent contracts can pull information from external sources, such as other blockchains or real-world occurrences.

Besides providing an extra layer of safety, the oracles' decentralized approach also offers the benefit of being more convenient. There is no single point of failure or attack because several network nodes deliver the data.

By incorporating Chainlink, the Zilliqa design team hopes to expand the blockchain platform's usability to include decentralized marketplaces, trading systems, and other asymmetric encryption financial services. Although Zilliqa's specialized Chainlink adapter primarily uses recent market prices, it may also be used to acquire data on other variables of interest, such as currency exchange rates, election outcomes, and weather forecasts.

How does Zilliqa ensure the safety of its network?

Zilliqa's network is protected against threats of all kinds thanks to a combination of the system's many advanced security mechanisms. Zilliqa uses a Byzantine Fault Tolerant consensus process with two layers of verification as the foundation of its security architecture. The first prevents Sybil attacks by restricting blockchain processing to macro-blocks on individual shards. Finally, a second level of the consensus method verifies and guarantees there will be no network hard forks.

To further ensure the safety of its transaction logs, the Zilliqa blockchain uses elliptic-curve cryptography in conjunction with a Proof of Work mechanism to create shards and assign node identities.

Last, Zilliqa employs its coding language, Scilla, which guarantees that any apps developed are secure to run on the Zilliqa network by proactively identifying and eliminating security vulnerabilities. This is accomplished at the language level, giving developers more confidence in the safety of Scilla-based intelligent contracts.

Methods of Applying Zilliqa

While anyone is welcome to utilize Zilliqa's public blockchain, the network's rapid transaction speeds will likely attract developers of high-volume intelligent contracts and decentralized applications. Blockchain technology can be used for things like high-volume robotic auctions and decentralized exchanges, high-performance scientific computing, and something that needs precise findings.

Zilliqa's native token, ZIL, can be used for a wide variety of purposes on the network, including the execution of smart contracts, the payment of transaction fees, and the acquisition of mining or staking rewards.

For those who consider ZIL as a solid investment opportunity, holding or trading it may be preferable.

The Zilliqa team is committed to further decentralizing the platform. Therefore they've enabled staking with the Zilliqa token, ZIL. Users that stake a portion of their ZIL shares will receive access to network governance components and direct incentives for doing so.

This is why the developer team has formed strategic alliances with Staked Seed Node Operators, which are multiple exchanges and wallets supporting staking.

Users can stake a minimum of 10 ZIL and a maximum of any amount the system supports.