Zilliqa (ZIL): A New Coin on the Block

Zilliqa (ZIL) was introduced in the cryptocurrency market on 26^th January 2018. It is, in fact, the first public blockchain that engages sharding that enables linear scaling along with the physical growth of the blockchain. Scalability issues of Bitcoin and Ethereum have long been a concern. At the moment being unable to meet all the demands, the transaction fees on the Bitcoin blockchain have increased significantly. In case of Ethereum, the smart contracts can become gas-intensive when it is limited throughput. Many newer crypto coins and even ERC20 tokens have tried to address this issue. But, till date, no one has been able to come up with the perfect solution. So, what makes Zilliqa different?

Zilliqa Combating Scalability Issues

Zilliqa brings in a new approach to the scalability issue. The sharding solution allows the network to grow in size. So, theoretically speaking the network of Zilliqa can process any number of transactions per second. However, in the real situation, considering the number of nodes present on the network, it can confirm tens or hundreds or thousands of transactions in one second.

It has been observed that with increment in the number of nodes present in the network, the time taken to reach consensus to confirm a transaction increases. Therefore, the network size and consensus speed are inversely proportional to each other. To truly solve scalability issues, the network size and the time taken to reach consensus should be working together. Zilliqa’s solution is different as it re-imagines the blockchain from the beginning. The model includes a hybrid consensus protocol that allows growth of the network’s throughput as nearly 600 new nodes join the network. The work gets divided into nearly 600 new nodes join the Zilliqa network. The problem is that there will be issues with broadcast when the number of nodes goes beyond one million. But, it is an upper limit and at this moment the network is far away from reaching the mark. Till now, the Zilliqa network has managed to confirm 2400 transactions per second while the sharding solution was being tested on the private blockchain.

The concept of sharding

Shard is the group formed when the Zilliqa protocol segregates the mining nodes present on the network into 600 each. Suppose, if there are 3600 nodes present then they will be divided into 6 shards. As the number of nodes increases the number of shards will also increase.

By dividing the work, the Zilliqa network ensures faster transactions. The shards will be taking care of a fraction of the network’s transactions. As the number of nodes is segregated into groups the amount of work done by a shard gets divided by the total number of groups present on the network at the moment. Thus the consensus load gets divided among the shards and the network is able to meet the computing demands. The assigned transactions are processed by the shard into a microblock. The processing period is called the “DS epoch” and by the end of it, all the microblocks combine to form a full block. It is then incorporated into the blockchain.

Zilliqa Testnet v1.0 Release

Codenamed Red Prawn, the announcement of the release of Zilliqa Testnet v1.0 was done by Yaoqi Jia, Zilliqa’s Head of Technology on 31^st March 2018. The sharding technology has been successfully utilized by MasterCard, Visa, and other international payment mediums. The motive of Zilliqa behind implementing this technology is to increase throughput such that there is a linear increase in the size of the network along with an increase in the demand for the number of transactions. Testnet v1.0 is speculated to have the capability of carrying out approximately 1000 transactions per second. From the official blog of Zilliqa (ZIL), “Please note that Red Prawn is the first version of our testnet and we will be continuously updating the testnet on a weekly basis. In our internal testing, we ran experiments on about 2,000 to 3,000 nodes achieving 2,000–3,000 transactions per second. As we have implemented several new features in the past few weeks, we do realize that the stability of our testnet needs improvement. We are first releasing a testnet with 1,000 nodes (4 shards) running on AWS.”

Zilliqa and Noorcoin Partnership

Zilliqa partnered up with the world’s first shariah token Noorcoin, early this April. Zilliqa will now be able to test its blockchain protocol for on-chain high-throughput transactions for the Noorcoin system. Hear it from Noorcoin’s founder and CEO, Sofia Koswara the reason to choose Zilliqa, “We’ve decided to build on Zilliqa’s platform since it opens up new options that weren’t possible earlier. We aspire to achieve outstanding quality and to be a pioneer in setting the best practices in the world for the growing blockchain industry. With Zilliqa we believe that we can achieve that goal.”

Zilliqa (ZIL) Price Analysis

According to the price chart of Ziliqa (ZIL) on coinmarketcap.com, the coin had managed to ‘maintain’ green candles ever since its inception into the cryptocurrency market. At the time of writing, the price is $0.09 USD (7.39%) approximately and the rank shown is 36. The market cap is approximately $699,243,414 USD and the volume (24h) is nearly $37,958,200 USD. (As of 27^th April 2018). The unique approach of Zilliqa (ZIL) to scalability has the capability of bringing in more partnerships and this, in turn, will hopefully see more investors. So, this is probably the ‘perfect’ time to buy the crypto coin and hold on to it.

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Disclaimer: This article should not be taken as, and is not intended to provide, investment advice. Global Coin Report and/or its affiliates, employees, writers, and subcontractors are cryptocurrency investors and from time to time may or may not have holdings in some of the coins or tokens they cover. Please conduct your own thorough research before investing in any cryptocurrency and read our full disclaimer.

Image courtesy of Molly Dilworth via Flickr