What is Zilliqa?

Zilliqa (ZIL) is a blockchain created to solve Ethereum’s scalability and transaction processing problems. Zilliqa’s core feature is that it is a good foundation to build applications and networks that require high transaction throughput.

How it works

Zilliqa is an ERC-20 blockchain with a focus on high transaction throughput. Currently, the Zilliqa blockchain can handle 2,828 transactions per second. ZIL is the network’s utility token and it can be used to pay for transaction processing and have smart contracts executed.

Zilliqa accomplishes its high transaction through-put by using a sharded database. In a sharded database, nodes on the network are placed in subgroups that support a specific shard rather than the entire network. Transactions happen within each shard, and eventually, the transactions from each shard are aggregated into blocks and relayed to the main chain.

Unlike most blockchain networks, Zilliqa does not use a proof-of-work consensus algorithm. Instead, Zilliqa uses a consensus algorithm that is a combination of practical Byzantine fault tolerance (pBFT) and proof-of-work.

In Zilliqa’s hybrid consensus, miners are only required to do proof-of-work consensus for five minutes out of every 1.5 hours. Miners are rewarded proportionately to how many signatures they validated during the 1.5 hour period; therefore, more miners receive a reward compared to miners on most blockchain networks.

Zilliqa’s pBFT consensus is computationally-intense and cannot be run by GPU’s and ASIC’s.

ZIL Token

Zilliqa had an ICO that ran from December 27th, 2017 to January 10th, 2018. During the ICO, Zilliqa raised $22,000,000. The ZIL tokens were released on January 25th, 2018 under the ERC-20 token standard, the total supply is 12,599,999,804, and 8,059,460,653 ZIL are currently in circulation. Zilliqa expects 80% of the total token supply to be in circulation within the first four years of operation, and the final 20% to be minted over the course of the following six years.

Zilliqa plans to operate on the Ethereum blockchain until the Zilliqa main net launches, which is expected to take place in early 2019.

Why Zilliqa?

If you want to build a decentralized application or blockchain network that requires high transaction throughput, you might be interested in Zilliqa. Zilliqa was created to solve the transaction processing and scalability problems that plague Ethereum. For example, the Ethereum blockchain processes about 15 transactions per second.

That is why Zilliqa opted to use a sharded-data base — to achieve higher scalability and better transaction processing than other crypto networks.

The Zilliqa test net is currently able to process about 2828 transactions per second and the blockchain scales linearly as more nodes join the Zilliqa network.