Zilliqa

What is Zilliqa?

Zilliqa (ZIL) is a blockchain designed to address the scalability and transaction processing challenges faced by Ethereum. Its primary strength lies in providing a robust foundation for building applications and networks requiring high transaction throughput. In the competitive landscape of blockchain technology, Zilliqa stands among other platforms like Ethereum, Tron, and EOS, all striving to foster ecosystems of decentralized applications (dapps) and cryptocurrencies.

What sets Zilliqa apart is its innovative sharding process, which divides its infrastructure into interconnected blockchains, enabling a higher capacity for processing transactions. Moreover, Zilliqa has introduced Scilla, a native programming language emphasizing security. This language empowers developers to create and launch customizable dapps that emulate real-world services.

---

Recent Video Interview

Main points of the interview:

• Emphasis on gaming, aiming to create revenue-generating businesses and attract developers and gamers to Zil.
• Partnership with Racing League to bring digital audience into horse racing.
• Plans for expansion into UK, Southeast Asia, targeting luxury, racing, and esports markets.
• Pivoting from the console project to focus on real-world asset capability on-chain.

---

How Does Zilliqa Work?

The Zilliqa network offers various common features found in other cryptocurrency networks, such as smart contracting, transaction settlement, and token issuance. It utilizes its proprietary language, Scilla, enabling developers to create custom programming logic (smart contracts) and design new decentralized applications (dApps) for a wide range of products and services.

To achieve scalability and efficiency, Zilliqa employs a complex implementation called sharding. This technique divides the network into several shards, with each shard acting as its own blockchain, processing only a fraction of the network's transactions. The assigned nodes in each shard handle data storage, transaction processing, and adding new blocks (microblocks) to their specific shard chain. These microblocks are then combined into a transaction block by Directory Service Nodes (DS nodes) and added to the Zilliqa blockchain. It's important to note that shard nodes do not need to store the entire history of Zilliqa.

At the core of Zilliqa's functionality is the Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (pBFT) governance mechanism. It ensures synchronization among the distributed network of computers. To participate in the network and vote on changes, nodes must stake ZIL, allowing anyone who owns ZIL to help operate the network. Through pBFT, all nodes assigned to specific shards must agree before a microblock is finalized and merged into a transaction block. As a reward for validating transactions, each node receives a portion of the block reward.

Zilliqa Team Background and Partnerships

Zilliqa's inception can be traced back to a paper published in 2016 by Prateek Saxena, an assistant professor at the National University of Singapore School of Computing, along with several students from the same school. This paper laid out the vision of a sharding-focused blockchain that could enhance network efficiency and speed.

Around that time, Prateek Saxena co-founded Anquan Capital in collaboration with Max Kantelia, a seasoned finance and tech entrepreneur, and Juzar Motiwalla, former president of the Singapore Computer Society. Subsequently, in June 2017, Zilliqa Research was established as a part of Anquan Capital to spearhead the development of the Zilliqa network. The team welcomed Dong Xinshu as the CEO, Yaoqi Jia as the chief technology officer, and Amrit Kumar as the chief scientific officer. Notably, all three had prior experience as research fellows at the NUS School of Computing.

Zilliqa is quickly emerging as the prominent blockchain in the esports industry: it has partnered with three esports and gaming companies: Indonesian-based RRQ, Spain-based MAD Lions and Sweden’s Ninjas in Pyjamas. The Zilliqa ecosystem also offers services to a wide range of entities such as Binance, Envelop, SimpleHold, Autofarm, Bittrex, Bithumb, Changelly, CoinHako, Coral App, Comining...

Zilliqa Project Development

A major focus for 2023 is the execution of Zilliqa 2.0 from a technical standpoint. There are plans to transition to proof of stake, which is expected to happen soon.

The team has shown remarkable progress in accelerating delivery and reducing technical debt. This will lead to a more assertive approach in terms of upgrades and deployments, positioning them well for the future of Zilliqa 2.0. A significant milestone to anticipate is the delivery of EVM in Q1 2023, which will expand the ecosystem, enabling more builders and applications, including dApps, games, and DeFi.

In addition, there has been considerable development behind the scenes, strategizing on infrastructure and DeFi initiatives beyond the gaming focus. With various new capabilities, partnerships, and use cases emerging in 2023, the adoption and credibility of Zilliqa's blockchain are predicted to flourish in the coming years.