- Zilliqa is a smart contract blockchain that uses Sharding to increase its transaction limits.
- It’s a Layer-1 blockchain initially launched over the Ethereum network as an ERC-20 Token, which provided it a good base to build dApps.
Zilliqa focuses on high transaction capacity, currently offering a throughput of 2828 transactions per second (TPS). To execute smart contracts and pay transaction fees, Zilliqa uses its utility token ZIL. This network provides great scalability, high throughput along with low network congestion. It represents an unusual mechanism being a sharded network.
What Is Zilliqa Network?
Zilliqa was designed to counter all the hurdles with existing blockchains like scalability and transaction capacity. It possesses Sharding technology by which it distributes networks into different nodes which run in parallel to increase this blockchain’s throughput and scalability. Zilliqa has its native cryptocurrency ZIL used for transactions.
According to the token’s developers, Zilliqa is the first blockchain network to use sharding technology, and achieves a great transaction capacity about thousand times faster than Ethereum blockchain itself. By restricting other blockchain’s limitations, it can be used by developers to host decentralised applications (dApps) and smart contracts.
How does Zilliqa work?
Zilliqa use an uncommon consensus mechanism which is a combination of proof-of-work (PoW) and practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (pBFT). Sharding also plays a major role in this network which helps to increase transaction capacity by the distribution of networks into multiple nodes with their individual role, at the same time, they runs in parallel to each other.
Its consensus allows different independent nodes to have the same value, to maintain transaction history and balance of blockchain. Consensus helps to maintain the ideology of this ecosystem by each participant irrespective of any central authority. Being Solely dependent on proof-of-work requires a lot of computing and power, which is resolved by its unusual consensus mechanism of combined PoW and pBFT.
Functionalities Of Zilliqa
Zilliqa, with its smart contract blockchain, provides developers an ideal framework to build decentralised applications (dApps). It possesses other functionalities as well.
Low Cost Throughput
Sharding helps to reach a high throughput by executing vast amounts of transactions which results in its low cost.
Scalability
Sharding also helps in increased capacity as it adds more sharding according to the increasing number of blockchain users.
Cost-efficient Mining
The undivided agreement of practical byzantine fault tolerance (pBFT) makes sure that a small ratio of block reward is given to lower powered hardware as well. This feature makes Zilliqa blockchain more cost-efficient in mining ZIL tokens, even without proposing a block first.
Drawbacks of Zilliqa
Even after being based on Ethereum, it’s a new project as compared to its base blockchain technology. That means its widespread consumption will take some time. It will be risky if you want to invest in ZIL assuming that its price will increase in the near future.
Availability is another issue of this crypto. Although being available on various international exchanges, it’s still not listed over any major US-based cryptocurrency exchange.
Zilliqa’s Future Aspects
So, is Zilliqa a good investment? Well, every crypto initiative comes with its own challenges. Being a newly developed platform, Zilliqa also has various hurdles in its way to become the best technology. But even though, with its sharding technology and unique consensus mechanism, it’s working efficiently and providing various opportunities for dApp developers and crypto enthusiasts.
