What is Zilliqa (ZIL)? A brief overview of blockchain platforms

Zilliqa scored a powerful movement over the last couple of weeks and not without reasons. The team that created the Zilliqa, has set itself the task to create the fastest, fully decentralized blockchain-based platform in the industry.

As stated on the official website Zilliqa, it is a blockchain platform for next-generation high bandwidth. Zilliqa positioning itself as a serious competitor Ethereum, allowing you to deploy smart contracts and decentralized apps on their platform. The key difference is that Zilliqa will be much higher transaction throughput and much lower cost of their conduct, than Ethereum and other blockchain platforms.

In this article we will look at the key features of the project Zilliqa.

the

Blackany and scalability

If Zilliqa will be able to run your platform, as planned by its developers, it will be one of the first of the block chain, solved the problem of scalability without sacrificing decentralization in sacrifice.

Scalability is a big problem for blockchains. First the scalability issues that come to mind, have been associated with Bitcoin end of 2017 and scored Ethereum because of the simple but wildly popular decentralized application CryptoKitties. However, although the two most famous cases, many other blackany suffered from similar problems of scalability.

Based on these problems of scalability are nodes (nodes) used by the blockchains. Nodes acknowledge the transaction and provide network security. The problem with knots is that the more they network, the more difficult to agree on a transaction, that is, to reach consensus.

The Developers of most of the block chain has tried to solve scalability problems by using a number of solutions such as third-party chains and masternode. But most of these solutions have their drawbacks; most often sacrificed full decentralization.

Zilliqa solves the scalability problem directly into its blockchain, introducing a completely new technical solution, while remaining completely decentralized.

the

Sharding in Zilliqa

To solve the problems of scalability Zilliqa uses the method of sharding (sharding).

Sharding is a kind of database partitioning for a smaller, more fast and easy to portion control – data shards (literally, "pieces of data"). These date-shards are pieces of the database, and therefore can store only certain fragments of her information.

It Turns out, the shards are meaningless in themselves; their content has value only in the aggregate. Sharding also allows you to store all data shards on different servers.

In the case Zilliqa sharding is used to split the work with verification of transactions and securing the network in the same network. Verification transaction is conducted by a team consisting of a maximum of 600 knots, bearing the name of the shard. Every time when reaching 600 knots, there is a new shard.

If, for example, active nodes will have the 4200, will and 7 shards. In this case, each shard handles 1/7, or 14.3%, of all transactions of the network.

All transactions that verifierade the shard, are Packed into microblocks. Then mikroblogi each shard are merged (7 mikroblogov, if you follow our example) process DS Epoch. Once these mikroblogi are combined, they form one unit that is added to the blockchain Zilliqa.

Thus, sharding distributes Zilliqa network, and when the work is completed, everything will be merged.

The steep sharding is what makes the network work faster with the emergence of new actors, not slows it down. The more users included in the network, the more transactions and the faster the network can process them. With every 600 new nodes, the network throughput increases.

Theoretically, there is no limit to the number of transactions per second that can be processed by the blockchain Zilliqa if the number of nodes will continue to grow. At the moment Zilliqa already reached speeds of up to 2488 of transactions per second on my test network is beyond the ability of the networks Bitcoin and Ethereum.

the

Smart contracts Zilliqa

As Zilliqa solves the scalability problem is its a big first step. But the platform used, it must be something else.

Application Zilliqa is that its platform can be carried out smart contracts and decentralized applications deployed. In this respect, the method of sharding is a limitation because it requires a huge amount of communication between the different shards to decentralized app worked as it should. Because of this, the platform natively supports smart contracts created for functional programming and data flow. According to the team, this will change in the near future.

To be able to use smart-contracts platform Zilliqa, the team had to develop a new programming language. This language is called Scilla and its job is to make functional programming more secure and standardized.

The Application of this new language is quite technically complex, but essentially comes down to the programming language which understands how to separate the computational work of the contract (state) from the communicative aspect of the contract (function).

the

Algorithm consensus Zilliqa

Team Zilliqa claims that the blockchain will be able to provide the aforementioned transaction throughput, without sacrificing decentralization. This will be done through a unique hybrid algorithm consensus. Hybrid because it mixes the consensus algorithm Proof-of-Work consensus with a practical Byzantine fault tolerance (Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance).

Proof-of-Work is used to confirm the identity of the nodes, and this node is assigned to the shard. Then the shard (600 nodes) finds a consensus within itself to ensure the creation of microblocks, and then with the other shards to create the final block, using the practical algorithm for Byzantine fault tolerance.

the

Command Zilliqa

If you need a doctor of Sciences, the team Zilliqa they are. The team Zilliqa powerful academic past and the three founders of the company — graduates of the prestigious National University of Singapore.

The CEO and co-founder is Tinishu Dong. Dong is an internationally recognized expert in the field of cyber security and participates in numerous national security project for the government of Singapore. It supports the co-founder of the Practice Saxena, Professor of computer science, National University of Singapore, also a doctor of Sciences.

The Third co-founder is Gia Aoki, doctor of computer Sciences and specialist in network security and distributed systems security. The fourth co — founder- Amrit Kumar.

Here's the command:

Advisers Zilliqa also doing well. LOI Luu, founder of Kyber Network; Evan Cheng, technical Director of Facebook.

the

Road map Zilliqa

Platform Zilliqa is currently working on a test network and need to go back to the home network in the 3rd quarter of 2018. Another important task is to start to deploy smart contracts on the platform. Beta will begin in the third quarter of 2018.

the

Token ZIL

To run the core network Zilliqa token ZIL will be ERC-20 token, part of Ethereum.

Once manned will be launched, ZIL go to the blockchain Zilliqa and will be used to encourage the miners confirming the transaction and payment for trisakti and payment for the implementation of smart contracts.

the

Competitors and challenges

A Blockchain platform is now very popular, and no wonder Zilliqa struggling with the largest networks in the industry, including Ethereum, EOS and NEO. Although technically superior to Zilliqa Ethereum, and to a certain extent EOS and NEO, he doesn't have enough projects already on the platform. That is, a working product yet.

Taking into account the theoretically unlimited scalability Zilliqa, we can assume that it will take time and platform will be created decentralized applications. However Zilliqa still have to create the ecosystem that will be able to meet the requirements of the industry players and become comparable in size with other large platforms. In the end, the value, the blockchain platform depends on its size.

the

in conclusion

Scalability is a very serious problem of modern blockchain industry, and Zilliqa offers an interesting solution. The team has already provided evidence of unique bandwidth test network, which gives hope for high-speed operation after startup mandata.

Now theoretically unlimited scalability of the blockchain Zilliqa is its trump card, but the platform will probably be offered and much more, which will allow it to stand on level with Ethereum, EOS and NEO. However, these platforms are growing rapidly and improve the quality of its ecosystems, and will surely find solutions to issues of scalability.

As soon As Zilliqa will find partners, the platform can become one of the leaders in the industry of the blockchain, thanks to its technical advantages.

...