What Is Zilliqa?

With so many different blockchain platforms in existence, it has become impossible to keep track of them all. Zilliqa is a new platform that has attracted a lot of attention with a focus on transaction throughput and sharding. Considering how this project has been in development for over two years, expectations are pretty high. It seems this project is greatly interesting to various companies around the world.

Zilliqa Makes Sharding a Possibility

A name like Zilliqa would not necessarily be associated with blockchain technology. Then again, the name is catchy. The word Zilliqa means “silicon for the high-throughput consensus computer.” In a way, that perfectly describes how most people expect blockchain technology to operate, assuming it can be scaled to the proper levels. This has been a big problem as far as most public blockchains are concerned, including Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Interestingly enough, Zilliqa is also a public blockchain which focuses on high-throughput and sharding. In fact, it brings various processes and protocols to the table to achieve higher transaction rates than any other blockchain in the world. The developers claim Zilliqa will be able to scale by orders of magnitude, depending on the needs of the people using this solution. That is a rather ambitious goal, though one that is not entirely impossible to achieve.

Other points of focus for Zilliqa include sharding, decentralized apps, smart contracts, and quantifiable security. In a way, it almost sounds like an improved version of the Ethereum blockchain, considering it packs virtually the same functionality under the hood. It also appears the developers created this public blockchain as a way to provide decentralized solutions for machine learning and financial algorithms. So far, the team has conducted one major trial run, which yielded some unexpected results. With a throughput of 1,389 transactions per second, Zilliqa is well ahead of any of its competitors.

Although these results are only the initial benchmark, a second test is scheduled for October 1st of this year. The public testnet for Zilliqa will be released in December, at which time the developers will make their source code public. The main net launch and the first decentralized applications for this blockchain are slated for Q2 and Q3 of 2018, respectively. Many developers will be keeping an eye on these developments in the coming months. If the project can deliver on its promise, Zilliqa may quickly become a favorite blockchain among coders.

It remains to be seen how this public blockchain will handle the concept of sharding. Ethereum developers have been working on a similar solution for some time now, although it does not appear the technology will come to market anytime soon. It is not all that easy to introduce sharding to a public blockchain without undergoing several thorough tests. If Zilliqa can bring one to market first, it may have a competitive edge over Ethereum in that regard.

One thing to keep in mind is how the initial test run used nodes hosted on AWS EC2 instances. There is no real decentralization of this network just yet, although that situation will change over time once the source code has been released to the public. It is good to see increased competition in the world of public blockchain solutions. Zilliqa may very well become a big project in the near future, although only time will tell if the team can deliver on their promises. So far, things look rather promising.