What does Zilliqa do?
The Zilliqa project is the first public blockchain designed to implement sharding, which allows for linear scaling and a high transaction speed. In decentralized systems, as more nodes join the network, then more consensus is required to validate a transaction, which results in slower processing speeds. Zilliqa tackles this issue by splitting the nodes in to their own sub-networks.
Every 600 nodes on the network creates a new shard. This means that when a transaction is submitted to the blockchain, only 600 nodes are required to validate a transaction rather than the entire network. As a result, Zilliqa’s developers claim that their network can handle thousands of transactions per second (compared to Ethereum’s 15 transactions per second). Transactions will validate even faster as more nodes join the network.
Much like Ethereum, developers can deploy projects on the Zilliqa blockchain. The language used to write smart contracts on Zilliqa offers high levels of security due to its simplicity. The Zilliqa team is working on different projects that can handle large volumes of transactions such as decentralized exchanges, automated high-volume auctions, and scientific computing projects.
What is ZIL used for?
ZIL, the native currency of Zilliqa, is used by both miners and users. ZIL provides incentive for miners to keep the network alive. Miners receive mining rewards in the form of ZIL for validating transactions.
ZIL is also used to pay for fees associated with any transaction submitted to the blockchain. Such fees are created by sending ZIL peer-to-peer or deploying smart contracts, for example.
How can ZIL value appreciate?
If Ethereum, NEO, and other platform-based projects fail to solve their scalability issues, and Zilliqa has projects running efficiently on its network, then it is likely that ZIL’s coin price will increase in value due to both demand and attention.
ZIL’s total supply is limited to 21 billion. Since more ZIL can never be created, this limited supply will create scarcity. Also, Zilliqa has a number of ambitious projects including its decentralized exchanges, auctions, and scientific computing projects. If any of them are particularly successful, ZIL’s value will increase due to further integration in Zilliqa’s ecosystem.
What is the difference between ZIL and its competitors?
ZIL’s main competitors are both Ethereum and NEO. Ethereum and NEO can process more complex programming languages than Zilliqa. This is a positive for the sake of creating more intricate applications, but a negative regarding security. The more complicated a program, the more likely there is to be bugs which can be exploited.
On the other hand, Zilliqa’s simple language provides a solution to satisfy issues around creating highly scalable, yet technically more simple applications. As a rule of thumb, the simpler the application, the less errors can arise.
