Zilliqa 101
This ambitious project has been developed as a faster, more scalable version of Ethereum. Now they’re developing a Metaverse.
Have they delivered?
Outline:
- Zilliqa is a highly-scalable blockchain that processes many more transactions than Ethereum while expending less energy
- It also allows for the development of altcoins, dApps and DeFi applications within its ecosystems
- Zilliqa can bridge with the Ethereum blockchain
- A metaverse with extended reality is set to be released in 2022
- Zilliqa has not experienced high levels of adoption
- ZIL is promising but it may have bit off more than it can chew
Zilliqa is still relatively unknown — ZIL falls just somewhere between the top 50—100 cryptos by market cap
— Arpil 2022 CoinGecko
Zilliqa has a market cap around $600 million, substantially lower than many other up-and-coming cryptocurrencies.
The critics say that Zilliqa might be biting off more than it can chew. With the amount of competitors, some argue it’s too late for Zilliqa to make any noise in the space.
Nonetheless, it offers up an impressive team and a mission backed by an actual, detailed whitepaper.
Zilliqa is Solving for Scalability.
Current blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum don’t scale very well. To say the least.
These blockchains process less than 15 transactions per second. While Bitcoin’s transaction fees dropped to around a few dollars, Ethereum’s transaction fees regularly spike to more than $100, meaning that only people who can afford high fees will have their transactions go through.
Additionally, with more nodes working to verify transactions it means that it becomes trickier to reach a consensus.
There’s a reason both Bitcoin and Ethereum are embracing various sidechains or Layer 2 solutions (Lightning Network for Bitcoin and Polygon for Ethereum). Sidechains sit atop the main blockchain speeding up and settling transactions. Even now, many DeFi and Play-to-earn/GameFi applications are opting to build on Polygon rather than Ethereum, because there the transaction fees are negligible on Polygon.
Related: What’s so great about Polygon?
There is simply too much traffic and demand for the Ethereum network to keep up in its 1.0 iteration. This is slowing adoption and seeding frustration.
Zilliqa uses a hybrid protocol to divide up nodes into “shards” to maintain security while improving scalability.
Imagine there are 1000 nodes or validators in the network, rather than having them all agree on everything, they are subdivided into four equal shards of 250. When new validators enter the network, they are allocated to one of these shards. Each shard runs its own verification process and then the results between all of these shards are used to reach consensus. Instead of processing less than 15 transactions per second like Bitcoin or Ethereum, Zilliqa has the potential to process thousands.
How do they manage all these shards?
Some nodes from each shard are randomly selected to act on a committee responsible for assembling the microblocks from each shard into one block that’s added to the blockchain. It uses a a variation of the Proof-of-Work protocol to reach the consensus. Due to the differences between this protocol and the ones used by Bitcoin and Ethereum, there is significantly less energy being used and the transactions are processed faster.
Can I earn rewards through staking?
Yes indeed!
The Zilliqa ecosystem rewards people who stake ZIL for helping verify transactions through Proof-of-Work.
Staking on Moonlet will earn you around 13% annually. It’s a better return than you’re likely to see on most investments, especially a savings account. If the token appreciates, that provides another upside. Of course there’s no guarantee that it will but it’s also not unlikely. Especially over a longer period of time.
Also, on Moonlet you can hold you ZIL on a Ledger for the added security and assurance of cold storage.
You can calculate your potential staking rewards here.
Wait, what about transaction fees?
Since Zilliqa doesn’t use a lot of energy to secure the network, the transaction fees are smaller than $0.01.
It also means that Zilliqa enables micropayments and transactions whether through peer-to-peer transfers or other smart contracts.
What Else is Zilliqa Up To?
Smart Contracts and dApps
Zilliqa has its own programmable language for developing smart contracts: Smart Contract Intermediate-Level Language or Scilla for short. To increase the quality and reputability of dApps on the blockchain, Scilla uses algorithmic proofs to ensure that smart contracts meet certain requirements before the app is deployed.
Currently, all the dApps built on Zilliqa have less than 5,000 unique users. At best it is proof that scalable dApps can be deployed in Zilliqa.
Bridging Between Blockchains
In October of 2021, Zilliqa revealed its bridging solution for interoperability between blockchains. ZilBridge allows users to move wrapped BTC, ETH and USDT from the Ethereum blockchain onto Zilliqa and vice-versa. This helps draw in users from the Ethereum ecosystem and bolstering the growth of dApps and DeFi applications in Zilliqa.
What About the Metaverse?
At the end of 2021, Zilliqa revealed a much awaited update on Metapolis, their version of a metaverse built on Layer 1 of Zilliqa.
The Metapolis was slated to go live in January of 2022, boasting the use of extended reality (XR) technology. However, Metapolis isn’t functional as of yet. While the blockchain itself is able to facilitate many transactions, NFTs and tokens quickly, it is unclear whether its metaverse (or any metaverse for that matter) will reach mass adoption.
But Can Zilliqa Pull It Off?
Possibly.
Zilliqa’s team is completely public which provides transparency and credence to their technology.
- CEO Dr. Ben Livshits is an established computer scientist who previously worked on at Microsoft Research and Brave.
- The CSO is Dr. Amrit Kumar who earned a PhD in engineering in France.
- The other members of the team also have impressive amounts of experience in their respective domains.
What have these guys done so far?
There are more than 100,000 smart contracts deployed within the ecosystem and 67,000 active users.
There are 60 different tokens within the ecosystem and another 300 million locked into DeFi applications on Zilliqa. Zilliqa has a partnership with CommX, an investment platform that allows one to tokenize or fractionalize physical assets. But the ecosystem still needs more investments and more users to go toe-to-toe against the likes of Ethereum, Avalanche and Solana.
A brief history
Zilliqa originally launched as an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum network, helping raise money for the development of its native blockchain.
In autumn of 2018, it spiked to $0.20, roughly doubling its initial launch value. The native blockchain was then launched in 2019. These ERC-20 tokens were swapped with ZIL’s native token in a one to one ratio. The price then dropped to below $0.05 until 2020 where the price peaked at nearly $0.25 in April and May.
The price declined and sat at $0.05 in of February 2022 but then exploded in early April, going all the way up to $0.20 in just a week. It quickly fell back to the $0.10 range.
The ATH of $0.2563 was reached in May 6 2021.
Why Isn’t ZIL More Valuable?
Despite having a solid whitepaper and a roadmap, ZIL is going up against many of the top blockchains like Ethereum or Solana. However, much of the marketing and reporting on ZIL is lacking and it does not have a very large social media presence. In addition, there are few centralized exchanges offering ZIL making it difficult for people to actually buy it. Many people who purchase cryptocurrency might not be comfortable using decentralized exchanges.
It doesn’t help that ZIL has not really established a single niche but continues to pursue every single avenue and usage of the blockchain.
While there are plenty of dApps on Zilliqa, none of them are very popular. A great dApp in itself would be an awesome advertisement of the ZIL ecosystem.
Finally, the metaverse isn’t quite as compelling when everyone in the world is trying to build one. It doesn’t help that they announced a January 2022 rollout but it still isn’t publicly released and functional.
Like the great emperor Augustus, Zilliqa might be stretching its forces thin.
Buying and Storing ZIL
Buying ZIL
If you’re in the US or Europe, you can purchase ZIL through Binance; otherwise it’s advisable to use a decentralized exchange or aggregator to purchase ZIL.
You can easily use Exodus wallet to trade BTC for ZIL.
Recommended wallets for storing ZIL:
Hot Wallets | Cold Storage | |
Wallet | Exodus, Moonlet |
Trezor, Ledger |
Platforms | Desktop, Mobile |
Desktop, Mobile |
Supported Wallets | Trezor, Ledger |
Exodus, Moonlet (Earn 12.8% APY) |
Setup | Easy | Moderate |
Non-Custodial | Yes | Yes |
Takeaway
Zilliqa is a highly-functional, scaleable blockchain that processes transactions significantly faster than Ethereum or Bitcoin.
It uses a lot less energy to validate transactions leading to negligible transaction fees.
While Zilliqa has smart app capabilities, its dApps have not gained significant traction. Even though there is a bridge from Ethereum onto Zilliqa, many people have not heard of this blockchain.
Meanwhile Zilliqa is also developing a metaverse. This might be stretching itself a bit thin or it could be the next big thing for Zilliqa. It’s hard to predict.
While the idea of Zilliqa is promising, it is unclear whether they can deliver and compete with larger blockchains.
In our humble opinion, Zilliqa is built the right way and the current price is still low.
As far as crypto investments go, ZIL seems fairly low risk. It has the potential to appreciate and it offers a decent earning potential by staking.
Further reading and sources:
- What Is Zilliqa (ZIL)? Solving the Blockchain Scalability Challenge
- Zilliqa Whitepaper
- Zilliqa’s dApps, ZIL Coin, and Blockchain Sharding | Gemini
- A peek into Metapolis: The Metaverse for all, powered by Zilliqa — Coming to you in 2022 | Dec, 2021 | Zilliqa — Official Blog
- Zilliqa: Why Cross-Chain Interoperability is the Key to Securing Blockchain’s Future | The Fintech Times
- @Zilliqa (Twitter)
- YouTube
- Official site
Zilliqa Made Simple via YouTube: