Introduction To Zilliqa: The Next Generation Blockchain Platform!

Zilliqa is termed a third-generation cryptocurrency. It was developed in 2017 by a group of scientists consisting of Prateek Saxena from the University of California and Xinshu Dong and Amrit Kumar from the University of Singapore.

Zilliqa is self-defined as a “next-gen, high throughput platform”.

What Is Zilliqa?

The main advantage of Zilliqa over the first and second-generation cryptocurrencies is its factor of Scalability. Scalability refers to the ability of a cryptocurrency to deal with a large number of user transactions without any slowness.

At the time of writing this article, the value of a Zilliqa coin is 0.0038 USD. The total supply of Zilliqa is capped at 12.6 billion. 

Technology Behind Zilliqa

Zilliqa uses the technology of sharding to provide better scalability. In sharding, the Zilliqa network is divided into groups of nodes called shards. Nodes are computers that verify all the transactions made in a crypto network.

There are around 600 nodes in a single shard. Each shard operates like a mini blockchain network.

As each of the shards operates as a single blockchain network, a lot more transactions are allowed to process simultaneously. The processing time for each transaction is also reduced. The number of transactions will also increase as the number of shards increases

In their private testnet, the Zilliqa processed 1218 transactions per second using 3 shards. This proves that the processing of Zilliqa is 10 times faster than bitcoin.

Disadvantages of Sharding Technology

• Sharding divides the entire blockchain into small groups. This also divides the information stored in it. 
• The nodes present in the shards contain only a limited number of blockchains. Thus communication between the groups is necessary to get all the information needed for transactions. This becomes more complicated as the number of nodes computers present in a network increases.

Zilliqa uses a Hybrid Consensus mechanism to overcome this problem. This is a two-layer agreement system used for reaching the finality of a particular transaction. The first layer is called the Shard layer, this layering process only a small amount of information.

So they do not require communication with other shards. The second layer is DS Layer, this layer combines the decisions of various shard layers and reaches the final agreement dealing with the confirmation of the transaction.

Security of Zilliqa

Normally blockchains are very safe and secure. Thousands of systems constitute a blockchain network. A hacker needs to control more than half of this network to hack a blockchain. Zilliqa has two security features:

• Hybrid consensus mechanism: We already discussed this mechanism. The first layer which is the shards layers verifies the identity of the nodes. This will block access to any potential invaders.
• Scillia: Scillia is the language in which the entire Zilliqa code is developed. Software developed scillia runs securely in the Zilliqa network.

 This article reveals the technology and the security issues behind the next-generation blockchain platform, Zilliqa. I hope you all found it useful and leave your queries below.