What is Zilliqa (ZIL)?

Zilliqa is a permissionless public blockchain designed to provide fast throughput and the potential to complete thousands of transactions per second. It uses sharding as a second-layer scaling technique to address the issue of blockchain scalability and speed. The platform is home to numerous decentralized applications, and it will also include staking and yield farming as of October 2020.

Zilliqa development officially began in June 2017, and its test net became operational in March 2018. In June 2019, the platform opened its mainnet, a little more than a year later.

ZIL, Zilliqa's native utility currency, is used to process network transactions and execute smart contracts.

Who are the founders of Zilliqa?

Prateek Saxena, an assistant professor at the National University of Singapore School of Computing, invented Zilliqa. In 2016, Saxena and a group of students from the School of Computing published a paper outlining how a sharding-focused blockchain could increase network efficiency and performance.

Simultaneously, Saxena co-founded Anquan Capital with Max Kantelia, a career financial and technology entrepreneur, and Juzar Motiwalla, past president of the Singapore Computer Society. In June 2017, the business established Zilliqa Research to further develop the Zilliqa network, naming Dong Xinshu as CEO, Yaoqi Jia as chief technology officer, and Amrit Kumar as chief scientific officer. All three previously worked as NUS School of Computing research fellows.

What makes Zilliqa unique?

Zilliqa bills itself as the world's first public blockchain that is solely based on a shared network. This enables it to achieve high throughput and a high transaction rate per second, which it claims addresses the scalability problem. Because each shard processes transactions independently, the number of transactions that can be processed per second increases as the network develops and the number of shards increases. Furthermore, after being processed, records are immediately posted to the Zilliqa blockchain, requiring no extra wait for confirmation.

Zilliqa aspires to be the blockchain of choice for large-scale enterprise applications, particularly in the advertising, gaming, entertainment, financial services, and payments industries. 

Explain the network security of Zilliqa.

The Zilliqa network employs a practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (pBFT) consensus protocol, requiring agreement from at least two-thirds of all nodes to add a record to the blockchain. Each shard in Zilliqa relies on a group of nodes to confirm specific transactions, and once each shard reaches consensus, another group of nodes confirms the combined results and adds a new block to the blockchain.

To secure its consensus protocol, Zilliqa uses elliptic-curve cryptography, enabling multisignatures. Besides the pBFT consensus, Zilliqa utilizes a proof-of-work algorithm to assign node identities and create shards.

Zilliqa introduced a new language called Scilla, which stands for Smart Contract Intermediate-Level Language. Scilla is designed with a focus on safety, automatically identifying and eliminating security vulnerabilities at the language level. It simplifies the process of formally verifying the safety of smart contracts through mathematical proofs.

What are the recent developments in Zilliqa?

Zeeves, a digital-only neobank powered by the Zilliqa blockchain, is launching its initial batch of debit cards, enabling users to make everyday payments using ZIL. A neobank operates without physical branches, providing a more convenient and user-friendly banking experience compared to traditional banks.

Zeeves integrates fiat and crypto exchange in one application, allowing users to easily convert between the two. With the Zilliqa debit card, users can make payments and withdraw cash from ATMs worldwide.

During the beta stage, Zeeves will continue to introduce additional features and test the platform's performance and functionality. The Zeeves debit card uses Visa as a payment provider and has met compliance requirements to issue Visa bank cards tied to crypto assets.

The Zeeves wallet on Telegram is non-custodial, meaning users retain control of their tokens, while the banking product is custodial to comply with regulations. Zeeves is considering launching its own token and issuing NFTs linked to the debit cards. They also plan to onboard corporations to open bank accounts and manage crypto and Euro balances.

The neobank has ambitious plans to expand its support for various tokens and compatible wallets, allowing users to manage custodial and non-custodial assets in one place. Zeeves aims to revolutionize crypto payments with on-the-fly approvals, instantly converting crypto into fiat for transactions.

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