Zilliqa(ZIL)

Zilliqa is a layer-1 blockchain that is designed to offer high throughput with the capability to perform thousands of transactions per second. Zilliqa was first formulated by Prateek Saxena and a number of students back in 2015 when they published a paper outlining the advantages of a shard-focused blockchain and how it could improve network speed and efficiency. 

Zilliqa's native cryptocurrency was officially launched as ZIL in June 2017 by co-founders Amrit Kumar and Xinshu Don, researchers from the National University of Singapore. ZIL was initially made available as an ERC-20 token, raising $22 million in ETH through an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) held in 2017. The ZIL tokens on Ethereum were later swapped to ZIL coins on the Zilliqa mainnet which went live in January 2019.

The Zilliqa network aims to provide a blockchain platform with high scalability, by using a process known as sharding, allowing developers to host decentralized applications (DApps) and run smart contracts without facing network congestion and high gas fees, as the case for networks like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH).

ZIL price

According to our ZIL/USD live price chart, Zilliqa's coin saw its first bull run in early 2020, when ZIL price went from around $0.004 on Jan. 1, to $0.009 by Feb. 15, marking a gain of over 100%. However, ZIL's price declined in the following months as the crypto market turned bearish with the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic. 

With the market still showing signs of volatility as it entered Q2 2020, the Zilliqa coin showed an impressive gain of 640% when it went from $0.004 in April. 16 to $0.030 on June 11. Despite the significant gain, the coin started to depreciate again, falling to $0.01. This pattern continued for the next couple of months when the token rallied to $0.02 on Aug. 11, falling short of its previous high in April, before falling again. 

Zilliqa’s next major rally came in Q4 of 2020 when the token jumped from $0.02 on Oct. 11, to around $0.1 on Dec. 27 — a gain of 427%. The price of the ZIL coin took a one-month breather before rallying to an all-time high when it went from $0.07 on Jan. 24, 2021, to $0.26 on May 6, 2021, with a gain of 280%+, putting ZIL’s fully diluted valuation at $5.4 billion. Nonetheless, Zilliqa lost a large share of gains as the crypto market crashed in May 2021.

With the crypto market showing signs of recovery in autumn of 2021, ZIL witnessed two noticeable spikes, $0.13 on Sep. 5, and $0.12 on Oct. 31, although it failed to reach its previous all-time high again. However, the crypto market collapsed again near the end of 2021, continuing to throttle as it entered 2022. 

Despite the significant price drop in Q4 of 2021, ZIL cryptocurrency managed to close the year with a 220%+ gain while ranking at 81 in terms of market cap.

How ZIL works

The Zilliqa network is quite similar to its competitors ETH, TRON, and EOS in regards to what it offers: smart contracting, transaction settlements, and token issuances. However, to make its ecosystem more robust, and faster, and to allow it to scale as the network grows, ZIL uses a technique known as sharding.

Sharding: Sharding is a partitioning technique used by blockchain developers/companies with the intention to increase scalability, allowing them to process more transactions per second by splitting the blockchain into smaller fragments known as shards. Each shard acts as its own independent blockchain allowing allotted nodes to store data, process transactions, and add new blocks to their designated shard chain, called micro blocks. These micro blocks are later merged with the transaction block by Directory Service Nodes (DS nodes), verifying their validity before adding them to the Zilliqa blockchain. This makes transactions faster as each shard only contains a particular subset of the Zilliqa blockchain instead of storing the entire history.

Central to Zilliqa’s governance and security is its Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (pBFT) consensus mechanism, which has a two-layer verification to ensure there are no bad nodes. The first layer is in charge of securing the blockchain from Sybil attacks, ensuring that nodes are only processing their designated micro blocks, rather than the whole blockchain. The second layer of the consensus mechanism finalizes each block by ensuring that two-thirds of the nodes agree that the record is accurate and there are no hard forks before adding it to the blockchain.

The Zilliqa network consists of a total of 2,400 nodes distributed across four shards with each transaction that is received by the network to be verified by a shard that consists of 600 nodes. However, in order to become a node, earn validating rewards, or help operate the system, you must first stake ZIL. 

Finally, Zilliqa uses its native programming language called Scilla, ensuring any decentralized applications (DApps) and smart contracts written on it are safe to run on the ZIL network, automatically identifying threats and eliminating them.

It is worth mentioning that Zilliqa also uses the proof-of-work (PoW) algorithm, utilizing it only for the verification of its miners.

ZIL news, updates, and highlights

In June 2020, lead crypto exchange Binance added ZIL staking support to its platform. Binance would become the second cryptocurrency exchange to partner with Zilliqa to offer ZIL staking after Kucoin. The platform would pay ZIL holders on their exchange 50 ZIL balance and an annual yield ranging from 8% to 10% in ZIL tokens. 

In October 2020, Switcheo announced the launch of its new decentralized exchange Zilswap, powered by the Zilliqa blockchain network. Zilswap, similar to Uniswap, also uses an automated market maker (AMM) built atop a permissionless liquidity pool. Zilliqa announced that this move would allow users to trade their ZIL tokens on the blockchain directly while staking them as liquidity providers to Zilswap pools to earn rewards. With the launch of Zilswap, Zilliqa became ready to step into the rapidly growing decentralized finance (DeFi) market.

With the gaming industry growing rapidly, expected to reach $200 billion by the end of 2022, Zilliqa partnered with Ninjas in Pyjamas (NIP), one of the biggest Swedish gaming organizations out there. The two inked a 5-year deal in November 2021, with the focus to deliver the best virtual and digital experience possible. Using Zilliqa’s scalability and security, NIP aspires to create a unique and immersive pay-to-earn experience for its fan all over the world.

Frequently asked questions about ZIL

• Can you mine or stake ZIL cryptocurrency?

Yes, you can mine and stake ZIL tokens. Zilliqa uses a proof-of-work consensus mechanism that allows tokens to be mined, it also allows for the staking of ZIL tokens to earn rewards by becoming a node and securing the blockchain.

• What are some of the best ZIL wallets?

Zilliqa is compatible with both software and hardware wallets. If you are looking for an easy-to-use wallet that you can use on your desktop and mobile then Atomic Wallet is a fantastic option. Another great wallet that you can use through your cellular device is Trust Wallet. However, if you are leaning more towards hardware wallets then Ledger Nano X is your best option.

• What can you do with ZIL?

Users can use their ZIL tokens to pay for transactions on the Zilliqa network, stake them to earn rewards, vote on changes for the network, or trade them against other popular cryptocurrencies like BTC, ETH, and USDT.

• How to buy ZIL?

You can buy ZIL against ZIL/BTC, ZIL/ETH, and ZIL/USDT trading pairs on exchanges like HitBTC and Kucoin, or by using fiat currency with on-ramp services.