{"id":5940,"date":"2019-02-05T07:00:02","date_gmt":"2019-02-05T15:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/coincentral.com\/?p=5940"},"modified":"2019-02-05T08:02:57","modified_gmt":"2019-02-05T16:02:57","slug":"zilliqa-beginners-guide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coincentral.com\/zilliqa-beginners-guide\/","title":{"rendered":"What Is Zilliqa (ZIL)? | The Complete Guide to the High Throughput Blockchain"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>What Is Zilliqa?<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Zilliqa is the first public blockchain designed to implement sharding, allowing for linear scaling as the blockchain grows in size. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To date, scalability has been an issue for existing blockchain technologies.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Right now, Bitcoin can\u2019t process all the demand for its network, and transaction fees have risen accordingly. The same goes for Ethereum where limited throughput means smart contracts can become gas-intensive. For instance, the popularity of Crypto Kitties significantly slowed Ethereum, showing the limits of the network.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Zilliqa fundamentally changes how a blockchain reaches consensus. Their sharding solution scales with the size of the network. Theoretically, there\u2019s no limit to the number of transactions Zilliqa could process per second. Practically, however, depending on the number of nodes on the network, Zilliqa could process tens or hundreds of thousands of transactions per second.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Zilliqa also promises to support smart contracts. Running smart contracts on a sharded network is a major technical challenge for Zilliqa. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">In this guide we will cover:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li class=\"p1\"><a href=\"#how\">How Zilliqa Works<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\"><a href=\"#supply\">Coin Supply<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\"><a href=\"#roadmap\">Roadmap and Team<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\"><a href=\"#trading\">Trading History<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\"><a href=\"#competitors\">Competitors<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\"><a href=\"#buy\">Where to Buy ZIL<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\"><a href=\"#store\">Where to Store ZIL<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#conclusion\">Conclusion<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"#resources\">Additional Resources<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/files.coinmarketcap.com\/static\/widget\/currency.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n<div class=\"coinmarketcap-currency-widget\" data-currencyid=\"2469\" data-base=\"USD\" data-secondary=\"\" data-ticker=\"true\" data-rank=\"true\" data-marketcap=\"true\" data-volume=\"true\" data-stats=\"USD\" data-statsticker=\"false\">\u00a0<\/div>\n<h2 id=\"how\">How Zilliqa Works<\/h2>\n<h3>Solving the Scalability Problem<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Blockchain has an inherent scalability problem. The more nodes you have on a network, the harder it is to reach consensus.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To illustrate the point, it\u2019s helpful to think of consensus scaling in terms of people:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With a small group of your close friends, it\u2019s simple to make decisions. You may not always agree, but it\u2019s straightforward to see how everyone feels.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For a larger group of people, like an auditorium full of people, you could have people raise their hands to quickly vote. But it becomes harder to count, and you can\u2019t be sure everyone is acting honestly.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With groups of thousands or millions of individuals, you\u2019ll need a more complex voting system that takes more energy. You also can\u2019t be sure people are acting in good faith, and it\u2019s hard to achieve finality &#8211; the sense that everyone has voted and there\u2019s a clear answer.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While the analogy isn\u2019t perfect, you can see how consensus gets more complicated the larger your network is. Consensus speed\/quality and network size are inversely related. When one goes up, the other goes down.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Other solutions to the blockchain scalability problem focus on moving some information off-chain. Or, they seek to increase the block size, effectively establishing consensus on more transactions with each round of consensus. These solutions may work as a stopgap, but they don\u2019t fundamentally fix the scalability problem.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To fix it, you\u2019d need to change the architecture of the entire system so consensus speed and network size are positively correlated.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>[thrive_leads id=&#8217;5219&#8242;]<\/p>\n<h3>Zilliqa\u2019s Scalability Answer<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Zilliqa has found a way to process more transactions as more nodes join the network. It involves re-imagining the blockchain from scratch. Their new model implements a hybrid consensus protocol to grow the network\u2019s throughput with every ~600 new nodes that join.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In theory, every 600 new nodes, Zilliqa\u2019s throughput increases by dividing the work. In practice, there are issues with broadcast if the network becomes very big (over one million nodes). Still, one million nodes is an upper bound that we\u2019re nowhere close to reaching. As of this writing, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/bitnodes.earn.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bitcoin has ~11,000 nodes<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in operation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bitcoin and Ethereum\u2019s networks of tens of thousands of nodes can still only process <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.coindesk.com\/information\/will-ethereum-scale\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">3-15 transactions<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> per second. In contrast,\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.techinasia.com\/talk\/singapore-based-blockchain-compete-visa\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">tests on private testnet<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (AWS virtual test) have shown that Zilliqa\u2019s network has a throughput of 1,218 tx\/s when 1,800 nodes are operating. Increase the number of nodes to 3,600, and Zilliqa\u2019s network scales to 2,488 tx\/s.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_5942\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5942\" style=\"width: 801px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-5942 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Increasing-throughput-801x450.jpeg\" alt=\"zilliqa throughput\" width=\"801\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Increasing-throughput-801x450.jpeg 801w, https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Increasing-throughput-591x332.jpeg 591w, https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Increasing-throughput-621x349.jpeg 621w, https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Increasing-throughput-300x169.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Increasing-throughput-768x432.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Increasing-throughput-600x337.jpeg 600w, https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Increasing-throughput.jpeg 1400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 801px) 100vw, 801px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-5942\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The more nodes on Zilliqa, the higher the throughput.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h3>Sharding: Dividing Work Across the Network<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">How does Zilliqa accomplish this scalability?\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They use a solution known as sharding. The Zilliqa protocol divides the number of mining nodes on the network into groups of 600 nodes. Each group is known as a shard.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For instance, in the testnet examples above, when operating with 1,800 nodes, the testnet divided itself into 3 shards. When operating with 3,600 nodes, there were 6 shards. As more nodes join the network, Zilliqa can further divide the network, creating more shards.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Those shards each process a fractional portion of the network\u2019s transactions. In simplified terms, if there are six shards, each shard would process approximately 1\/6 of the network\u2019s transactions. The more shards there are, the more the network divides the consensus load between shards, keeping computing demands relatively stable.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_5946\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5946\" style=\"width: 768px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-5946 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/sharding-768x427.png\" alt=\"zilliqa sharding\" width=\"768\" height=\"427\" srcset=\"https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/sharding-768x427.png 768w, https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/sharding-768x427-591x329.png 591w, https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/sharding-768x427-621x345.png 621w, https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/sharding-768x427-300x167.png 300w, https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/sharding-768x427-600x334.png 600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-5946\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Zilliqa sharding uses a <i>divide and conquer\u00a0<\/i>strategy<i>.<\/i><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Each shard processes its assigned transactions into a microblock in parallel with the other shards. At the end of the parallel processing period, known as the \u201cDS epoch,\u201d those microblocks get combined into a full block that\u2019s added to the blockchain.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>The DS Committee: Managing the Shards<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For each DS epoch, several nodes are randomly selected to manage the various shards. This managing committee, known as the \u201cDS committee,\u201d directs the network. They decide which nodes are assigned to which shard. When new transaction requests arrive, the DS committee assigns the transactions to a shard for processing. At the end of the DS epoch, the DS committee assembles the full block from the microblocks the shards created.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>Finding Consensus: PoW + BFT<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Zilliqa uses a hybrid consensus mechanism. When you first start mining, you\u2019ll have to complete a proof of work (PoW) hash. PoW requires computing power that guarantees that a machine can only operate one node. As such, PoW helps Zilliqa establish identity. It makes it difficult for one bad actor to create multiple identities to overwhelm the network in what\u2019s known as a <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sybil_attack\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sybil attack<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. The network does not use proof of work for consensus, however.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After a node has proven its identity, it gets assigned to a shard. Within the shards, Zilliqa uses Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance consensus. This is a higher-throughput consensus mechanism that has finality. Finality means that most of the nodes in the shard must agree on the miniblock. Once a block is confirmed by the shards and DS committee, it is the only block that can reference the block before it. There is no forking in a consensus mechanism with finality.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Zilliqa isn\u2019t the first distributed ledger to implement BFT. NEO, Tendermint, and Hyperledger use versions of the proven BFT consensus mechanism as well.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>Data Flow Contracts &amp; State Sharding<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sharding transactions is fairly straightforward. You can easily assign transaction verifications to various shards, and each verification stands on its own. There shouldn\u2019t be a need for much communication between shards.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The same is not true for running smart contracts and decentralized apps (DApps) on a sharded blockchain. The issue is smart contract actions often rely on checking other states, variables, and functions. Doing so would require lots of communication between shards. These messages back and forth would require bandwidth and processing power that would negate the benefits of sharding.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As such, Zilliqa\u2019s contracts focus on data flow and functional programming, only. They don\u2019t allow for checking, storing, or changing states. At least, not yet.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The consensus so far is that there isn\u2019t a state sharding scheme that is secure and efficient. If you allow contracts to execute separately in various sharded states, there could be all kinds of potential attacks, challenges to reconciliation, and excessive cross-shard communication.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, Ethereum is currently working on a <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/ethereum\/wiki\/wiki\/Sharding-FAQs\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">state sharding solution<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. It\u2019s not clear how far along that initiative has advanced in its development.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That said, Zilliqa can still be used for DApps that require high throughput. Any DApp that needs transaction rates beyond what\u2019s currently possible on other blockchains could find a home on Zilliqa.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>A New Programming Language<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With the goal of making functional programming more standardized and secure, the Zilliqa team has developed a new programming language known as Scilla.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Scilla separates <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/amp.ibtimes.co.uk\/blockchain-how-write-safe-verifiable-smart-contracts-1657976\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">state and function<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. It&#8217;s a functional programming language that draws a distinction between the communication aspects of a contract &#8211; transferring funds or calling another contract &#8211; and the actual computational work the contract does.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The new language is not Turing-complete. This means it doesn\u2019t support applications that need certain types of loops or conditional statements. However, its incompleteness allows it to be subject to formal logic proofs. This is important for security purposes. Proving contracts let users know a contract is safe in a verifiable way before using it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Scilla helps draw the distinction between functional contracts, supported on Zilliqa, and state-dependent contracts that Zilliqa can\u2019t yet support.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2 id=\"supply\">Coin Supply<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Zilliqa has a token for its ecosystem. Similar to <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/coincentral.com\/best-dapps-platform\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">other DApps platforms<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> like Ethereum or NEO, the ZIL token serves as a mining incentive, gas for contract execution, and tender for paying transaction fees.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Initially, ZIL was an ERC-20 token based on the Ethereum blockchain. The Zilliqa mainnet launched at the end of January 2019. With that launch, ERC-20 ZIL tokens swap out for Zilliqa native tokens.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>There are 12.6 billion total ZIL tokens, with just over 8 billion in circulation as at January 2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"roadmap\">Roadmap and Team<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Zilliqa raised the equivalent of $12 million in ETH in a private funding round near the end of 2017. After the private round, the surging price of ETH meant that private funding originally worth $12 million was soon valued at the project\u2019s hard cap of $20 million.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Having hit its hard cap, Zilliqa told its community that it no longer needed a public sale. Due to community interest, however, Zilliqa <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cryptopotato.com\/zilliqa-ico-evaluation\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">allocated 4445 ETH<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to a public sale in January 2018.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Since that time, the Scilla smart contract programming language launched in May 2018. In November, the testnet launched, so the project has invited miners and developers to participate in testing the platform.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The most recent major milestone was the <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.zilliqa.com\/zilliqa-project-update-89f77583419\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">main net launch<\/a>\u00a0on January 31, 2019. The initial launch is set for bootstrap mode, with mining rewards allocated but no transactions allowed. This is to safeguard the network against early attacks. Zilliqa will enable smart contract functionality and transactions during the first quarter of 2019. After that, the token swap to native Zilliqa tokens will begin.\u00a0<\/p>\n<h3>Zilliqa Team<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The <a href=\"https:\/\/coincentral.com\/interview-zilliqa-team\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">team behind <\/a>Zilliqa is largely computer science academics and PhDs.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_5945\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5945\" style=\"width: 450px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-5945 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/ceozilliqa-450x450.jpg\" alt=\"xinshu\" width=\"450\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/ceozilliqa-450x450.jpg 450w, https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/ceozilliqa-591x591.jpg 591w, https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/ceozilliqa-100x100.jpg 100w, https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/ceozilliqa-621x621.jpg 621w, https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/ceozilliqa-250x250.jpg 250w, https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/ceozilliqa-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/ceozilliqa-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/ceozilliqa-768x768.jpg 768w, https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/ceozilliqa-65x65.jpg 65w, https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/ceozilliqa-600x600.jpg 600w, https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/ceozilliqa.jpg 1023w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-5945\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Xinshu Dong (CEO)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The CEO, Xinshu Dong, has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the National University of Singapore. He\u2019s a cybersecurity expert, responsible for several national security projects in Singapore. His research has also appeared at reputable conferences and in journals.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_5944\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5944\" style=\"width: 483px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-5944 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/prateeks-483x450.jpg\" alt=\"prateek\" width=\"483\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/prateeks-483x450.jpg 483w, https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/prateeks-591x550.jpg 591w, https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/prateeks-621x578.jpg 621w, https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/prateeks-300x279.jpg 300w, https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/prateeks-768x715.jpg 768w, https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/prateeks-600x559.jpg 600w, https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/prateeks.jpg 825w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 483px) 100vw, 483px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-5944\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Prateek Saxena (Chief Scientific Advisor)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Prateek Saxena is the Chief Scientific Advisor. He has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley. Now, he&#8217;s a professor of computer science at NUS.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_5943\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5943\" style=\"width: 374px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-5943 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/amritkumar-374x450.jpg\" alt=\"Amrit Kumar\" width=\"374\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/amritkumar-374x450.jpg 374w, https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/amritkumar-591x710.jpg 591w, https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/amritkumar-621x746.jpg 621w, https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/amritkumar-250x300.jpg 250w, https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/amritkumar-768x923.jpg 768w, https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/amritkumar-600x721.jpg 600w, https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/amritkumar-scaled.jpg 1704w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 374px) 100vw, 374px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-5943\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Amrit Kumar (Head of Research)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Amrit Kumar is the project\u2019s Head of Research. He\u2019s a Research Fellow at NUS. He has a Ph.D. from Universit\u00e9 Grenoble-Alpes, France and an Engineer\u2019s diploma from Ecole Polytechnique, France.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Zilliqa\u2019s advisory board includes the prominent figures in blockchain. They include Loi Luu, Co-founder of Kyber Network; Vincent Zhou, Founding Partner of FBG Capital; Nicolai Oster, Partner at Bitcoin Suisse AG; and Alexander Lipton, Founder and CEO of StrongHold Labs.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_17793\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-17793\" style=\"width: 1392px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-17793\" src=\"https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Screenshot-2019-02-05-09.56.23.png\" alt=\"Zilliqa Roadmap\" width=\"1392\" height=\"454\" srcset=\"https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Screenshot-2019-02-05-09.56.23.png 1392w, https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Screenshot-2019-02-05-09.56.23-591x193.png 591w, https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Screenshot-2019-02-05-09.56.23-621x203.png 621w, https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Screenshot-2019-02-05-09.56.23-300x98.png 300w, https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Screenshot-2019-02-05-09.56.23-768x250.png 768w, https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Screenshot-2019-02-05-09.56.23-874x285.png 874w, https:\/\/coincentral.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Screenshot-2019-02-05-09.56.23-600x196.png 600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1392px) 100vw, 1392px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-17793\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Zilliqa Roadmap<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2 id=\"trading\">Trading History<\/h2>\n<p>ZIL has only experienced one major price spike over the year since its launch. This came in May 2018 and appears to have happened immediately prior to the Scilla programming language launch. Therefore,\u00a0 an announcement of the launch probably caused this spike.<\/p>\n<p>Since then, the price of ZIL has held up well, considering the deeper bear market that Bitcoin and other cryptos experienced during the last months of 2018.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><script type=\"text\/javascript\">\nbaseUrl = \"https:\/\/widgets.cryptocompare.com\/\";\nvar scripts = document.getElementsByTagName(\"script\");\nvar embedder = scripts[ scripts.length - 1 ];\n(function (){\nvar appName = encodeURIComponent(window.location.hostname);\nif(appName==\"\"){appName=\"local\";}\nvar s = document.createElement(\"script\");\ns.type = \"text\/javascript\";\ns.async = true;\nvar theUrl = baseUrl+'serve\/v3\/coin\/chart?fsym=ZIL&tsyms=USD,EUR,CNY,GBP';\ns.src = theUrl + ( theUrl.indexOf(\"?\") >= 0 ? \"&\" : \"?\") + \"app=\" + appName;\nembedder.parentNode.appendChild(s);\n})();\n<\/script><\/p>\n<p>With a successful mainnet launch at the end of January, it&#8217;s possible that ZIL may see further spikes over the first months of 2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"competitors\">Competitors<\/h2>\n<p>As a high-throughput smart contract programming platform, Zilliqa does have some competition. <a href=\"https:\/\/coincentral.com\/what-is-eos\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">EOS<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/coincentral.com\/trx-beginners-guide\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Tron<\/a> both offer similar functionality. Furthermore,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/coincentral.com\/aelf-beginner-guide\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Aelf<\/a> is another smart contract platform using side chains for scalability. It&#8217;s also undergoing a mainnet launch early in 2019, and could be a close competitor.\u00a0<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"buy\">Where to Buy ZIL<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The ZIL token is currently available on <a href=\"https:\/\/coincentral.com\/binance-review\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Binance<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/coincentral.com\/huobi-token-ht-worth-it-an-in-depth-guide\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Huobi<\/a>. Recently, Coinbase Pro (previously GDAX)\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.coinbase.com\/ethereum-tokens-dai-dai-golem-gnt-maker-mkr-and-zilliqa-zil-are-launching-on-coinbase-3065eeb42d5b\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">also confirmed<\/a> it will start listing ZIL tokens.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h2 id=\"store\">Where to Store ZIL<\/h2>\n<p>If you buy ZIL prior to the token swap in Q2 2019, then you can store them in any Ethereum ERC-20 compatible wallet. As always, we recommend cold storage in a hardware wallet such as the <a href=\"https:\/\/coincentral.com\/ledger-nano-s-wallet-review\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ledger Nano S<\/a>. After the token swap, you&#8217;ll most likely have to use an official Zilliqa wallet.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"conclusion\">Conclusion<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Scalability will continue to be a problem for blockchain and distributed ledger technologies. In contrast to many, Zilliqa is an important project that\u2019s tackling scalability head-on. Therefore, the platform itself could prove to be an important development in blockchain. More broadly, however, expect to see Zilliqa\u2019s open source breakthroughs in sharding technology come into use for other blockchain projects in the coming years.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Editor\u2019s Note: This article was updated by Sarah Rothrie on January 28, 2019, to reflect the recent changes to\u00a0the project.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<h2 id=\"resources\">Additional Resources<\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/zilliqa\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Twitter<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/Zilliqa\/Zilliqa\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Github<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/t.me\/zilliqachat\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Telegram<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Zilliqa (ZIL) is the first public blockchain designed for high throughput using sharding. Learn how it supports transactions, smart contracts, and dApps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":6065,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"iawp_total_views":10,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5712],"tags":[16370,5836,23923,5860],"class_list":{"0":"post-5940","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-guides","8":"tag-scalability","9":"tag-smart-contracts","10":"tag-zil","11":"tag-zilliqa"},"wppr_data":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>What Is Zilliqa? | The Complete Guide to the High Throughput Blockchain<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Zilliqa (ZIL) is the first public blockchain designed for high throughput using sharding. 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