Zilliqa (ZIL) Token Progress Report
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What is Zilliqa?
Zilliqa is a dApps environment blockchain platform that uses sharding to boost the output as the network increases. This potentially solves issues associated with scaling and provides a blockchain powerful enough, stable enough and fast enough to process hundreds of transactions a second. That transaction rate makes the blockchain a viable real-world proposition and could be the tipping point for mass adoption. The technology is there, but it needs the developers to come on board with the best decentralized applications.
Introduction to Zilliqa ZIL
We covered the Zilliqa ICO back in December of 2017, ranking it among the top 1% of projects we have reviewed in the space. The smart contract-enabled blockchain technology looks that good. It’s the speed with which the blockchain network can process the smart contracts that really marks it apart.
Zilliqa introduces a high-throughout protocol capable of processing thousands of transactions per second, rivaling the speeds of centralized payment systems and producing viable transaction rates for the dApps environment that could form the basis of a decentralized internet.
To accomplish this, Zilliqa employs a mechanism called “sharding”, which increases throughput linearly as the network expands. Using a 1,000 node network as an example, Zilliqa divides the network into 10 shards of 100 nodes each. The shards can then process transactions in parallel with each other. If each shard is capable of processing 10 transactions per second, then all shards together can process 100 transactions per second. That’s a solid number of transactions.
Zilliqa tokens are used to reward network nodes. On the network, blocks are validated by multiple miners simultaneously, so that miner income remains more stable compared to other chains. Through this design, rewards can be more evenly distributed throughout the blockchain platform that relies on Proof-of-Work verification.
The smart contracts programming language follows a dataflow style and Zilliqa has its own programming language for the dApps, which could count against it. Other blockchain platforms have more inclusive programming languages, including Javascript.
Zilliqa Proposed Roadmap
Let’s first have a look at the roadmap as a point of reference for the project progress.
Project Roadmap
- June 2017: Project Launch
- August 2017: Whitepaper released
- September 2017: Release results of v0.1 internal testnet
- October 2017: Release results of v0.5 internal testnet
- December 2017: Release Scillia design document
- January 2018: Release source code
- March 2018: Release testnet v1.0
- Q2 2018: Release testnet v2.0
- Q3 2018: Mainnet launch
- Q4 2018: Release of anchor dApps (with partnership companies)
Zilliqa Project Development Progress:
In line with the roadmap, Zillaqa announced the released of their v1.0 testnet on March 31st Zilliqa.
As development of the network continued, the team announced a program called BuildOnZIL on June 19th to solicit support from the developer community. The program provided ecosystem grants for contributors to both the network and development of dApps to expand the project ecosystem.
By August 14th, program participants and their respective projects were shared with the public. Leveraging the wider community to source top programming teams, many crucial network components are currently under development.
The projects from the 12 teams currently underway include:
APIs:
Wallets:
- iOS wallet for Zil tokens
- Secure Multi-party Computation (SMPC) Protocol Wallet
- Gaming engine wallet for blockchain-based gaming
Web Extensions
Library:
Native Zilliqa Language Server
Games
Additional Applications
The Q2 2018 of the v2.0 Zillaqa testnet, D24, launched according to schedule on June 30th. With the timely release of the v2.0 testnnet, the project appeared to be on track for a Q3 mainnet release. However, on August 6th, an announcement on the Zilliqa Telegram channel stated the mainnet release would be delayed until January 2019 at the latest. Co-founder Amrit Kumar had this to say about the delay of the mainnet launch:
“Since the release of our technical whitepaper back in August 2017, we have come a long way and have modified part of the initial design and implemented new techniques to make the protocol more performant and more secure (…) Oftentimes, such modifications to the protocol design required a complete re-design of certain parts of the system. In the past few weeks, we have had extensive discussions to review the timeline in light of these enhancements. Unfortunately, we will need more time to ensure that the code gets properly tested by the core development team, the community and last but not the least, established auditing firms. We will also be leveraging the additional time to:
– Conduct thorough security audits
– Prepare for and execute the token swap
– Integrate with wallets
– Develop toolchains
– Bring more dApps onboard”
The Zilliqa and Mindshare Partnership?
In our review of the Zilliqa ICO, we pointed to the Zilliqa-Mindshare partnership as a promising signal for potential enterprise adoption by one of the world’s largest media and marketing companies. On May 23rd, Zilliqa tweeted again about the partnership, in reference to a “full value chain solution” pilot-project that would include NASDAQ and NYSE-listed firms.
A question in the Zilliqa Telegram channel on August 21st from a community member regarding enterprise partnerships received a confirmation from their admin that the Mindshare partnership is indeed still on, yet no official updates have been released in several months. If this partnership bears fruit, nobody in the crypto space will be left asking what is Zilliqa?
Other ZIL Partnerships
On August 2nd, Zilliqa released news of a new partnership with Japanese software company Infoteria. According to the announcement, both companies will promote the Zilliqa platform on Asteria, a middleware product developed by Infoteria that serves more than 6,500 enterprise customers. The enterprise blockchain as a service is obviously a separate strand of the public blockchain. That shares the development costs, while giving absolute security for a Fortune 500 firm’s private data.
To promote enterprise development of dApps on the public blockchain, Zilliqa plan to deploy a connectivity adapter to the Asteria platform as a bridge to existing ERP systems. Whether the Infoteria or Mindshare partnerships result in the release of key, “anchor” dApps by the end of Q4 as planned remains up in the air.
With the project’s value proposition tied heavily to enterprise deployment, the results of these partnerships hold significant weight for the project.
ZIL Token Performance
Zilliqa holds 32nd place on CoinMarketCap at the time of publishing, with a market cap of around $270M USD. With a total supply of 12.6 billion ZILs, the current circulating supply is approximately 7.6 billion.
Less than two weeks after the release of the v1.0 testnet on March 31st, Zilliqa experienced a meteoric rise, surpassing a $1 billion dollar market cap on May 5th.
On May 10th, ZIL peaked at an ATH of $0.23 (at a $1.5 billion dollar MC) but has followed a relative downward trend since then, reaching a low on August 14th of $0.025. Since then, ZIL has exhibited a very slight recovery in line with the overall trend of the altcoin market.
Our Verdict on Zilliqa
Looking at the project from a technical perspective, Zilliqa is a competitive frontrunner in the high-throughput race. The team has largely stuck to deadlines and made significant progress toward demonstrating the performance capability of the network.
Still, the project’s two high-profile enterprise partnerships have yet to bear fruit, and mainnet release has been delayed several months. While Zilliqa holds immense potential, the question of adoption will ultimately play a decisive factor in the future of the project.
Until we see more progress on the dApp front beyond gaming, we’ll hold off on adding ZIL to the bag for now.
Learn more about the progress of Zilliqa from our Telegram Community by clicking here.
Published: 7/22/18
Token Name: ZIL
ICO Date: December 27th, 2017
Raised: $22M USD
Crowdsale Token Ownership: 30%
ICO Price: 1 ZIL = $0.0038 USD
Current Price: $0.03
Token Return: 9.36x
Market Cap: $269,276,550
The author is not invested in Zilliqa but holds other digital currency investments.
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