Zilliqa (ZIL) is a public, permissionless blockchain designed to offer high throughput and offer greater scalability. Launched in June 2017 by founders Amrit Kumar and Xinshu Dong, originating from research at the National University of Singapore, the project's mainnet was launched in January 2019 following a successful Initial Coin Offering (ICO) in 2017, which raised over $22 million in ETH. The development and growth of Zilliqa are supported by Zilliqa Research and ZILHive.
A key feature of Zilliqa is sharding, a technology that splits the network into several smaller, interconnected blockchains to increase transaction capacity. Additionally, Zilliqa introduced Scilla, a security-focused programming language designed for the development of customizable decentralized applications (dApps).
The native cryptocurrency of the platform, ZIL, is used for executing programs, conducting transactions, and rewarding network participants. Zilliqa’s Blog is a source of information for those interested in the platform’s updates and developments.
Zilliqa includes functionalities common to blockchain technologies, such as smart contracts and token issuance, with operations powered by Scilla. The platform aims to enhance the efficiency and scalability of smart contract execution and transaction processing.
The network uses the Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (pBFT) mechanism to maintain consistency across its nodes. In Zilliqa's system, nodes that stake ZIL can influence the network's decisions, requiring consensus among shard-assigned nodes for the completion of microblock transactions. Contributors to block production receive a portion of the block rewards, supporting a collaborative network environment.
