🌟🔍 Zilliqa: Unraveling the Scalable Blockchain with Sharding Magic 🔮🚀

Welcome to the dazzling world of Zilliqa, where scalability meets innovation! Today, we embark on an epic journey to explore the wonders of Zilliqa, a public blockchain platform that utilizes sharding to achieve breathtaking scalability. 🏰

🌈 Sharding: The Secret to Zilliqa's Speed 🌪️

Step into a vibrant city, alive with bustling crowds and constant transactions. Now, envision this city thoughtfully divided into smaller districts, each offering its unique array of services. This concept lies at the core of sharding in Zilliqa!

Discover the wonders of sharding, an extraordinary technique that weaves its magic by partitioning the network into smaller, purposeful groups called shards. Within the confines of each shard, transactions are processed autonomously, gifting Zilliqa with an awe-inspiring capacity to effortlessly manage a massive influx of transactions. 🌌

🔢 How Zilliqa Works: Proof-of-Work and Beyond 🛠️

At the heart of Zilliqa's brilliance lies its proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism. Miners engage in a thrilling competition to solve complex mathematical puzzles, adding new blocks to the blockchain. The first miner to crack the code is rewarded with a treasure trove of 10 ZIL tokens! 🚀

📝 Accounts, Nodes, Transaction Structure, Fees & TPS: The Nuts and Bolts 💰💻

Zilliqa's transactions are a symphony of efficiency:

📜 Header: Contains the transaction's essential details, such as the sender's address, recipient's address, transaction amount, and gas price.
✨ Body: Holds the transaction's data, including the type and specifics of the transaction.
🖋️ Signature: The key to verifying the transaction's authenticity.

The fees for Zilliqa transactions are determined by the gas price. This gas price is the amount of ZIL paid to the miner for processing the transaction. As for TPS, Zilliqa zooms at around 2,400 transactions per second, like a rocket shooting through the cryptoverse! 🚀💨

🏦 Accounts in Zilliqa: Unveiling the Secrets 💼🔑

In the realm of Zilliqa, accounts play a crucial role. Each account is like a vault, capable of holding native assets such as $ZIL or app-layer tokens. These tokens can be effortlessly transferred from one account to another, like a treasure passed between explorers.

🚪 Two Types of Accounts: The Key to Zilliqa's Ecosystem 🔓🔒

Zilliqa's accounts come in two flavors:

🕵️‍♂️ Externally-Owned Account (aka User Account): Controlled by end-users with a public-private signature key pair. Their addresses are like secret codes, safeguarding the treasures within.
🤖 Contract Account: These accounts harbor smart contract codes and are created by users when deploying a smart contract. Their addresses are the heart of the contract's existence.

🎭 Interacting with Accounts: A Tale of Transactions and Gas 💸⛽

Every interaction with an account, be it user or contract, is like a grand performance on the blockchain stage! Each transaction is a carefully crafted data package, signed by an externally-owned account.

🏦 Simple Transfers: Like handing a treasure chest to another explorer, simple transfers of native tokens (like $ZIL) from one user account to another are swift and efficient.
🎩 Smart Contracts: Contracts are the magicians of the blockchain world. They execute complex tasks, and every interaction requires a transaction, which costs gas. The more intricate the contract, the more gas it consumes.

⚙️ The Zilliqa Mainnet: Where Nodes Unite 🌐🤝

Zilliqa's Mainnet is a bustling network of specialized nodes working in harmony to keep the magic alive!

🔮 Shard Nodes: The mystical miners of Zilliqa's Network, each assigned to one of the shards within the network. They work together to process transactions within their shard, like a well-coordinated dance.

🌌 DS Nodes: The wise and powerful Directory Service (DS) nodes, responsible for aggregating shard microblocks to form the Transaction Block. Their job is crucial, like weaving a tapestry of transactions!

🔍 Lookup Nodes: These full nodes hold the key to the blockchain's history. They store all the data generated by the shards and DS nodes, like the wise historians of Zilliqa's cryptoverse.

🌱 Seed Nodes: The supportive full nodes that serve JSON-RPC requests, creating new transactions and bundling them for dispatch.

💼 Staked Seed Nodes: These nodes are like the loyal partners, running SSNs and serving the community, earning rewards for their dedicated service.

🔑 The Art of Sharding: Network Sharding at Its Finest! 🎨🌟

Sharding is the true essence of Zilliqa's magic, and it comes in many forms - network sharding, transaction sharding, and computational sharding. But the crown jewel is network sharding!

Imagine Zilliqa as a vast kingdom divided into smaller districts (shards). Each shard processes transactions independently, working in parallel to achieve stunning throughput. As the number of nodes in the network grows, more shards are added, increasing Zilliqa's capacity to process transactions. The magic of sharding ensures that Zilliqa's throughput scales gracefully with the size of its network! 🌟🏰

🔮 Transaction Sharding: The Sorcery of Efficient Transactions 🧙‍♂️🔍

But the magic doesn't stop there! Within each shard, another enchantment called transaction sharding takes place. When a transaction enters the network, it is assigned to a specific shard based on certain characteristics.

For example, in a network with two shards, S1 and S2, transactions where both the sender's and recipient's addresses end with 0 are assigned to S1, while others are assigned to S2. This strategy ensures that transactions are efficiently processed within their designated shards. It's like a magical sorting hat for transactions! 🎩✨

📜 The Scilla Language: Enchanting Smart Contracts with Safety 📜🌟

In the realm of Zilliqa, smart contracts are crafted using the Scilla language - a principled language designed with safety in mind. Scilla imposes a structure on contracts that eliminates known vulnerabilities, making them more secure and amenable to formal verification.

Some of Scilla's design choices include:

🗝️ Separation of Computation and Communication: Contracts in Scilla are structured as communicating automata, where each computation happens independently without involving other parties. It's like sending secret messages in a magical realm!

⚖️ Separation of Effectful and Pure Computations: Scilla distinguishes between pure expressions, impure local state manipulations, and blockchain reflection. This separation ensures predictability and safety in contract execution.

🔮 Scilla Interpreter: Unleashing the Magic of Execution 🧙‍♂️💻

Scilla's magic comes to life with its interpreter written in OCaml. This interpreter enables users to invoke contract transitions with specific inputs and receive magical outputs. As transitions are executed, the smart contract's mutable state changes like spells being cast!

⛽ Gas Pricer: Keeping the Magic Under Control 🧹⚙️

To maintain the balance of the magical realm, Zilliqa employs a Gas Pricer algorithm. This algorithm computes the acceptable global minimum gas price that the entire network will agree upon. It considers previous gas prices, miners' acceptable prices, and network congestion to decide on the right price.

The current global minimum gas price is set at 0.002 ZIL. So, every transaction incurs a gas cost depending on its complexity. Payment transactions have a fixed cost of 0.1 ZIL, while smart contracts' gas costs vary based on their intricacy.

🔍 Rewards: A Magical Bounty for the Brave 💰🏆

In the world of Zilliqa, rewards are distributed to brave validators who ensure the blockchain's security and integrity.

💫 Base Rewards: Every validating node in the network, whether DS or shard, receives base rewards. They are like the well-deserved treasures for the hardworking nodes!

✨ Cosignature-based Rewards: These rewards are based on the number of valid and accepted signatures submitted by a node during a transaction epoch. The more valid signatures, the greater the rewards, like discovering hidden treasures!

⏳ Final Thoughts on Zilliqa: A Magical Blockchain Adventure 🌌🌠

Zilliqa has enchanted us with its innovative approach to scalability, thanks to the magic of sharding. Its smart contracts are built with safety in mind, and the Scilla language ensures secure and efficient execution.

As Zilliqa continues to grow, its throughput and scalability are poised to reach new heights, making it a formidable player in the world of blockchain. With its vast array of features and enchanting ecosystem, Zilliqa stands as a beacon of hope and promise for the future of decentralized technologies.

So, join us on this mesmerizing adventure as we witness the unfolding magic of Zilliqa - the blockchain of tomorrow, designed for scalability, security, and boundless possibilities! 🧙‍♀️🚀🌟

Sources:
\=>https://www.zilliqa.com/
\=>https://dev.zilliqa.com/
\=>https://github.com/Zilliqa/Zilliqa
\=>https://golden.com/wiki/Zilliqa-EAVDZMA