Zilliqa, a project to develop next-generation, high-throughput distributed ledger technology (DLT), announced that their current internal testnet of 2400 nodes was able to process 1,389 transactions per second, a result that they can improve upon in the future.
Zilliqa aims to remove one of the most pressing problems facing blockchain platforms, which is their lack of scalability, as they cannot handle a larger number of transactions per second as the network grows. In fact, existing blockchains are not able to scale for the next generation of Internet-style applications, whereby 7–10 transactions/second (TX/s) are available in Bitcoin and Ethereum today, and the demands of payment processing in centralized operators (e.g., VISA, MasterCard) for supporting thousands of TX/s.
This new blockchain platform is designed to scale in an open, permission-less distributed network without compromising security and resilience. Zilliqa’s scalability is achieved through “sharding”, which is the division of the network into several smaller component networks (called shards) capable of processing transactions in parallel.
Sharding, which is seen by many DLT developers as a promising way to achieve high throughput, is also part of Ethereum’s roadmap for the future.
The transaction rate in Zilliqa increases as the mining network expands, as a result of the team’s work around sharding, and with a network size of 10,000 nodes, Zilliqa will enable a throughput matching that of VISA and MasterCard with lower fees for the merchants.
The Zilliqa blockchain will support smart contracts with a dataflow programming system that, while not Turing-complete like Ethereum, offers better scalability and can be more easily parallelized for a sharded blockchain. Dataflow programming is visual and used in demanding commercial projects, including game development, which ensures the availability of talent.
