Mainnet Launch of Zilliqa Postponed To January 2019, From 3Q18

Zilliqa (ZIL) disappointed investors by announcing that it has postponed the launch of its mainnet from 3Q18 to January 2019. One of the main issues faced by blockchain network is scalability. Right from Bitcoin to Ethereum, all the networks are struggling to solve this crucial issue which may ultimately decide the leader in blockchain technology.

Zilliqa, one of the 28 cryptocurrencies with a market cap of $1 billion, is carving its own way to resolve the scalability issue.

The Singapore based blockchain company’s CEO Xinshu Dong has opined that it is not easy to achieve the task of solving the scalability issue. Zilliqa plans to remove limitations related to scaling using sharding, which virtually splits blockchain networks into shards, enabling the chain to process numerous transactions simultaneously. The process not only increases transaction capability but also minimizes the computing power required by the network.

Bitcoin mining releases carbon-di-oxide equivalent to one million transatlantic flights. In the long-run, it is not sustainable as ecologists are concerned about the high energy consumed by the network. The postponement of mainnet launch by Zilliqa is obviously a disappointing announcement to crypto investors.

However, Dong has stated that Zillqa’s carbon footprint is far less than that of Bitcoin or Ethereum. The cryptocurrrency market has a bullish view of Zilliqa, which saw a 68% gain in its price following the release of public testnet in April 2018. At that time, Zilliqa network processed 2,488 transactions per second using only 3,600 nodes.

The announcement was made by Zilliqa’s co-founder Amrit Kumar in the official Telegram group.

Reason for delay

Amrit Kumar provided the following reason for the delay in mainnet launch.

“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 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

We will be updating the community about the mainnet timeline along the way. At this stage, we are targeting end of this year or January 2019. We apologize for the delay but we firmly believe that it is in the best interest of the long-term future of the project and would like to seek your support and understanding.”

About Zilliqa

The underlying concept that powers Zilliqa was initially proposed in a research paper published by Prateek Saxena, founding team member and Chief Scientific Advisor of Zilliqa, and Loi Luu, Zilliqa’s advisor and CEO and co-founder of KyberNetwork. The paper explained the process of building a secure sharding protocol for open-source blockchains.

Zilliqa is also the first blockchain firm to practically implement sharding. The team has a focused and straight forward approach towards Zilliqa blockchain. The team has clearly explained the need for the creation of Scilla, the smart contract language specifically created for the chain. Furthermore, Zilliqa team is always ready to clarify technical and non-technical details related to the platform. It also runs a community-generated FAQ forum.

Therefore, we can understand that the team is committed to the launch of a perfect platform instead of merely sticking to deadlines.