There are many solid contenders vying for the spot of the best cryptocurrency of 2018. IOTA, Stellar, VeChain Thor and Cardano have all made advances and are set to expand further. But Zilliqa is the coin of choice as the best cryptocurrency of 2018, for three primary reasons. These reasons are speed, security, and politics.
Zilliqa is focused on building the fastest and safest network possible. It is a DApp development environment that intends to compete with Ethereum, as well as Tron and EOS.
Speed and scalability
Zilliqa achieved speeds of 2,488 transactions per second in its testnet on six network shards using only 3,600 nodes. It has successfully implemented sharding while the majority of other cryptocurrencies, such as Ethereum, are still only considering it. It ranks among the fastest and most scalable of all cryptocurrencies, which is a pre-requisite to the effective functioning of any blockchain network on a large scale. Zilliqa is said to scale as the network gets bigger, much like IOTA, with theoretically limitless scalability.
Smart contract security
Zilliqa is aiming to create the most secure smart contract protocol possible. Smart contract security is of the utmost importance. Bancor, the world’s largest decentralized exchange, recently lost USD 23.5 Million due to a permission back door in a smart contract. The DAO hack, the second biggest failure in blockchain history aside from Mount Gox, occurred due to a smart contract programming error. Wallet provider Parity has been subjected to numerous smart contract hacks. A cryptocurrency that is focused on smart contract security will certainly have a bright future. And Zilliqa is far ahead of other DApp environments in this context, with smart contract security a network priority from the design phase.
Politics
Zilliqa is not subjected to the bitter struggles and controversies seen with other DApp platforms, such as EOS and Tron. In fact, it is hard to find any kind of controversy associated with the organization. They are focused on providing security and scalability while leaving the political controversy behind. With hacks and scams running rampant in the cryptocurrency industry, integrity is a valuable commodity not easily measured. Recently, a Chinese billionaire called Justin Sun (Tron) a cheat along with the Binance CEO, in a secret recording. True or false, these outbreaks can damage a cryptocurrency.
The Zilliqa team is largely composed of computer science academics and Ph.D.’s, with a noticeable lack of marketing and business ‘consultants’. This could explain their focus on simply building a good DApp environment instead of hype and marketing.
Other considerations
Zilliqa was rated among the best 14 cryptocurrencies by Weiss cryptocurrency ratings across four key categories. It ranks especially high given its smaller market cap, punching above its weight in this regard. This could be an indication of upside potential. Its energy footprint is much lower than other cryptocurrencies, and its smart contract programming language is called Scilla, developed specifically by Zilliqa.
Zilliqa’s mainnet is not yet launched. This can be viewed as either positive or negative. The downside is that without a mainnet there is no real traffic to judge its efficiency. But from an adoption and price perspective, the mainnet launch will boost both and is expected to happen in Q3 2018.
Zilliqa scores top points on speed, scalability, security, and politics, and it is in prime position to become a top cryptocurrency in the coming years. Its challenge will be in providing a user-friendly platform at an organizational level to facilitate mass adoption. The mainnet launch is eagerly anticipated, and it could be the best cryptocurrency of 2018 and beyond.
