Poly Network AMA Recap With Zilliqa
On 30th September, 2021, Zilliqa (@zilliqa) officially proclaimed its partnership with Poly Network (@PolyNetwork2) on Twitter. The Poly Network AMA with Zilliqa was then hosted on 13th October in the Poly Network Telegram Community. From the Live AMA with Zilliqa VP, Milan, this recap has been carefully drafted to ensure the full grasp of the information.
GUEST INTRODUCTION
Moderator: Poly Network is a groundbreaking heterogeneous interoperability protocol alliance, which has already integrated Bitcoin, Ethereum, Neo, Ontology, Heco, BSC, OKExChain, Arbitrum, Polygon, Elrond, and Cosmos-SDK, and aims to build the foundation for Next-gen Internet (NGI) by enabling greater integration, cooperation, and innovation. Since the launch, the protocol has reached total trade volume of more than $13 billion USD involving more than 270K cross-chain addresses on different blockchains.
Milan: Zilliqa is a smart contract platform that was born at the national university of Singapore. It was the first protocol that would implement sharding technology to scale a blockchain network, which has inspired many other blockchains to do the same. Our mainnet went live in 2019 and since then, we are expanding our ecosystem with currently 100+ projects building and associated with us.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS IN LIVE AMA
Q1：What are the factors that make Zilliqa outshine other blockchains?
Milan: There are a lot of things to talk about but I’ll just focus on how we differentiate ourselves on the language level and the platform level.
On the smart contract language level we have Scilla. Scilla imposes a structure on smart contracts that will make applications running on Zilliqa less vulnerable to attacks by eliminating certain known vulnerabilities directly at the language level. Furthermore, the principled structure of Scilla will make applications inherently more secure.
1) Rooted in science
Scilla is a peer-reviewed smart contract language created by academics from the ground up. It has been designed as a principled language with smart contract safety in mind.
2) Identifies security risks
An extensible static analysis framework and an automated scanner is provided to help developers identify generic security vulnerabilities directly at the language level.
3) Easier to write safe contracts
Scilla provides developers with more sanity-checkers in addition to static type-checkers. This makes comprehensive testing much easier.
4) Mathematical proof of safety
Scilla is amenable to formal verification, meaning you can write mathematical proofs to prove that a given contract satisfies certain safety properties.
If you want to try it out and code on Scilla, check out: http://www.learnscilla.com/ (http://www.learnscilla.com/).
Also, we have written a dedicated blog post on this topic: https://blog.zilliqa.com/scilla-design-story-piece-by-piece-part-1-why-do-we-need-a-new-language-27d5f14ae661
Then on a platform level our fundamental principle is to turn token holders into users. We think that ultimate goal of any token issuer of any dapp or platform should be able to convert its token holders into its actual users. The more users a platform or a dapp has, the more market share it will attract, thereby creating a sustainable value capture for the underlying token. We will not be able to convert non-crypto users into crypto users, if we are unable to convert our very own token holders (that already have a stake in the system) into actual users of the product that drives that token. Utility tokens will not survive for too long without users extracting utility and governance tokens will not exist in the space for too long if the token holders as stakeholders do not exercise their governance rights.
This is why we are heavily focusing on DeFi and the Creator Economy where Xcademy (see https://xcadnetwork.com/) will launch fan tokens for big Youtubers or Package Portal (see https://www.packageportal.com/) incentivizes online shoppers with their crypto, or RedChilles (see https://zilchill.com/) lets people use their tokens for games, and so forth. All protocols will eventually become similar on the protocol level. Some may be more decentralized or more secure or have faster TPS, but eventually we need to focus on differentiating ourselves on the application level. This is what most people will use and what most people will care about.
Q2: What’s unique about ETH-Zil Bridge ?
Milan: To bridge this question (pun intended haha) with my last response, is that we want to turn token holders into users. What’s also important is to provide a seamless experience where people enjoy using your products. Therefore, what makes our bridge unique is making it as easy to use as possible. By integrating it directly to www.zilswap.io it seems you are trading inside the Zilliqa ecosystem, instead of bridging from outside. In other words, we try to make it feel like it is all interconnected instead of separated. It should all feel like one!
Q3: As officially announced at the end of September, Zilliqa now partners with Poly Network to power Zilliqa chain. So why did Zilliqa choose Poly Network for partnership?
Milan: The Zilliqa team connected with Poly Network to allow the Zilliqa chain to transitively connect to all the other chains that Poly Network itself is connected to which includes Bitcoin, Ethereum, NEO, Binance Smart Chain among others. This will be beneficial to both the Zilliqa community and the communities of the connecting chains in the following ways:
Through the Poly Network bridge, token holders and developers alike will benefit from Zilliqa’s comparatively lower transaction fees. Furthermore, Zilliqa’s greater transaction throughput is designed to accommodate even the most complex contracts without diminishing speed, performance, and security. For example, once BTC is converted into a ZRC-20 token on top of Zilliqa, transferring those representations of Bitcoin will cost pennies compared to the fees that users would have paid had they made the transfer on the Bitcoin chain itself.
With the bridge, developers will also be able to build cross-chain logic in their Scilla smart contracts in order to integrate them with smart contracts on all other supported blockchain.
We will leverage these functionalities on our on-chain DEX ZilSwap, to bridge ERC20/BEP20/NEP5 assets to Zilliqa as ZRC-2 tokens. Switcheo’s DEX will also provide liquidity pairs which will enable users to earn trading fees and $ZWAP (Zilswap’s recently announced governance token) liquidity mining rewards.
Conversely, $ZIL and ZRC-2 token holders will be able to bridge their tokens to Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain, and use these assets on DeFi products built on top of the partner chains. $ZIL and ZRC-2 assets can also be ported over to Switcheo TradeHub and be traded on Demex, a decentralized spot and derivatives exchange.
Creating a collaborative infrastructure is key to this industry’s growth, and the Poly Network Bridge is a testament to the progress being made on that front. Zilliqa — Poly Network bridge is currently under active development. Once the bridge is launched, users and developers for both Zilliqa and Ethereum ecosystems will be able to benefit from Zilswap’s cross-chain features.
Q4: Zilliqa recently launched Liquidity Mining Incentives for Bridged Assets which becomes a hit now. Could you elaborate more on the program, especially how can users get involved with the program?
Milan: To incentivize early users to bridge over their ERC-20 assets and bootstrap liquidity, incentives worth 45.3M ZIL (US$3.75M) will be distributed to those who pool their assets on ZILSwap. This began on Oct 6, for a total of 6 weeks (first batch will be dropped today!). Liquidity providers on any of the aforementioned pools can potentially earn high yields on liquidity mining incentives alone. With ZWAP rewards kicking in, these yields will only get higher!
Users can get involved by going to https://zilswap.io/bridge and bridge their assets over.
If you look at the zUSDT, zETH, and zWBTC APY it is super high (over 180%). Recommend everyone to check it out. You’re still early.
Q5: Is there any roadmap or plan over the development of Zilliqa? What can we expect from Zilliqa in the future?
Milan: Actually, this quarter (Q4) is a bit special. We have a lot of things coming up. I think it will be our most important quarter so far. However, most of it is a surprise. We will do some initiatives that have not been done before by any other smart contract platform. I do not want to say too much but in the next few weeks you will see more about this. I suggest joining our Telegram (https://t.me/zilliqa) and following our Twitter (https://twitter.com/zilliqa) for updates.
COMMUNITY LIVE QUESTIONS
Note: 5 questions were chosen and answered by the AMA guest in this session. The AMA Rewards for this session was $500USD in total.
Q1: Can you tell me more details on the IDO? The schedule and contribution for each?
Milan: Since the launch of ZilSwap projects can launch their own token offering through the ZILO initiative. So far we have Stream, BLOX, and DeMons launched through ZilSwap. Each raising 4.2 million, 3.3 million, and 4.3 million respectively. Looks like the community is bullish on Zilliqa projects!
You can check more details here if you want to launch your own project: https://docs.zilswap.io/how-to/zilo.
Q2: Do you have any NFT plans and its integration ahead in the roadmap? Also do you have any passive income options and incentivization reward for a long-term holder?
Milan: Yes we do. The ‘Creator Economy’ where NFTs fall under is one of our main markets we are focussing on, and many NFT initiatives.
Useful things to help kickstart your Zilaverse journey!
First you’ll need a web3 wallet:
ZILPay — https://zilpay.io/
Zillet — https://zillet.io/
Zeeves — @zilliqawalletbot (Accessible through Telegram for you to view your NFTs!)
There are plenty other wallets including Zeeves so feel free to explore and pick the one you’re most comfortable with using
Marketplaces:
Mintable — https://zilliqa.mintable.app/
Sparda — https://spardawallet.com/marketplace.html
Duck Marketplace — https://app.duck.community/duckstore
Okimoto — https://okimoto.io/ (Coming soon!)
Zilswap NFT Marketplace — https://zilswap.io (Coming soon!)
Explore, create and purchase NFTs in the above listed marketplaces. Mintable is a good place to start to view an array of different art styles and collections. For auctions you can head over to Sparda and partake in them by purchasing some SPW. Zilduck’s Marketplace sells Duck NFTs. Okimoto’s marketplace for NFTs is in the works and is coming soon!
NFT Projects and Collections on Zilliqa:
There’s plenty of them. Here’s a few examples of NFT projects in the Zilliqa ecosystem
DeMons — https://demons.world (NFT project with gamified metaverse in the works)
TheBearMarket — https://thebear.market (Commemorative of Zilliqa and Switcheo’s 1 year of partnership, Generative NFT)
ZILDuck (Non Fungible Ducks) — https://duck.community (Generative art collection, utility to be announced soon)
XcademyNetwork — https://xcademytoken.com/ (Although it’s a social and creator token, creator NFTs can also be purchased eventually)
PELE Network — https://pele.network (Focuses on decentralized media but also utilizes NFTs in its initial fund raises)
Elons — https://elons.io (Project that bridges the physical and digital. Hold some ELONS and get sent digital and physical art!)
UFFS — https://www.uffsports.com/ (Fantasy Sports NFTs)
DragonZIL — dragonzil.xyz (Game where you can buy, trade, upgrade, and battle with you dragons. Has its own Marketplace as well)
Q3: How does project increase the token’s value, liquidity and utility? So that it can lead to an increase in token price? What is your plan to make your project stable and provide the highest return for investors in the long term?
Milan: We have a circular economy model. The more Zilliqa is used the more deflationary it gets. This is why we aggressively push to make token holders users. The more users on Zilliqa, the more value and utility ZIL gets. This creates a win-win for everyone!
Q4: As an individual user ,In what ways can I contribute to the development of Zilliqa? Do you have Ambassador programs and what are its benefits?
Milan: We are preparing a new and global ambassador program for the last months. We are waiting till some other things have launched to launch this program. If you are interested in becoming an ambassador please join our community and follow our social channels. this will be very exciting!
Q5: Why do you believe Zilliqa powered stable coin XSGD is better than any other stable coins in existence and what can it do to improve global commerce in South East Asia and particularly Singapore where we’ve seen huge investment in FinTech recently?
Milan: You have to look at the stablecoin being developed on Zilliqa, XSGD, from a slightly different angle. To a very large extent, it seems that much of the use of USD backed stablecoins right now is in trading. Additionally, many of them seem also to have some issues with regulations, including Tether, which does not serve US customers (if I am not wrong).
We believe that unregulated stablecoins will face issues being adopted beyond trading usage as regulators would like to know when a token is redeemed for fiat.
Since Xfers, our partner that helped launch this stablecoin initiative, are licensed to operate as a Widely Accepted Stored Value Facility, this solves the problem. It also opens up other use cases, particularly in the region beyond trading — for example, remittance. XIDR (when it gets launched) can help create that bridge between Singapore and Indonesia.
Moreover, remittance is a huge market even if you only consider the ASEAN region (which we are focusing on heavily). The region is still over 60% underbanked and unbanked. If the right tools are provided to the people in this region, you should be able to make XSGD more useful in day-to-day economy than USD-backed stablecoins. The regionalness of XSGD will be a factor at play here.
The AMA this time was fairly informative, disseminating abundant useful details of Zilliqa and its ecosystem. It attracted around 1,000 new members to the Telegram community of Poly Network. Please stay tuned with a new round of AMA coming next week.
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