It is safe to say that Zilliqa is not one of the more well known cryptocurrencies, but right now, it could definitely be one to watch right now, as it has become one of just 28 virtual currencies that is now boasting a market capitalisation of over $1 billion. According to figures, the beginning of the week was certainly a big one for Zilliqa, as it broke the $1 billion threshold on Monday. It is currently worth around $1.2 billion, which makes it the 23rd most valuable cryptocurrency in the whole world. So why the sudden rise in value? Well rise coincided with the announcement that Zilliqa is now available to trade on OKEx, which is the third highest volume cryptocurrency exchange. It is not exclusive to this exchange though, and is also featured on Binance, Huobi and Gate.io just to name a few more. Zilliqa is a Singapore based project, and was designed with the aim of solving the problem of scalability that many cryptocurrencies face. It aims to use sharding, which is an efficiency-boosting technique, that, although predates Bitcoin, has not proved its worth, or viability in large, permissionless networks. The whitepaper, introduced last year, states;

“…at Ethereum’s present network size of 30,000 miners, Zilliqa would expect to process about [1,000] times the transaction rates of Ethereum.”

Alhough Zilliqa is the first to introduce sharding, they shouldn’t get too complacent just yet, as there are reports that the Ethereum network also plans to introduce sharding in the future, and there are rumours that they could undercut Zilliqa’s value proposition. But, right now, Zilliqa is in a positive position. It’s market capital has more than tripled in just 30 days, and it is still on the rise. It is currently worth approximately $0.16, which means that in just 24 hours, the value has gain risen by 16.9%.